I expect that with you it's a case of live and learn.
I hope so, I'm sure, and I wish you a good night.'

He turned away, leaving Parkins in act to speak at the bottom of the
stair, and soon each was in his own bedroom.

By some unfortunate accident, there were neither blinds nor curtains to
the windows of the Professor's room. The previous night he had thought
little of this, but tonight there seemed every prospect of a bright moon
rising to shine directly on his bed, and probably wake him later on. When
he noticed this he was a good deal annoyed, but, with an ingenuity which
I can only envy, he succeeded in rigging up, with the help of a
railway-rug, some safety-pins, and a stick and umbrella, a screen which,
if it only held together, would completely keep the moonlight off his
bed. And shortly afterwards he was comfortably in that bed. When he had
read a somewhat solid work long enough to produce a decided wish to
sleep, he cast a drowsy glance round the room, blew out the candle, and
fell back upon the pillow.

He must have slept soundly for an hour or more, when a sudden clatter
shook him up in a most unwelcome manner. In a moment he realized what had
happened: his carefully-constructed screen had given way, and a very
bright frosty moon was shining directly on his face. This was highly
annoying. Could he possibly get up and reconstruct the screen? or could
he manage to sleep if he did not?

For some minutes he lay and pondered over all the possibilities; then he
turned over sharply, and with his eyes open lay breathlessly listening.
There had been a movement, he was sure, in the empty bed on the opposite
side of the room. Tomorrow he would have it moved, for there must be rats
or something playing about in it. It was quiet now. No! the commotion
began again. There was a rustling and shaking: surely more than any rat
could cause.

I can figure to myself something of the Professor's bewilderment and
horror, for I have in a dream thirty years back seen the same thing
happen; but the reader will hardly, perhaps, imagine how dreadful it was
to him to see a figure suddenly sit up in what he had known was an empty
bed. He was out of his own bed in one bound, and made a dash towards the
window, where lay his only weapon, the stick with which he had propped
his screen. This was, as it turned out, the worst thing he could have
done, because the personage in the empty bed, with a sudden smooth
motion, slipped from the b