meant
nothing to this little creature whom Dorothy had saved from drowning,
and with a sudden pitiful memory of poor, half-witted Peter Piper who
had loved her so, she realized that here was another such as he. In
body and mind the child had never grown up, though her years were
many.

"Come this way, little lady. Come with me. Let us go into the house;"
said the girl gently, and led the stranger to the window she had left
open. "You must be the odd guest I needed for my House Party, to make
the couples even, and so I bid you welcome. Strange, the window should
be shut!"

But closed it was; nor could all the girl's puny pounding bring help
to open it. Against the front door the great tree still pressed and
she could not reach its bell; and confused by all she had passed
through Dorothy forgot that there were other entrances where help
could be summoned and sank down on the piazza floor beside her first,
her uninvited guest, to wait for morning.

CHAPTER IV

TROUBLES LIGHTEN IN THE TELLING

But a few moments sufficed to show that this would not do. Despite her
own heavy kimono she was already chilled by the air of that late
September night, while the little creature beside her was shivering as
if in ague, although she seemed to be half-asleep.

She reasoned that Ephraim must have waked and closed the library
window and departed to his own quarters. But there must be some way in
which a girl could get into her own house; and then she exclaimed:

"Why, yes! The sun-parlor, right at the end of this very piazza. All
that south side is covered with glass and if I can get a sash up we
can climb through. The place is as nice as a bedroom. Anyway, I'll
try!"

She left the stranger where she lay and ran to make the effort, and
though for a time the heavy sash resisted her strength, it did yield
slightly and her fresh fear that it had been locked vanished. Yet with
her utmost endeavor she could lift it but a few inches and she
wondered if she would be able to get her visitor through that scant
opening.

"I shall have to make her go through flat-wise, like crawling through
fence bars, and I wonder if she will! Anyhow, I must try. I--I don't
like it out here in the night and we'll both be sick of cold, and that
would end our party."

Dorothy never quite realized how that affair was managed.

Though the wanderer appeared to hear well enough she did not speak and
had not from the first. Probably she could not,