The closer it came to their bedtime the more excited the children were, although they stayed very quiet. Delia was afraid they wouldn’t sleep, or that if they did sleep they’d wake up in time to find herself and Martin creeping into their room with their presents. She stood by their bed, talking to them to calm them down, and she found that the sleepier they became the more apprehensive she herself was. She was getting what she called “nervous” and she couldn’t understand it, because she had been looking forward to Christmas. She didn’t know what was the matter with her. She was as fearful tonight as she used to be long ago at home when she lay in bed listening to the wind blowing around and around the house. The fear was the same in this house, exactly the same, except that this house was attached on both sides to other houses and so the wind couldn’t blow around it but only across it. But the fear was the same. She hated the wind. In the daytime she was able to keep busy, but at night as she lay alone in the dark her mind went back, and instead of going back into dreaming, like daydreaming, it went back into conjecture and from there into confusion. Instead of rebuilding the past to her own design and making things happen as they should have happened, she was blown by the noise of the wind against bitter obstacles that she was able to avoid when the weather was steady. Words like “why” and “when” and “how” rose up against the dreaming that rested her, and she was forced back on herself, so that instead of rearranging things she had to face them. The past led to the present — that was the trouble. She couldn’t see any connection at all between herself as she used to be and herself as she was now, and she couldn’t understand how with a husband and two children in the house she was lonely and afraid. She stood there talking to the children about what a lovely day they were all going to have tomorrow, and she was well aware that she was falling into a morbid frame of mind. And there was no excuse for her. She had nothing to worry about, not tonight anyway. There wasn’t even any wind, although it had rained earlier and would probably rain again before morning. There was really nothing to worry about at the moment, except, of course, how to get Bennie up out of the kitchen and into her room without Martin knowing about it. It would be terrible, awful, if Martin found out that Bennie slept every night on her bed, but she couldn’t leave him out in the shed in the cold. The cats always slept on the children’s bed, but they’d be all right in the shed for the one night. She had a basket out there for them. They could curl up together. But Bennie couldn’t go out there — she’d miss him too much. She wished she could talk to Martin and explain to him that Bennie was important, but she knew there was no use hoping for that. It was time now to go down and call him to come up and say good night to Lily and Margaret, but when she walked out on the landing she saw him standing in the hall below.