Blade-O'-Grass. Golden Grain. and Bread and Cheese and Kisses.Farjeon, B. L. (Benjamin Leopold)
General
Blade-O'-Grass. Golden Grain. and Bread and Cheese and Kisses.
Farjeon, B. L. (Benjamin Leopold)
Christmas stories; Fiction
Tottie, with feminine duplicity, accepts this warning in an inverted
sense, and cries, with her mouth full of sugar,
'Tottie's a dood little girl!' as if indorsing a statement made by her
grandfather. But Tottie's thoughts are not upon the good little girl;
at the present moment she resembles a savage. She has tasted blood,
and thirsts for more.
'It's a fatter stomach than mine,' proceeds Ben, laying his hand upon
his stomach of flesh, the stomach he came into the world with; 'it's
rounder and plumper, and would fit the Lord Mayor or an alderman, but
it'll do, I daresay. Now for my neck.'
He picks up the thickest piece of cinnamon, and measures it with his
eye, breaking the stick in two. 'I mustn't make my neck too long--nor
too short--and I take the thickest piece, Tottie, because it's got to
support my head. Like this.' He makes a hole in the end of the
lemon-peel, and sticks the cinnamon in firmly. 'Now to stick my head
on, Tottie.'
He selects the largest of the fat figs, and attaches it to his neck.
'What's the next thing? My eyes, to be sure. Currants.' Remarkably
like eyes do they look when they are inserted in the face of the fat
fig. Then he takes a clove for his nose, and, making a thin slit in
the fig for his mouth, inserts an appropriate morsel of mace. All this
being successfully accomplished, he holds himself up (as far as he
goes) for his own and Tottie's inspection and approval. Tottie claps
her hands, and laughs, but subsides into a quieter humour at a guilty
thought that steals into her mind. She thinks what a delightful thing
it would be to take her grandfather (as far as he goes) and eat him
bit by bit.
'I begin to look ship-shape,' observes Ben Sparrow, gazing admiringly
at the unfinished effigy of himself. 'You see, Tottie, what the people
want nowadays is novelty--something new, something they haven't seen
before. Give them that, and you're all right' (Which vague generality
appears to satisfy him.) 'Now, here it is--here's novelty--here's
something they've never seen before; and if this don't bring custom, I
don't know what will.'
Tottie gives a grave and silent assent; she cannot speak, for her mind
is bent upon cannibalism. She is ready to tear the old man limb from
limb.
'But,' continues Ben Sparrow, unconscious of the horrible thought at
work in the mind of the apparently innocent child before him, 'I must
get along with myself, or I shall never be finished. I haven't been in
any battle that I know of, and I wasn't born a cripple, so my limbs
must be all right when I appear in public. Now for my arms. More
cinnamon! I think I may call cinnamon my bones.'
When two pieces of cinnamon are stuck into the sides of the candied
lemon-peel, they look so naked that he says,
'I must put sleeves on my arms.'
And impales raisins upon them, and sticks five small slips of mace in
each of the last raisins, which serve for fingers.
'Now for my legs, and there I am. More cinnamon!'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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