Ginger got out of bed and also looked towards the hill, although it is doubtful if she saw it. Moving like a sightless person in a familiar room, she padded across to the door, down the steps, and out into the tail of the night.
A small dog, a cat and a mouse watched from the shadows as she moved silently down the alley and headed for the hill.
'Did you see her eyes?' said Gaspode.
'Glowing,' said the cat. 'Yukth!'
'She's going to the hill,' said Gaspode. 'I don't like that.'
'So what?' said Squeak. 'She's always around the hill somewhere. Goes up there every night and moons around looking dramatic.'
'What?'
'Every night. We thought it was all this romance stuff.'
'But you can see by the way she's movin' that somethin's not right,' said Gaspode desperately. 'That's not walkin', that's lurchin'. Like she's bein' pulled along by a inner voice, style of fing.'
'Don't look like that to me,' said Squeak. 'Walking on two legs is lurching, in my book.'
'You've only got to look at her face to see there's somethin' wrong!'
'Of course there's something wrong. She's a human,' said Squeak.
Gaspode considered the options. There weren't many. The obvious one was to find Victor and get him to come back here. He rejected it. It sounded too much like the silly, bouncy sort of thing that Laddie would do. It suggested that the best a dog could think of when confronted with a puzzle was to find a human to solve it.
He trotted forward and gripped the trailing hem of the sleepwalker's nightdress firmly in his jaws. She walked on, pulling him off his feet. The cat laughed, far too sarcastically for Gaspode's liking.
'Time to wake up, miss,' he growled, letting the nightdress go. Ginger strode onwards.
'See?' said the cat. 'Give them an opposed thumb and they think they're something shpecial.'
'I'm going to follow her,' said Gaspode. 'A girl could come to harm out by herself at night.'
'That's dogs for you,' said the cat to Squeak. 'Alwaysh fawning on people. It'll be diamante collars and a bowl with his name on it nexsht, I'm telling you.'
'If you're lookin' to lose a mouthful of fur you've come to the right place, kitty,' snarled Gaspode, barring his rotting teeth again.
'I don't have to tolerate that short of thing,' said the cat, lifting its nose haughtily. 'Come, Squeak. Let us hie us to a garbage heap where there ain't sho much rubbish.'
Gaspode scowled at their departing backs.
'Pussy!' he yelled after them.
Then he trotted after Ginger, hating himself. If I was a wolf, which technic'ly I am, he thought, there'd definitely be a rending of jaws and similar. Any girl wandering around by herself would be in dead trouble. I could attack, I could attack any time I liked, I'm jus' choosing not to. One thing I'm not doin', I'm not sort of keepin' an eye on her. I know Victor told me to keep an eye on her, but catch me goin' around doin' what humans tell me. I'd like to see humans that could give me orders. Tear his froat out, jus' like that. Hah.
An' if anything happened to her he'd go around moonin' for days and prob'ly forget to feed me. Not that dogs like me needs humans to feed 'em, I could be out bringing down reindeers just by leaping on their backs and bitin' their jugulars off, but it's damn convenient getting it all on a plate.
She was moving quite fast. Gaspode's tongue hung out as he strove to keep up. His head was aching.
He risked a few sideways squints to see if any other dogs were watching. If they were, he thought, he could pretend he was chasin' her. Which was what he was doing, anyway. Yeah. The trouble was, he never had much breath at the best of times, and it was getting hard to keep pace. She ought to have the decency to slow down a bit.
Ginger began to climb the lower slopes of the hill.
Gaspode considered barking loudly, and then if anyone drew attention to this afterwards he could always say it was to frighten her. Trouble was, he had about enough wind left for a threatening wheeze.
Ginger topped a rise and went down into the little dell among the trees.
Gaspode staggered after her, righted himself, opened his mouth to whimper a warning, and almost swallowed his tongue.