Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/145

Rh had happened I could not think, nor where I was. It was pitch dark. I had been roused from sound sleep, as it seemed, by someone falling over me, who was making vigorous efforts at my expense to regain a footing. I remonstrated.

“Who is it? what are you doing?”

“Emily!” returned a voice, in accents of unmistakable surprise.

It was Pollie. She was lying right across me, and, with sundry ejaculations, was using my body as a sort of lever to assist her in regaining her perpendicular. She was plainly as much astonished to find that it was me as I was to find it was her.

“You’ve been lying on the floor. Why have you been doing that?”

“Because I happen to have been lying on the floor that is no reason why you should tumble over me.”

“That’s good. How was I to see you in the middle of this brilliant illumination? I called out to you; as you did not answer I was beginning to be half afraid that the black bogies had swallowed you up. Have you been there all night?”

“I don’t know.” I wondered myself. “I suppose so.”

Raising myself to a sitting posture I found that I was stiff all over. I had not been accustomed to quite so hard a mattress. “Have you any idea what time it is?”