Country life -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Siblings -- Fiction
“Go and fetch 'em quick!” shouted Selina, stamping with impatience.
Harold ran off at once, true to the stern system of discipline in which
he had been nurtured. But his eyes were like round O's, and as he ran he
talked fast to himself, in evident disorder of mind.
The pea-sticks made a rare blaze, and the fire, no longer smouldering
sullenly, leapt up and began to assume the appearance of a genuine
bonfire. Harold, awed into silence at first, began to jump round it with
shouts of triumph. Selina looked on grimly, with knitted brow; she
was not yet fully satisfied. “Can't you get any more sticks?” she said
presently. “Go and hunt about. Get some old hampers and matting and
things out of the tool-house. Smash up that old cucumber frame Edward
shoved you into, the day we were playing scouts and Mohicans. Stop a
bit! Hooray! I know. You come along with me.”
Hard by there was a hot-house, Aunt Eliza's special pride and joy, and
even grimly approved of by the gardener. At one end, in an out-house
adjoining, the necessary firing was stored; and to this sacred fuel, of
which we were strictly forbidden to touch a stick, Selina went straight.
Harold followed obediently, prepared for any crime after that of the
pea-sticks, but pinching himself to see if he were really awake.
“You bring some coals,” said Selina briefly, without any palaver or
pro-and-con discussion. “Here's a basket. I'll manage the faggots!”
In a very few minutes there was little doubt about its being a genuine
bonfire and no paltry makeshift. Selina, a Maenad now, hatless and
tossing disordered locks, all the dross of the young lady purged out of
her, stalked around the pyre of her own purloining, or prodded it with
a pea-stick. And as she prodded she murmured at intervals, “I knew there
was something we could do! It isn't much--but still it 's something!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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