“The house isn’t going to blow up. You shouldn’t think things like that.”

“But it might blow up, mightn’t it? It might blow up.”

“It might, but it can’t. Will you stop talking and let Margaret go to sleep.”

“Why can’t it?”

“It — the house can’t blow up because we are living in it. Now, stop it, Lily. I want Margaret to sleep.”

“I have another question for when we go downstairs,” Lily said.

Mrs. Bagot felt her arms and legs sinking down into the bed, as though they would hold her there, sinking slowly into soft ease, and then she felt her back sinking down, and then her shoulders began to rest, but she could not settle her head. Her hair was in the way, and she lifted her arm from across her eyes and pulled out the pins and pulled her hair over onto the pillow where it loosened out, tumbling sleepily to its full length.

“Oh, I hope nobody comes to the door,” Mrs. Bagot said. “They will think I am a madwoman, with my hair down in the middle of the day.”

“Maybe nobody will come,” Lily said.

“Let me know when Margaret drops off,” Mrs. Bagot said, “and then I’ll get up. Don’t let me go to sleep now, Lily.”

Margaret had already dropped off. Margaret was fast asleep, and then Mrs. Bagot slept suddenly. Before she knew it, she was asleep. Margaret slept with her right arm lying alongside her orange favorite. Bennie slept. Minnie, sensing something unusual, crept across the bed and settled blissfully into Mrs. Bagot’s long brown hair, the best nest she would ever know. They all slept safely. There wasn’t a sound in the house. Nobody came to the door. Nobody saw them. There on the bed they might all have been invisible, or enchanted, or, as they were for that time, forgotten.

Down in the garden Lily sat on the carpet and traveled without delay to Paris. From Paris she went to Spain, where she hesitated, floating high in the air, trying to remember the name of Spain’s capital city. The effort of remembering caused her to lie down, and as she lay there with her eyes closed the carpet turned around and sailed home, back to the garden, where it lay flat on the grass, looking again exactly as it had looked when the thought of sleep drew Mrs. Bagot gently into the house that might blow up but that would never blow up. Never, never. That house never blew up.

The Shadow of Kindness

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