“Mistake my poor chick’s knocking for anyone else! Why, Granny could tell it among a thousand! Do you suppose there’s anyone else in the world who’s such a silly-billy, with such feverish little knuckles, so afraid of waking me up and of not making me understand? Even if he just gave the least scratch, Granny could tell her mouse’s sound at once, especially such a poor miserable little mouse as mine is. I could hear it just now, trying to make up its mind, and rustling the bedclothes, and going through all its tricks.”

She pushed open the shutters; where a wing of the hotel jutted out at right angles to my window, the sun was already installed upon the roof, like a slater who is up betimes, and starts early and works quietly so as not to rouse the sleeping town, whose stillness seems to enhance his activity. She told me what o’clock, what sort of day it was; that it was not worth while my getting up and coming to the window, that there was a mist over the sea; if the baker’s shop had opened yet; what the vehicle was that I could hear passing. All that brief, trivial curtain-raiser, that negligible introit