“All right,” said Harold: and he and Rachel were summoned away by someone without.

Emily was translated into Heaven. So this was an alligator! She was actually going to sleep with an alligator! She had thought that to anyone who had once been in an earthquake nothing really exciting could happen again: but then, she had not thought of this.

There was once a girl called Emily, who slept with an alligator.⁠ ⁠…

In search of greater warmth, the creature high-stepped warily up the bed towards her face. About six inches away it paused, and they looked each other in the eye, those two children.

The eye of an alligator is large, protruding, and of a brilliant yellow, with a slit pupil like a cat’s. A cat’s eye, to the casual observer, is expressionless: though with attention one can distinguish in it many changes of emotion. But the eye of an alligator is infinitely more stony and brilliant⁠—reptilian.