The room was quite dark but for the flickering firelight, which had brightened since that big piece of coal fell apart. Basil went to his own special cupboard and took from it a pack of cards, which his grandfather had given him only last week. Grandfather never used the same pack on two consecutive evenings, and gave one to Basil nearly every week with the instruction: “Never use dirty cards, even to build castles with.” The child had never played with the ones he held in his hands, and his big grey eyes filled with tears as he wrapped them up in a leaf torn out of his copy-book. Then, laboriously, for Basil was no scribe, he wrote on the packet, a proceeding which took a considerable time. He gave a sob as he kissed his message, but there was no time to be lost. Slipping off his shoes, he opened the door very softly, raced across the hall and up the stairs. The staircase was quite dark, for Chapman had forgotten to light the lamps.
When he reached his grandfather’s bedroom door he paused with his hand on the handle. His heart was pounding in his ears, and for a full minute he could not hear whether all was quiet in the room or not. Opening the door very softly, and as softly shutting it after him, he ran across the room and pulled up the blind of the big window that faced the bed. The moon came out from behind a bank of cloud, as if to aid him in his task, and shone full on that strange last couch at the foot of the bed in which grandfather lay so still under his coverlet of flowers. Basil pushed at the heavy window, but it was fastened far out of his reach, and he could not let in the fresh night air that grandfather loved. As his eyes grew accustomed to the lighter room, he came and stood by that light-colored box that he hated so, lifted the white cloth covering his grandfather’s face, and looked at him long and earnestly.
Basil had very vague notions as to what heaven was like; but, on reviewing all that he had heard of it, he came to the conclusion that if there was no whist there grandfather would be dull, and he had often heard him say: “There’s only one thing that I dread, and that’s boredom.” So Basil had decided that at all costs such a contingency must be avoided, and grandfather must teach the angels to play whist. “They can p’obably make more cards when they’ve seen them,” said Basil to himself, and pushed his little packet underneath the folded hands, kissed them, and turned to go as softly as he had come.
But the door opened at that moment, and his mother, candle in hand, stood on the threshold gazing at the little figure standing full in the strand of moonlight thrown across the carpet.
“What are you doing here, Basil?” she asked breathlessly.
“I came to give something to grandfather. Oh, don’t take it away from him!”
The passionate distress in the child’s voice moved her.
“I will take nothing away from him that you wish to give him. But what is it? Is it flowers?”
“No, mother, it is not flowers.”
She came into the room, closing the door after her.