Page:Pleased to Meet You (1927).pdf/165

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It was indeed Mildred. Nervous excitement, the cocktail, the uproars of the orchestra and a lively indigestion had made sleep spasmodic. Her dreams were all of the brilliant elevator man who was going to take her promenading by the moat in the morning. She had been put in a room by herself. Thence, after restless rollings in a vast canopied bed, she had eventually sallied out in an almost somnambulist trance which was half fatigue and half the uneasiness of colic. A rearward stair brought her unobserved to the postern door onto the terrace. Here, refreshed by the clear night, her extravagant and erring spirit desired one more tiptoe along the stone balustrade.

With considerable difficulty the Colonel held up the strangling figure while Nyla, groping along the wall, pulled the punt toward them and shouted for help. The dress uniform of Dalmatian admirals, as fortunately few of them have learned, makes an ill swimming suit. The Colonel was heavily sogged by his golden festoonery. He swam laboriously, grasping