So, after Nurse and Maria had gone down-stairs she lay with her eyes wide open, watching the glimmering light which the lamps outside cast on the ceiling, and listening to the noise in the street below. Roll, roll, rumble, rumble, it went on without a break, for the house was in the midst of the great city of London. In the day-time she never noticed this noise much, but at night when everything else was silent, and everyone was going to sleep, it was strange to think that it still went on and on like that. Did it never stop? Sometimes she had tried to keep awake, so that she might find out, but she had never been able to do it. She had always fallen asleep with that roll, roll, roll, sounding in her ears. It must be getting very late now, surely Mother must come soon! I'll count a hundred, said Susan to herself, and then I shall hear her coming upstairs. But when she had done there was no sound at all in the house; not even a door shutting. It was all quite quiet. "Can I have _been_ asleep without knowing it?" she thought in alarm, and then--"can Mother have forgotten to come?" This last thought was so painful that she sat up in bed, stretched out her arms towards the door, and said out loud: "Oh, _do_ come, Mother." There was no answer, and no sound except the cinders falling in the grate, and the rumble of the wheels below. Susan gave a little sob; she felt deserted, disappointed, and ill-used. If _only_ Mother would come! All sorts of fancies, too, began to make the dark corners of the room dreadful, and chief amongst them loomed the form of Aunt Enticknapp just as Freddie had pictured her that day. In another minute Susan felt she should scream out with fear; but she must not do it, because it would frighten Freddie, and make Mother so angry. What was that sudden gleam on the wall? The fire or the lamps? Neither, because it jigged about too much; it was the light of a candle, coming nearer and nearer, and there was a step on the stairs at last. Almost directly someone gave the half-open door a little push and came quickly into the room; it was Mother in her pink dressing-gown which Susan always thought so beautiful, and her fair hair all plaited up in one long tail for the night. She came up to the bed, shading the flame of the candle with one hand: "What, awake?" she said, "and crying! Oh, naughty Susan! What's the matter?" Susan gulped down her tears. It was all right now that mother had not forgotten to come. "I thought you weren't coming," she said. "Well, but here I am, you see. And now you must be a good little girl, and go to sleep directly. Kiss me and lie down." In another second Mother would be out of the room again Susan knew. She put up her hand and took hold of the lace frilling round the neck of the pink dressing-gown to keep her from going away. "I've got something to ask you," she whispered eagerly.