It happened this year that Miss Maddison gave her party during the
very week that Mr. and Mrs. Cole went to Drymouth. She sent out her
invitations only three days before the great event, because the summer
had come with so fine a rush. “Master Jeremy and the Misses Cole...
Would they give Miss Maddison the pleasure...?” Yes, of course they
would. Aunt Amy would take them.
On the morning of the great day Jeremy poured the contents of his
watering-can upon Aunt Amy's head. It was a most unfortunate accident,
arranged obviously by a malignant fate. Jeremy had been presented with
a pot of pinks, and these, every morning, he most faithfully watered. He
had a bright-red watering-can, bought with his own money, and, because
it held more water than the pinks needed, he was in the daily habit of
emptying the remnant in a glittering shower out of the pantry window
on to the bed nearest the garden wall. Upon this morning someone called
him; he turned his head; the water still flowed, and Aunt Amy, hatless
and defenceless, received it as it tumbled with that sudden rush which
always seizes a watering-can at its last gasp. Jeremy was banished into
his bedroom, where he employed the sunny morning in drawing pictures of
Aunt Amy as a witch upon the wallpaper. For doing this he was caned
by Aunt Amy herself with a ruler, and at the end of the operation
he laughed and said she hadn't hurt him at all. In return for this
impertinence he was robbed, at luncheon, of his pudding--which was,
of course, on that very day, marmalade pudding--and then, Mary being
discovered putting some of hers into a piece of paper, to be delivered
to him in due course, they were both stood in different corners of the
room “until you say you're sorry.”
When the jingle arrived at three o'clock they had still not made this
acknowledgment, and Jeremy said he never would, “not if he lived till
he was ninety-nine.” At quarter past three Jeremy might have been seen
sitting up very straight in the jingle, his face crimson from washing
and temper. He was wearing his new sailor suit, which tickled him and
was hot and sticky; he sat there devoting the whole of his energies to
the business of hating Aunt Amy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account