Explore "A Loyal Little Red-Coat" by Ruth Ogden on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
HAT a queer sort of thing it is, this regularly going to sleep and waking up again once in every twenty-four hours; but people who have had a little experience in not going to sleep regularly, and in waking up at most unheard-of and irregular hours, will tell you that that experience is a deal queerer, and not so pleasant by half. Some of the little folk who have need to be coaxed and urged to bed six nights out of the seven, would hardly dare to fret, I imagine, if they only knew that to be a sound sleeper is an accomplishment sorely envied by some of those grown-up people who may sit up as late as they choose. And if one of those wakeful, grown-up people should some day ask you, "What is the secret of your sound sleeping, my little friend? " just tell them that you think it is because you do not worry. Then if they say, "That's all very well; children have no need to worry, they have fathers and mothers to lean upon tell them that they, too, have a Father, One far more kind and loving than any earthly father, and that they could lie down at night as free from worry as any child if they would; " and who knows but they will learn a blessed lesson from you that will be well worth the learning.
Now this little reverie has all been suggested by the fact that the Boniface household was waking up, all save old Dinah, the cook, for she had been up for an hour or more. She had once been Hazel's nurse, and, since the beginning of the war, was the only servant the Bonifaces could afford to keep. How comfortable she made them, that faithful old Dinah, so that all one had to do was to waken and wash, and brush and dress, and then sit down to steaming coffee, delicate rolls, and the most savory little rasher of bacon, which Dinah always added as a "relisher," as she called it, to the more substantial part of the breakfast. Yes, they were waking, all of them, from anxious Captain Boniface to happy little Flutters, for Dinah's vigorous ringing of the rising bell had thoroughly done its work.