At that moment Virginia and Ursula rushed along the road from their own house and joined us. Virginia was clad in a nightdress, with a mackintosh over it and a sumptuous pale blue kimono (covered with brown and black flying herons) on the top of the mac. Ursula was wearing her heliotrope dressing-gown, an ostrich feather boa, and an eiderdown quilt.
They both apologised for calling so late (it was past midnight), but said they felt they should just like to talk things over.
While I was bidding them welcome, Miss Quirker (from round the corner) appeared; likewise Miss Thresher (a secondary-school mistress) and her friend Mrs. Brash, who share a flat near by; and in the rear came Mrs. Ridley, the doctor’s widow from across the road.
They all said they had come because they could see “it” better from my house, which stands on a high point, overlooking London one way, and Kent from the other side.
Each caller was grateful for the loan of a blanket.
Meanwhile, in far less time than it takes to write all this, fire-engines and ambulances, and policemen and motor-cars and pedestrians appeared as by magic from nowhere and went tearing along the road. Yet, crane our necks as we would, not a glimpse could we catch of “it.”
Miss Quirker—who always seems to have special and exclusive information about everything—said the creature was exactly over her bedroom chimney when the bomb was dropped; she heard a strange whirring noise (described most graphically), and turned on the electric light for company; then there was a _brilliant_ flash in the sky (yes, she could see it above the electric light), and the bomb fell—she was sure it was in her back garden. She looked very pleased with herself and superior, to think that she had been singled out by Fate for this special and distinctive visitation.
The man of the house, after bidding us stay just where we were as he wouldn’t be gone a minute, hied him buoyantly down the road in company with neighbouring masculines—to find the bomb, I suppose. He soon returned, however, with the exceedingly flat information that a gas explosion had occurred in a house further along, though they couldn’t tell whether it was due to the geyser or the cooking-range, as they couldn’t find either.