"I don't know. I just woke up, and the room was upside down. And first I thought it was an earthquake, and then I thought it was the Day of Judgment." He suddenly began to chuckle to himself. "How silly of me, Mother. Of course it couldn't be the Day of Judgment, because it's night, isn't it? It couldn't ever be the Day of Judgment in the night, could it?" he continued hopefully. Mrs. Lidderdale did not hesitate to reassure her small son on this point. She had no wish to add another to that long list of nightly fears and fantasies which began with mad dogs and culminated in the Prince of Darkness himself. "The room looks quite safe now, doesn't it?" Mark theorized. "It is quite safe, darling." "Do you think I could have the gas lighted when you really _must_ go?" "Just a little bit for once." "Only a little bit?" he echoed doubtfully. A very small illumination was in its eerie effect almost worse than absolute darkness. "It isn't healthy to sleep with a great deal of light," said his mother. "Well, how much could I have? Just for once not a crocus, but a tulip. And of course not a violet." Mark always thought of the gas-jets as flowers. The dimmest of all was the violet; followed by the crocus, the tulip, and the water-lily; the last a brilliant affair with wavy edges, and sparkling motes dancing about in the blue water on which it swam. "No, no, dearest boy. You really can't have as much as that. And now snuggle down and go to sleep again. I wonder what made you wake up?" Mark seized upon this splendid excuse to detain his mother for awhile. "Well, it wasn't ergzackly a dream," he began to improvise. "Because I was awake. And I heard a terrible plump and I said 'what can that be?' and then I was frightened and. . . ." "Yes, well, my sweetheart, you must tell Mother in the morning." Mark perceived that he had been too slow in working up to his crisis and desperately he sought for something to arrest the attention of his beloved audience. "Perhaps my Guardian Angel was beside me all the time, because, look! here's a feather." He eyed his mother, hoping against hope that she would pretend to accept his suggestion; but alas, she was severely unimaginative. "Now, darling, don't talk foolishly. You know perfectly that is only a feather which has worked its way out of your pillow." "Why?" The monosyllable had served Mark well in its time; but even as he fell back upon this stale resource he knew it had failed at last. "I can't stay to explain 'why' now; but if you try to think you'll understand why." "Mother, if I don't have any gas at all, will you sit with me in the dark for a little while, a tiny little while, and stroke my forehead where I bumped it on the knob of the bed? I really did bump it quite hard--I forgot to tell you that. I forgot to tell you because when it was you I was so excited that I forgot."