He hesitated for a moment, then stuck his feet into a pair of red Turkish slippers without heels, buttoned the jacket of his pyjamas, which he had thrown open because of the heat, took his candle in hand, and shuffled—­he always shuffled when he had on the ridiculous slippers—­to the door.

There he paused.

The landing was fairly wide.  It looked dreary and deserted in the darkness defined by the light from his candle.  He could see the head of the staircase, the shallow wooden steps disappearing into the empty blackness in which the ground floor of the house was shrouded; he could see the door of his mother’s bedroom.  As he stared at it, considering whether his thirst justified him in waking her up—­for, if she were asleep, he felt pretty sure she would wake however softly he crept into her room—­he saw that the door was partly open.  Perhaps his mother had found the heat too great, and had tried to create a draught by opening her door.  There was darkness in the aperture.  She wasn’t reading, then.  Probably she was asleep.  He was infernally thirsty; the door was open; the lemonade was almost within reach; he resolved to risk it.  Carefully shading the candle with one hand he crept across the landing, adroitly abandoned his slippers outside the door, and on naked feet entered his mother’s room.

His eyes immediately rested on the tall jug of lemonade, which stood on a small table, with a glass and some books, beside the big, low bed.  He stole towards it, always shielding the candle with his hand, and not looking at the bed lest his glance might, perhaps, disturb the sleeper he supposed to be in it.  He reached the table, and was about to lay a desirous hand upon the jug, when it occurred to him that, in doing this, he would expose the candle ray.  Better blow the candle out!  He located the jug, and was on the edge of action—­his lips were pursed for the puff—­when the dead silence of the room struck him.  Could any one, even his remarkably quiet mother, sleep without making even the tiniest sound?  He shot a glance at the bed.  There was no one in it.  He bent down.  It had not been slept in that night.

Jimmy stood, with his mouth open, staring at the large, neat, unruffled bed.  What the dickens could the mater be up to?  She must, of course, be sitting up in her small sitting-room next door to the bedroom.  Evidently the heat had made her sleepless.

He took a pull at the lemonade, went to the sitting-room door and softly opened it, at the same time exclaiming, “I say, mater——­”

Darkness and emptiness confronted him.

He shut the door rather hurriedly, and again stood considering.  Something cracked.  He started, and the candle rattled in his hand.  A disagreeable sensation was stealing upon him.  He would not, of course, have acknowledged that an unpleasant feeling of loneliness, almost of desertion.  The servants slept in a small wing of the villa, shut off from the main part of the house by double doors.  Mrs. Clarke detested hearing the servants at night, and had taken good care to make such hearing impossible.  Jimmy began to feel isolated.