I did not like to say what I thought, so I answered, 'Well, perhaps it
would be as well to get the doctor to have another look at him. I'll go
for him if you like.'

'I don't believe you could manage it, sir,' said Betty. 'You can't stand
outside; me and Polly has been clinging on to the palings all the way,
and it will be terrible up on the top.'

'Shall I try, Polly?'

She gave me a grateful look, but did not answer by words. But the two
women gave me so long a description of the way to the doctor's house,
and interrupted each other so often, and at length both talked together
in their eagerness to make it clear to me, that at the end I was more
bewildered and hopelessly puzzled than at the beginning, and I
determined to go to Mr. Christie before I started, in order to obtain
from him full and clear directions.

It took me quite ten minutes to reach his house, and I felt as if I had
gone through a battle when I arrived there at length, quite spent and
breathless. I saw a light in the lower room, and I found Mr. Christie
and his wife and children sitting in the room where I had passed through
so much the night before. Marjorie and little Jack were in their
nightgowns, wrapped in a blanket, and sitting in the same arm-chair. My
mother's picture was looking at me from the wall, and I fancied that she
smiled at me as I came in.

'What a terrible night!' said Mrs. Christie. 'The children were so
frightened by the noise of the wind in their attic that we brought them
down here.'