Half-Past Bedtime

by Sir H. H. Bashford

So Doris went upstairs, and he unbuttoned the hook, and when she caught hold of it she felt a strange sort of thrill. She felt like Cuthbert had felt when he went into In-between Land; and indeed that was where she really was. St Uncus had vanished, and she saw Christopher Mark like a little fat ghost, with his soul shining inside him. Then she suddenly heard a cry in a strange foreign language, and she saw a dark-eyed mother at the bottom of some stone steps, and a small round baby, with an olive-coloured skin, tumbling down them one by one. She felt a hot wind, full of the odour of spices, blowing faintly against her cheek; and then she bent forward and hooked up the baby, and saw the look of terror die out of the mother's face.

Never in her life had Doris felt so pleased. She felt as if she could shout and sing with joy. No wonder, she thought, that St Uncus looked so happy. She began to understand what being in Heaven meant. And then she heard a shout, and smelt a smell of herrings, and she saw a man in a blue jersey, and a curly-headed boy, about four years old, pitching head first down a dark staircase. Through a dirty window-pane she could see the mouth of a river, full of fishing-smacks floating side by side; and she saw a woman, with rolled-up sleeves, run out of a kitchen and stand beside the man.

Then she hooked up the boy, and she heard the woman say "Thank God!" and the man say "You little rascal, you!" and then she was back again, and there was St Uncus sitting beside her and rubbing his hands.

"Ever so many thanks," he said. "I haven't seen old Bill for nearly three hundred years. He says he'd like to meet you, but of course it's only now and again that anybody like you is able to see us."

Then he said good-bye to her, and she never saw him again, but she knew that he was there, and once she actually heard him; and that was very late on this same evening, long after everyone had gone to bed. For soon after midnight, when Auntie Kate was dreaming about clergymen and bazaars, and when Teddy and George were dreaming about bears, and Jimmy and Jocko about bathrooms, and when Christopher Mark was dreaming about rabbits, and Doris wasn't dreaming at all—soon after midnight a little red-hot cinder suddenly popped out of the kitchen grate.

It fell on a bit of matting, and burnt its way through to the floor-boards below; and presently a wisp of smoke, with a wicked pungent smell, began to twist upward and flatten against the ceiling. Fuller and fuller grew the kitchen of smoke, and Teddy and George began to dream of camp-fires, but Auntie Kate still dreamt of bazaars and pincushions marked tenpence halfpenny. Teddy and George were sleeping by themselves, and Christopher Mark slept in a little room turning out of Auntie Kate's. These rooms were above the sitting-room in the front of the house, and it was Teddy and George who slept over the kitchen; while Doris herself and Jimmy and Jocko shared a little room under the roof.

The floor of the kitchen was now blazing fiercely, with the boards crackling in the flames, and Teddy and George began to dream about guns, but still they didn't wake up. They only moved a little uneasily, and it was somebody shouting that finally woke them, just as it was a neighbour banging at the front door that roused Auntie Kate from her dreams.

"Hurry up!" cried the neighbour, "your house is on fire!" and Auntie Kate was so flustered that she quite forgot where she had put her clothes, and rushed downstairs in her nightdress. As for Teddy and George, their room was full of smoke, and they bolted out of it, coughing and spluttering, and met Doris coming down from the attic, pushing Jimmy and Jocko in front of her.

The kitchen door had now swung open, and the flames were darting across the hall; and clouds of smoke were rolling upstairs like a sour and suffocating fog.

"Never mind," said Doris. "Hold your breath, and run downstairs as quick as you can," and soon they were all standing together in the street, while some of the neighbours were running for the fire-engine.