the New Year come in. If you didn't something dreadful would happen.

Downstairs there was a party. Uncle Victor and Aunt Lavvy and Aunt
Charlotte were there, and the big boys from Vinings and the Vicarage at
Aldborough Hatch. Mark and Dank and Roddy were sitting up, and Roddy had
promised to wake her when the New Year was coming.

He left the door open so that she could hear the clock strike twelve. She
got up and opened the windows ready. There were three in Mamma's room.
She opened them all.

The air outside was like clear black water and very cold. You couldn't
see the garden wall; the dark fields were close--close against the house.
One--Two--Three.

Seven--When the last stroke sounded the New Year would have come in.

Ten--Eleven--Twelve.

The bells rang out; the bells of Ilford, the bells of Barkingside, and
far beyond the flats and the cemetery there would be Bow bells, and
beyond that the bells of the City of London. They clanged together and
she trembled. The sounds closed over her; they left off and began again,
not very loud, but tight--tight, crushing her heart, crushing tears out
of her eyelids. When the bells stopped there was a faint whirring sound.
That was the Old Year, that was eighteen sixty-nine, going out by itself
in the dark, going away over the fields.

Mamma was not pleased when she came to bed and found the door and windows
open and Mary awake in the cot.