“I was passing the door on my way to Alison’s room with her book when I heard you shouting,” she said hoarsely as Mrs. Broome came up. “Why did you do that? Why did you call out of the window instead of trying to get the wretched man out of his damned bag?”
Mrs. Broome stared at her and they could see the question presenting itself for the first time. Her answer was spontaneous and clearly perfectly true.
“I didn’t know it was a bag,” she said frankly. “I didn’t know what it was. There wasn’t a lot of light and I wasn’t wearing glasses because I don’t need them except for reading, and I thought he’d somehow gone like that after all that drink. All liquid and awful.”
It was one of those frank statements of a familiar if idiotic state of mind. “He didn’t look human and I lost my head and
