China oil paintings

China oil paintings
the fire was almost out - woke to hear a quarter to twelve chime out - woke at last to the sound she had been listening for before she fell asleep - the sound of Mr. Sleuth, wearing his rubber-soled shoes, creeping downstairs, along the passage, and so out, very, very quietly by the front door.
But once she was in bed Mrs. Bunting turned restless. She tossed this way and that, full of discomfort and unease. Perhaps it was the unaccustomed firelight dancing on the walls, making queer shadows all round her, which kept her so wide awake.
She lay thinking and listening - listening and thinking. It even occurred to her to do the one thing that might have quieted her excited brain - to get a book, one of those detective stories of which Bunting had a slender store in the next room, and then, lighting the gas, to sit up and read.
No, Mrs. Bunting had always been told it was very wrong to read in bed, and she was not in a mood just now to begin doing anything that she had been told was wrong. . .