d the evening paper, or his latest short
story, and Edith's sewing basket showed how she put in what women
miscall their leisure.

I did not go to sleep at once: naturally the rather vital step I had
taken in the library insisted on being considered and almost regretted.
I tried reading myself to sleep, and when that failed, I tried the
soothing combination of a cigarette and a book. That worked like a
charm; the last thing I remember is of holding the cigarette in a death
grip as I lay with my pillows propped back of me, my head to the light,
and a delightful languor creeping over me.

I was wakened by the pungent acrid smell of smoke, and I sat up and
blinked my eyes open. The side of the bed was sending up a steady column
of gray smoke, and there was a smart crackle of fire under me somewhere.
I jumped out of bed and saw the trouble instantly. My cigarette had
dropped from my hand, still lighted, and as is the way with cigarettes,
determined to burn to the end. In so doing it had fired my bed, the rug
under the bed and pretty nearly the man on the bed.

It took some sharp work to get it all out without rousing the house.
Then I stood amid the wreckage and looked ruefully at Edith's pretty
room. I could see, mentally, the spot of water on the library ceiling
the next morning, and I could hear Fred's strictures on the heedlessness
and indifference to property of bachelors in general and me in
particular.

Three pitchers of water on the bed had made it an impossible couch. I
put on a dressing-gown, and, with a blanket over my arm, I went out to
hunt some sort of place to sleep. I decided on the davenport in the hall
just outside, and as quietly as I could, I put a screen around it and
settled down for the night.

I was wakened by the touch of a hand on my face. I started, I think, and
the hand was jerked away--I am not sure: I was still drowsy. I lay very
quiet, listening for footsteps, but none came. With the feeling that
there was some one behind the screen, I jumped up. The hall was dark
and quiet. When I found no one I concluded it had been only a vivid
dream, and I sat down on the edge of the davenport and yawned.

I heard Edith moving back in the nursery: she has an uncomfortable habit
of wandering around in the night, covering the children, closing
windows, and sniffing for fire. I was afraid some of the smoke from my
conflagration had reached her suspicious nose, but she did not come into
the front hall.