"When I was finished, I lit my candle, put out the lamp, and went
upstairs. As I came opposite the door of my mother's room, I saw that it
was open, called good night to her, very softly, and asked whether I
should close the door. As there was no answer, I knew that she had
dropped off to sleep again, and I closed the door very gently, and turned
into my room, just across the passage. As I did so, I experienced a
momentary, half-aware sense of a faint, peculiar, disagreeable odor in
the passage; but it was not until the following night that I _realized_ I
had noticed a smell that offended me. You follow me? It is so often like
that--one suddenly knows a thing that really recorded itself on one's
consciousness, perhaps a year before.
"The next morning at breakfast, I mentioned casually to my mother that
she had 'dropped off,' and I had shut the door for her. To my surprise,
she assured me she had never been out of her room. I reminded her about
the two raps she had given upon the banister; but she still was certain I
must be mistaken; and in the end I teased her, saying she had grown so
accustomed to my bad habit of sitting up late, that she had come to call
me in her sleep. Of course, she denied this, and I let the matter drop;
but I was more than a little puzzled, and did not know whether to believe
my own explanation, or to take the mater's, which was to put the noises
down to the mice, and the open door to the fact that she couldn't have
properly latched it, when she went to bed.
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