. Had the room really turned upside down? On an impulse
of terror he jumped back from the engorging night and bumped his
forehead on one of the brass knobs of the bedstead. With horror he
apprehended that what he had so often feared had finally come to pass.
An earthquake had swallowed up London in spite of everybody's assurance
that London could not be swallowed up by earthquakes. He was going down
down to smoke and fire . . . or was it the end of the world? The quick
and the dead . . . skeletons . . . thousands and thousands of skeletons.
. . .

"Guardian Angel!" he shrieked.

Now surely that Guardian Angel so often conjured must appear. A shaft of
golden candlelight flickered through the half open door. The little boy
prepared an attitude to greet his Angel that was a compound of the
suspicion and courtesy with which he would have welcomed a new governess
and the admiring fellowship with which he would have thrown a piece of
bread to a swan.

"Are you awake, Mark?" he heard his mother whisper outside.

He answered with a cry of exultation and relief.

"Oh, Mother," he sighed, clinging to the soft sleeves of her
dressing-gown. "I thought it was being the end of the world."

"What made you think that, my precious?"

"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; followe