For the time being, there seemed to be nothing that I could do. On the other hand, it was hopeless to think of going to bed. With Molly showing signs of having caught a very severe cold, with Nanny determined to leave me next day, and with Gran'pa crouching in that damp and miserable shelter down the garden, it would have been impossible for me to sleep a wink. The whole of my little, orderly world was topsy-turvy.
In my misery, I cursed science in general; I cursed Alfred the gorilla; I cursed Dr. Croft; and I even cursed Sir James Barrie for writing "Peter Pan."
I pictured those happy, peaceful days when Gran'pa had nodded at his unrejuvenated ease by the fireside—and life had been one smooth, eventless stream of comfort and solace after the day's work.
To think that this chaotic disturbance should have been caused by a mere couple of innocent looking thyroid glands! To think that, after all these years, dear, motherly old Nanny was going to leave us to fend for ourselves—or to leave us to the mercy of some cold-blooded, professional housekeeper.
With a sigh, I drew up my chair before the fire, and prepared to pass a night of comfortless dozings and painful cogitations on the future.
About one o'clock I woke with a start from an evil dream in which Gran'pa figured as a wild man of the woods, pursuing innocent children and hurrying them to some terrible and uncertain doom. In his cave were scattered the whitened remains of little human bones. . . .
At two o'clock I shook off the vestiges of a pitiful scene in which the old man had been lying in a great four-poster bed, with his long gray beard streaming over a red and yellow counterpane.
"I'm . . . dying, George!" he had whispered.
Scared and shaken, I sprang to my feet and determined to make still another appeal to his better nature.
The rain had ceased and a full moon shed its cold and pitiless light on the scene as I stood remonstrating and pleading with him.