Seven—When the last stroke sounded the New Year would have come in.
Ten—Eleven—Twelve.
The bells rang out; the bells of Ilford, the bells of Barkingside, and far beyond the flats and the cemetery there would be Bow bells, and beyond that the bells of the City of London. They clanged together and she trembled. The sounds closed over her; they left off and began again, not very loud, but tight—tight, crushing her heart, crushing tears out of her eyelids. When the bells stopped there was a faint whirring sound. That was the Old Year, that was eighteen sixty-nine, going out by itself in the dark, going away over the fields.
Mamma was not pleased when she came to bed and found the door and windows open and Mary awake in the cot.
II.
At the end of January she was seven years old. Something was bound to happen when you were seven.
She was moved out of Mamma's room to sleep by herself on the top floor in the night nursery. And the day nursery was turned into the boys' schoolroom.
When you were little and slept in the cot behind the curtain Mamma would sometimes come and read you to sleep with the bits you wanted: "The Lord is my Shepherd," and "Or ever the silver cord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain or the wheel broken at the cistern," and "the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof."
When you were frightened she taught you to say, "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty…. He shall cover thee with His feathers and under His wings shalt thou trust…. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night." And you were allowed to have a night-light.
Now it was all different. You went to bed half an hour later, while Mamma was dressing for dinner, and when she came to tuck you up the bell rang and she had to run downstairs, quick, so as not to keep Papa waiting. You hung on to her neck and untucked yourself, and she always got away before you could kiss her seven times. And there was no night-light. You had to read the Bible in the morning, and it always had to be the bits Mamma wanted, out of Genesis and the Gospel of St. John.