Miss Brown then asked
me what I did for mine.
Edward spluttered merrily. "He rises with the nightingale, comes bounding
downstairs some time after tea and wants to know why breakfast isn't ready.
Only last week I heard him exhorting Harriet to call him early next day as
he was going to a dance."
They all looked reproachfully at me because I didn't keep a pet insomnia
too. I spoke up for myself. I admitted I hadn't got one, and what was more
was proud of it. All healthy massive thinkers are heavy sleepers, I
insisted. They must sleep heavily to recuperate the enormous amount of
vitality expended by them in their waking hours. Sleep, I informed my
audience, is Nature's reward to the blameless and energetic liver. If they
could not sleep now they were but paying for past years of idleness and
excess, and they had only themselves to blame. I was going on to tell them
that an easy conscience is the best anodyne, etc., but they snatched up
their candles and went to bed. I went thither myself shortly afterwards.
I was awakened in the dead of night by a rapping at my door.
"Who's there?" I growled.
"I--Jane Brown," said a hollow voice.
"What's the matter?"
"Hush, there are men in the house."
"If they're burglars tell 'em the silver's in the sideboard."
"It's the police."
I sat up in bed. "The police!--why?--what?"
"Shissh! come quickly and don't make a noise," breathed Miss Brown.
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