‘Last night, Lorky Pignut,’ said an Iremonger, smoothing her dress down and standing forward, appointing herself mouthpiece, very important now, chest forward, ‘you must have been doing the firegrates, it was after the bell had rung. It happened down the corridor to the ashrooms. There came a terrible screaming, just one Iremonger screaming at first but then afterwards more screaming from other Iremongers, so we all went running, in our nightgowns, just enough time to slip on our clogs, and we rushed down the corridor, serving Iremongers from every room, body Iremongers too, the lot, so many white faces, and pushing through a little, I managed at last to see what is was all about. And then, oh yes, I certainly saw it, with my own eyes! And I screamed too!’

‘Oh, the terror!’ called the Iremongers around her, ruffling their feathers.

‘What?’ I asked. ‘What was it?’

‘It was,’ said the Iremonger, and very slowly, her face quite white, her hands shaking, ‘it was a moustache cup!’

‘A moustache cup?’ I asked. ‘What on earth is that?’

‘To be honest, we didn’t know at first. Never seen the like. But a moustache cup has a special lip over the rim of it so that a gentleman –’

‘A distinguished gentleman very like,’ added another.

‘Yes, a distinguished gentleman,’ continued the first, reclaiming her position, ‘may not disturb his well waxed and shaped moustache when he is a-drinking his tea. That’s a moustache cup for your information. And there was one last night! On the corridor. A cup with a strange shelf over its rim, white porcelain, no markings. No one knew where it came from, no one had ever seen it before.’

‘But what,’ I asked, ‘is so terrifying in that?’

‘Because, Looky Pineknot, if you want to know, it was moving!’

‘Moving?’ I asked.

‘Moving of its own accord, I saw it, I should not have believed it otherwise, but it was rolling along on its bottom, around and around in circles. Sometimes it stopped for a while and then hopped a little forward like a robin or a sparrow or some small bird. Sometimes it rolled itself almost to the feet of some Iremongers and then there was such a screaming or a scrambling to get away from it. One Iremonger threatened it with a poker and it did scuttle away a bit then.’

‘There must have been some creature inside it, a mouse, perhaps, or a shrew,’ I said, ‘a large bug even.’