A Night to Remember
It was about 11:30 on a
windy September night and Mr. and Mrs. Wilkinson had gone to bed early. They
had put out the light and were just going to sleep when Mrs. Wilkinson. heard a
noise coming from downstairs. Mr. Wilkinson got up to investigate. When he
reached the bottom of the stairs he noticed that the noise was coming from the
dining room, and it sounded as if someone was trying to open th 18318w2220s e French window
that led into the garden.
Mr. Wilkinson was quite
frightened, but he gathered up his courage, picked up a heavy walking stick and
tiptoed into the dining room, moving round the side of the room so that he
wouldn't be seen from the window. When he got to the window, he crouched down
and peered cautiously round the edge of the curtain. To this relief, he saw
that the noise was nothing more than a branch of a rose bush scraping against
the window in the wind.
Meanwhile, however, the
Wilkinson's dog, which had been sleeping in the kitchen, had also woken up and
had silently followed Mr. Wilkinson into the dining room. While Mr. Wilkinson
was crouching by the window, the dog crept up behind him and affectionately
rubbed his nose against his waster's ankle.
This gave Mr. Wilkinson
such a surprise that he gave a yell of terror, lost his balance and fell
against the window, breaking the glass and cutting his hand quite deeply. He
swore at the dog kicked it out of the worn.
Hearing all the
commotion, Mr. Wilkinson now came rushing downstairs. When she saw what
happened, she looks her husband back upstairs to the bathroom to treat his
injured hand, which was bleeding profusely. Before she bandaged the wound, she
cleaned it with pieces of cotton wool soaked in spirit, which she threw into
the lavatory bowl when she had finished with them.
Once this treatment was
complete, Mr. Wilkinson didn't feel like going to bed, so he lit a cigarette to
calm his nerves. Also, perhaps because of his excitement, he found that he
needed to use the lavatory, and it was while he was sitting on the lavatory that
he finished his cigarette and, without thinking, dropped the burning end into
the bowl. The cotton wool that his wife had thrown into highly inflammable
spirit, instantly burst into flames. Mr. Wilkinson's bottom was severely burnt
and he uttered another yell of terror.
This time, all Mrs. Wilkinson
could do was ring for an ambulance. It eventually arrived, and two men hurried
upstairs with a stretcher, on which thy laid Mr. Wilkinson face down. They were
a little puzzled when they saw that their patient had both a cut hand and a
burnt bottom, so while they were carrying him down the stairs to the ambulance
they asked him how these injuries had been caused. When Mr. Wilkinson told
them, they laughed so violently that they tipped him off the stretcher with the
result that he feel down the stairs and broke his leg.
