46 The front cover of our ex-library copy. img381

The little boy [Kay Harker] went upstairs to his room, in the old part of the house: there were oak beams in the ceiling; the floor was all oak plank. The bed was big and old, valanced to the floor, and topped by a canopy. Kay was very much afraid of it at going-to-bed-time because so many tigers could get underneath it, to wait until he was asleep...He had two windows in his room. One looked out on to a garden, where Nibbins, the black cat was watching some birds; the other looked out over a field, where there was a sheep-trough. He did not like the look of that trough in the long grass, because it looked so like a puma, with its ears cocked...When the sun had gone, all the world glowed for a while; but it was not wise to wait till the glow had gone, because so soon the dusk began, when the owls would come, and the footsteps would begin, and the tigers would stir under the bed and put out their paws, and the scratchings would scrape under the floor...He got into bed with a leap, because then you dodged the paws...When Kay came from under the bed-clothes he could not be sure that there was not a tiger lying in the canopy above him. If it were to give way. the tiger would fall right on top of him. Or very likely it was not a tiger but a pyhton, for that is what pythons do.

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