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
Two sticks of cinnamon stuck in the bottom of his candied stomach, and
then clothed with raisins, form his legs, and there he _is_, complete.
'I think I'll do,' he says complacently.
At this moment a voice calls 'Shop!' and a fairy, in the shape of a
shoeless ragged girl, taps upon the counter. Ben Sparrow goes into the
shop to serve, and Tottie is left alone with his effigy. Now it has
been mentioned above that Tottie has a vice, and this is it: she is
afflicted, not with a raging tooth, but with a tooth so sweet as to
weaken her moral sense, so to speak: she is unable to resist
temptation when it presents itself to her in the shape of sweetmeats
or fruit, and her notions as to the sacredness of such-like property
are so loose that (no one being by to see her do it) she helps
herself. And yet it is a proof that she possesses a wakeful
conscience, that she turns her back upon herself when she pilfers, as
if she would wish to make herself believe that she is unconscious of
what she is doing. Thus, seeing, say, a bowl of currants near, and no
person within sight, she will approach the bowl stealthily, and,
turning her back to it, will put her hand behind her, and take a
fistful, with an air of thinking of something else all the while. And
it is a proof that the moral obligation of her conscience is not
entirely dormant, that, after the act is committed and enjoyed, she
will, under the influence of a human eye, instantly defend herself
without being accused, by 'No, I never! no, I never!' This express
admission of guilt she can no more resist than she can resist the
temptation itself. At the present time the sweet effigy of Ben Sparrow
is lying within reach upon the table. Shutting her eyes. Tottie
stretches out her hand, and plucking her grandfather's left leg bodily
from his candied stomach, instantly devours it, cinnamon, raisins, and
all--and has just made the last gulp when Ben Sparrow, having served
his customer, reënters the parlour. He casts a puzzled look at his
dismembered effigy, and mutters,
'Well! if I didn't think I had made my two legs, may I be sugared!'
Which sweet oath is exactly appropriate to the occasion. Then he turns
to Tottie, who is gazing unconsciously at vacancy, with a wonderfully
intense expression in her eyes, and she immediately shakes her head
piteously, and cries,
'No, I never! no, I never!'
Ben Sparrow, having his doubts aroused by this vehement asseveration
of innocence, says mournfully,
'O, Tottie! Tottie! I didn't think you'd do it! To begin to eat me up
like that!'
But Tottie shakes her head still more vehemently, and desperately
reiterates, 'No, I never! no, I never!' With the frightful
consciousness that the proofs of her guilt are in her inside, and that
she has only to be cut open for them to be produced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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