And empty mills do creak and rustle and move about in a very odd way. Oswald was not afraid, but he did think we might as well have slept in the kitchen, because the gentleman could not have wanted to use that when he was asleep. You see, we thought then that he would sleep all night like other people.
We got to sleep at last, and in the night the girls edged up to their bold brothers, so that when the morning sun "shone in bars of dusty gold through the chinks of the aged edifice" and woke us up we were all lying in a snuggly heap like a litter of puppies.
"Oh, I am so stiff!" said Alice, stretching. "I never slept in my clothes before. It makes me feel as if I had been starched and ironed like a boy's collar."
We all felt pretty much the same. And our faces were tired too, and stiff, which was rum, and the author cannot account for it, unless it really was spiders that walked on us. I believe the ancient Greeks considered them to be venomous, and perhaps that's how their venom influences their victims.
"I think mills are merely beastly," remarked H.O. when we had woke him up. "You can't wash yourself or brush your hair or anything."
"You aren't always so jolly particular about your hair," said Dicky.
"Don't be so disagreeable," said Dora.
And Dicky rejoined, "Disagreeable yourself!"
There is certainly something about sleeping in your clothes that makes you feel not so kind and polite as usual. I expect this is why tramps are so fierce and knock people down in lonely roads and kick them. Oswald knows he felt just like kicking any one if they had happened to cheek him the least little bit. But by a fortunate accident nobody did.
The author believes there is a picture called "Hopeless Dawn." We felt exactly like that. Nothing seemed the least bit of good.