“Don’t sweep any dust into the corners,” said her mother; and she left Merrimeg in the kitchen, and went into the front room to make the beds. Merrimeg swept and swept with her little broom, and she made up a little song and sang it out loud, keeping time with the broom. Every little while her mother would call to her from the next room and say,---- “Have you finished yet, Merrimeg?” “Not yet, mother!” Merrimeg would say, and then she would go on with her sweeping and singing. She was very happy, but this wasn’t her day to be good; for she was in a great hurry to be out in the garden in the sunshine, and she forgot all about what her mother had said to her; so instead of wasting time on the dustpan, she swept all the dust into the nice clean fireplace, a very large fireplace, big enough to roast a pig in. An iron pot was hanging there, but there wasn’t any fire, and her mother had just cleaned off the hearth so that it was as spotless as new brick. She swept the dust from under the table and chairs, and out of the corners, and everywhere. And every single bit of the dust she swept into the fireplace, and piled it up at the back on the clean bricks, out of sight. And all the while she kept on singing. [Illustration] She was stooping down into the fireplace, with her head right at the back, under the chimney, when her mother called to her from the next room and said,---- “Have you finished now, Merrimeg?” “Yes, mother!” said Merrimeg. “I’m going out into the garden now!” But she didn’t go out into the garden. Instead of that,--just as she said, “I’m going out into the garden now,” whack! she was knocked against the iron pot, and bang! she was tossed against the back of the fireplace, and whoof! she was whirled up into that black dirty chimney like a leaf in a wind. And it _was_ a wind, too! She was sucked up in a wind that was rushing up the chimney,--and _such_ a wind! Never had she been caught in a wind like that, not even in the wildest March weather. Before she knew it, she was high up inside the chimney in the pitch dark, stuck fast, and the wind began to die down. “Mother!” she cried, at the top of her voice. But her mother couldn’t hear her; and all that Merrimeg heard was a sound as if a great many people were laughing at her, a long way off. It was pitch dark. But all around her, in the black soot of the chimney, were little sparks, like the sparks you see in the soot at the back of the fireplace when the fire is crackling on the hearth,--thousands of tiny sparks, and all of them getting dimmer as the wind died down more and more. Suddenly the wind sprang up again, stronger and stronger, and the harder the wind blew the brighter the sparks burned. Merrimeg had to hold on fast with her feet and back to keep from being blown out of the top of the chimney.