Viva and I talked in broken sentences, and her mother and father in monosyllables. We kept glancing at the window, but no one had the courage to draw up the blind for nearly an hour. Then we opened the window and looked out. The weed was fully six feet high in the street, and higher in the Strand. It had overrun the ’bus that stood at the opening. If there were people on the ’bus, it had overrun them, too.
“It doesn’t seem to hurt,” I said. “There’s no screaming now.” I shuddered as soon as I had said it.
“There is no screaming now,” Viva repeated. “I suppose they—they are all——”
Her voice broke. Her father shut the window sharply and drew her away.
“It will be gone in the morning,” he asserted, “as—as our friend said. We shall have to impose on your hospitality for the night, I am afraid, Mr. Adamson.”
“There is no question of imposing,” I assured him. “I cannot say how glad I am to have your company.”
We made a couch for the ladies by putting several hearth-rugs on the table in the clerks’ room, and laying two rugs of mine to cover them. Mr. Baker and I dozed in front of the fire in my room in chairs. Toward the morning I fell into a sounder sleep. When I woke he had pulled up the blind.
“It’s fifteen feet high at least,” he told me. “Halfway up the second windows. God help us!”
I joined him and saw the roadway filled with a sea of gray weeds. They looked like india-rubber reeds. The largest were as thick as my little finger, and the bulges were the size of damsons. We opened the window and listened. Presently a caretaker opened a window nearly opposite and called to his wife.
“Here’s a rum go, Mary,” he shouted, with a laugh. “Bulrushes growing to the street! We sha’n’t have any clerks pestering us today.”