"Who's there? That you, Jimmie?"
Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock!
She huddled the coverlet up under her chin and lay back on her pillow, but with her body so rigid that only half her weight relaxed to the mattress; and behind her tight-closed eyes flaming wheels revolved against the lids. Tears ran backward toward her ears like spectacle-frames and soaked into the pillow, a mouse with a thousand feet scurried between the walls.
"Essie? Jimmie, that you?"
Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock!
More tears leaked out from her closed eyes and found their way to her mouth, so that she could taste their salt. Then for a slight moment she dozed, with her body at full stretch and hardly raising the coverlet, and her thin cheek cupped in the palm of her thin hand. The mouse scurried in a light rain of falling plaster, and she woke with her pulse pounding in her ears.
"Jimmie? Jimmie? Who's there?"
Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock!
Sobs trembled through her and set the bed-springs vibrating, and she buried her head under her flat pillow and fell to counting the immemorial procession of phantom sheep that graze the black grasses of the Land of Wakeful Hours and lead their sleepless shepherds through the long, long, long pastures of the night.
"Three hundred 'n' five; three hundred 'n' six; three hundred 'n' seven; three hundred 'n'—Jimmie?"