Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts: A Book of StoriesQuiller-Couch, Arthur
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Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts: A Book of Stories
Quiller-Couch, Arthur
Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Short stories
"My little dolls--you clever boy! O you clever little boy!" She kissed
me twice again. "Come, and you shall sleep, and then, when you wake,
you shall see."
She took me by the hand and hurried me into the house, and upstairs to a
great bedroom with a large oaken four-post bed in it, and a narrow
wooden bed beside, and a fire lit, and an arm-chair by the hearth.
The four-post bed had curtains of green damask, all closely pinned
around it, and a green valance. But she went to the little bed, which
was hung with pink dimity, and pulled the white sheets out of it and
replaced them with others from a great wardrobe sunk in the wall.
And while I sat in the chair by the fire, munching a crust of bread and
feeling half inclined to cry and more than half inclined to sleep, she
left me, and returned with a can of hot water and a vast night-shirt of
the farmer's, and bade me good-night.
"Be quick and undress, little one." She turned at the door. "The tubs
are all in hiding by this time. Good-night, Yann."
I believe I slept as soon as my head touched the sweet-smelling pillow;
and I must have slept the round of the clock before I opened my eyes,
for the room was now bright with candles, and in the arm-chair by the
fire sat the Breton lady sewing as if for dear life.
But the wonder of her was that she now wore a short plain dress such as
girls wear in the convent schools in Brittany, and her grey hair was
tied just like a girl's. One little foot rested on the brass fender,
and the firelight played on its silver shoe-buckle.
I coughed, to let her know that I was awake, and she looked across and
nodded.
"Almost ten o'clock, Yann, and time for you to rise and have supper.
And after supper--are you sorry?--another journey for you. At midnight
you start in the gig with Farmer Ellory, who will drive you to the
coast, to a town called Fowey, where some friends of his 'in the trade'
are starting for Roscoff. In six hours you will be aboard ship again;
and in another twenty, perhaps, you will see your mother--and your
father too, if he escaped clear away. In little more than a day you
will be back in Brittany. But first you must lie quite still, and I
will show you something."
"To be sure I will, madame."
"You must not call me that. I am the Demoiselle Heloise Keranguin.
You know St. Pol de Leon, Yann?"
"Almost as well as my own town, mademoiselle."
"And the Convent of the Grey Nuns, on the road to Morlaix, a little
beyond the town?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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