cats would spit and
wail, making Michael wonder whether they were coming through his window
to claw his face. Presently, far up the street, newsboys would cry
hoarsely the details of a murder or suicide. As they passed beneath his
bedroom window their voices would swell to a paralyzing roar, and as the
voices died away round the corner, Michael would be left shaking with
fear. Once he was so frightened by a succession of these murder-shouts
that he got out of bed and crept forth on to the landing, whence he
peered down between the banisters into the quiet red light burning in
the hall far below. While he was leaning over, a door banged suddenly
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