“It’s an awful long time till ten o’clock,” said Bobby to himself, crawling out of bed as soon as he heard Norah close the door at the foot of the back stairs. “I hope I don’t go to sleep before it’s time to start.”
Bobby had not meant to undress, for when he and the boys talked it over they had decided that the best way would be to go to bed fully dressed and then pull the covers up and if anyone peeped into their bedrooms they would look as usual. But Bobby had reckoned without Norah who announced that she expected to see clothes “folded up as they belong on chairs and not scattered all about.” Bobby knew that if Norah went through his room and saw no clothes neatly folded she would immediately want to know where they were. So he had had to undress and get into his pajamas as he always did.
Bobby had a small room to himself, while the twins slept in a larger connecting room and Meg had her own little room.
“I s’pose Meg will be kind of sorry,” said Bobby, trying to dress quietly, and without snapping on the light. “But she would be sorrier if I stayed here and Mr. Bennett put me in prison. Mother wouldn’t like that, either. I wonder what Mr. Bennett will say when he finds we’ve gone.”
As soon as he was dressed, Bobby tiptoed into Mother Blossom’s room to look at her little ivory clock. It was only half-past eight!
“I wish I’d told the fellows nine o’clock,” thought Bobby. “But there would be a lot of people coming home from the movies then and they might see us. I guess I can read till a quarter of, and then I’ll go.”
He found a magazine on the table by the bed and he took that and Father Blossom’s pocket flashlight which lay near and went back into his own room and lay down on the floor and read the stories, not daring to turn on the electric light lest someone come home and see a light in his room when he was supposed to be asleep. He had to put the quilt over him, because, even though he had closed the window, the room was cold. Norah had carefully turned off the heat before she went downstairs.
Bobby was so wide awake that he knew he wouldn’t go to sleep and he was very much surprised when his head struck the floor with a bump.
“Why—I guess I went to sleep!” he whispered. “I hope it isn’t after ten o’clock!”
He hurried across the hall to look at the ivory clock. It said twenty minutes of ten. Bobby’s heart thumped a little as he went back to his room and felt around for the handkerchief he had tied up that afternoon and hidden on the floor of his closet. He found it and then crept carefully into the hall, afraid that Dot would hear him and call out. She was a light sleeper and woke easily.