on the top floor, and Michael fled barefooted down the stairs, until he reached the cold tiles of the front hall. Should he dare to descend still lower and disturb Nurse at her supper in the kitchen? Or were they all lying there, Cook and Annie and Nurse, with their throats cut? The door leading to the basement stairs was open, and he stole down over the oilcloth, past the yawning cellar, past the laundry-basket in the passage, past the cupboard under the stairs, to listen by the kitchen door. There was a murmur of voices, familiar yet unfamiliar: the kitchen door was ajar and he peered round stealthily. There was Nurse with a very red face in a heap on a chair, shaking her forefinger at Mrs. Frith, who with an equally red face was talking very indistinctly to Nurse; while between them, bolt upright and very pale, sat Annie nervously shaving from the cheese very thin segments which she ate from the knife’s edge. They seemed to Michael, as he watched them, like people in a nightmare, so unreal and horrible were they: they frightened him more than ever, sitting there nodding at each other in the kitchen where the blackbeetles ran slyly in and out beneath the fender. Suddenly Annie saw Michael and waved him back; he turned at her gesture and withdrew from sight. While he stood shivering in the dark passage, Annie came out and, picking him up, carried him out of hearing. “Whatever made you come downstairs?” she panted on the first-floor landing. “I was frightened.” “You frightened _me_ .” “Who are they murdering?” “You’ve been having a bad dream,” said Annie. She led him upstairs again to his room and tucked him up, and at his earnest request turned the gas a trifle higher. “Why did Nanny and Mrs. Frith look like that?” he asked. “They’re tired,” said Annie. “Why?” “They have to work so hard to look after you.” Then she left him alone, and he fell asleep before they all came up to bed.