Next day it was the day of the party and we were plunged in gloom. Archibald got out his Etons and put his clean shirt ready, and a pair of flashy silk socks with red spots, and then he went into the bath-room.
Noël and Jane were whispering on the stairs. Jane came up and Noël went down, Jane knocked at the bath-room door and said--
"Here's the soap, Master Archerbald. I didn't put none in to-day."
"Half a moment," said Jane, "I've got something else in my hand."
As she spoke the gas all over the house went down blue, and then went out. We held our breaths heavily.
"Here it is," she said; "I'll put it in your hand. I'll go down and turn off the burners and see about the gas. You'll be late, sir. If I was you I should get on a bit with the washing of myself in the dark. I daresay the gas'll be five or ten minutes, and it's five o'clock now."
It wasn't, and of course she ought not to have said it, but it was useful all the same.
Noël came stumping up the stairs in the dark. He fumbled about and then whispered, "I've turned the little white china knob that locks the bath-room door on the outside."
The water was bubbling and hissing in the pipes inside, and the darkness went on. Father and uncle had not come in yet, which was a fortunate blessing.
"Do be quiet!" said Noël. "Just you wait."
We all sat on the stairs and waited. Noël said--
"Don't ask me yet--you'll see--you wait."
And we waited, and the gas did not come back.
At last Archibald tried to come out--he thought he had washed himself clean, I suppose--and of course the door was fastened. He kicked and he hammered and he shouted, and we were glad.
At last Noël banged on the door and screamed through the keyhole--
"If we let you out will you let us off our promise not to tell about you and the pipes? We won't tell till you've gone back to school."
He wouldn't for a long time, but at last he had to.
"I shan't ever come to your beastly house again," he bellowed through the keyhole, "so I don't mind."
"Turn off the gas-burners then," said Oswald, ever thoughtful, though he was still in ignorance of the beautiful truth.
Then Noël sang out over the stairs, "Light up!" and Jane went round with a taper, and when the landing gas was lighted Noël turned the knob of the bath-room, and Archibald exited in his Indian red and yellow dressing-gown that he thought so much of. Of course we expected his face to be red with rage, or white with passion, or purple with mixed emotions, but you cannot think what our feelings were--indeed, we hardly knew what they were ourselves--when we saw that he was not red or white or purple, but _black_. He looked like an uneven sort of bluish nigger. His face and hands were all black and blue in streaks, and so were the bits of his feet that showed between his Indian dressing-gown and his Turkish slippers.