He never could wait for the event, but must build it out of dream-stuff and enjoy it beforehand--consequently sometimes when the event happened he saw that it was not as good as the one he had invented in his imagination, and so he had lost profit by not keeping the imaginary one and letting the reality go.
When he arrived at the house he went around to the back door and slipped off his boots and crept up-stairs and arrived at the room of those elderly ladies without having wakened any sleepers.

He undressed in the dark and got into bed and snuggled up against somebody.

He was a little surprised, but not much--for he thought it was our brother Ben.

It was winter, and the bed was comfortable, and the supposed Ben added to the comfort--and so he was dropping off to sleep very well satisfied with his progress so far and full of happy dreams of what was going to happen in the morning.

But something else was going to happen sooner than that, and it happened now.