Finally, having written two pages I, too, went to bed.

* * *

I think we were all hoping for a good night’s sleep, but we were to be denied this because all of a sudden in the middle of the night we were awoken by a shout. And not just any shout but Old Tom’s, and Old Tom was not given to shouting. I leapt up and ran to my window to see what the ruckus was all about.

There was a full moon and the night garden was wildly aglow. Only white flowers had been planted in the night garden in order to reflect the moonlight. The moonflowers open at dusk and close at dawn, their white trumpet-shaped blooms incandescent, like strings of lanterns all over the garden. There were white hydrangeas, white foxglove, and flowers like night-scented stock that released their scent only at night. If the breeze is right and I open my window and am awake to appreciate it, the smell of the night-blooming flowers wafts into my room mixed with the scent of the ocean. There are ancient old marble garden statues in the night garden, cherubim and griffins and phoenixes. Placed throughout are birdbaths of gleaming alabaster and solar stars and moon spinners whose globes at top, having absorbed the sun’s rays all day, glow all night, their copper arms spinning with the night breezes. I always try to remember to get up the nights of the full moon to see the night garden in its glory, but I always frankly forget. I’m a sound sleeper. But not that night.

By moonlight I could make out Old Tom standing outside the night garden fence, waving his arms and shouting. Inside were two figures bent over. When they straightened up I could see they were the hermit and Zebediah. I opened my window and could hear Old Tom saying, “Get that boy out of there. What are you thinking? Any minute now he might wish. He might wish for anything. Good God, there’s no telling what dangerous thing a boy will wish for.”

The hermit said nothing but hoisted Zebediah up and all but threw him over the fence the way you might throw a pulled weed onto a compost heap and then went back to weeding the night garden as if nothing had happened. As if he were under the garden’s spell.

“Don’t let me ever—do you hear me?—ever find you in there again!” shouted Old Tom at Zebediah.

Poor Zebediah broke into tears with all this shouting and ran into the house, and I could hear Old Tom muttering to himself, “Good. Well, good. Had to be done.”

The next thing I knew, Winifred and Wilfred, who it turned out had been watching from their rooms, were in my room and then a tearful Zebediah was heard running up the stairs. Wilfred ran into the hall, grabbed him, and dragged him back to my room. And then, despite my many misgivings, I had to tell them. After all, I thought, they had heard about UFOs, ghosts, and mermaids. They might as well hear about this, too.