Dora said if we took Noel down with his cold, she would scream 'Fire!' and 'Murder!' and she didn't mind if the whole street heard.
So Noel agreed to be getting his clothes on, and the rest of us said we would go down and look for the cat.
Now Oswald _said_ that about the cat, and it made it easier to go down, but in his inside he did not feel at all sure that it might not be robbers after all.

Of course, we had often talked about robbers before, but it is very different when you sit in a room and listen and listen and listen; and Oswald felt somehow that it would be easier to go down and see what it was, than to wait, and listen, and wait, and wait, and listen, and wait, and then perhaps to hear _it_, whatever it was, come creeping slowly up the stairs as softly as _it_ could with _its_ boots off, and the stairs creaking, towards the room where we were with the door open in case of Eliza coming back suddenly, and all dark on the landings.

And then it would have been just as bad, and it would have lasted longer, and you would have known you were a coward besides.

Dicky says he felt all these same things.

Many people would say we were young heroes to go down as we did; so I have tried to explain, because no young hero wishes to have more credit than he deserves.
The landing gas was turned down low--just a blue bead--and we four went out very softly, wrapped in our blankets, and we stood on the top of the stairs a good long time before we began to go down.