SIXTH CHAPTER


Before I speak of what happened at school, I must say how and when I
first became known to the doctor's boy.

It was during the previous Christmastide. On Christmas Eve I awoke in
the dead of night with the sense of awakening in another world. The
church-bells were ringing, and there was singing outside our house,
under the window of my mother's room. After listening for a little while
I made my voice as soft as I could and said:

"Mamma, what is it'?"

"Hush, dear! It is the Waits. Lie still and listen," said my mother.

I lay as long as my patience would permit, and then creeping over to the
window I saw a circle of men and women, with lanterns, and the frosty
air smoking about their red faces. After a while they stopped singing,
and then the chain of our front door rattled, and I heard my father's
loud voice asking the singers into the house.

They came in, and when I was back in bed, I heard them talking and then
laughing in the room below, with Aunt Bridget louder than all the rest,
and when I asked what she was doing my mother told me she was serving
out bunloaf and sherry-wine.

I fell asleep before the incident was over, but as soon as I awoke in