The third piece of devil work was far more daring and inexplicable. I had a cold one day and was not allowed to go out, but was left instead by the fire in the sitting-room belonging to my two elder brothers. There was a white sheepskin rug in front of it, and as soon as my father with the four eldest children had left the house, I ladled the whole of the burning coals out of the grate and put them on the hearthrug. An appalling stench arose as the wool caught fire; the place was filled with smoke, and I left the room, quite impenitent and merely interested to know what on earth would happen next. The smoke must by now have penetrated to the rest of the house, for I met my mother running downstairs, and she asked me if I knew what that smell was. I told her that I didn’t, and went up to the nursery. Presently, having extinguished the fire, she followed me, and again asked me if I was sure I didn’t know anything about it. Upon which I told her that it was I who had emptied the fire on to the rug. A fine spanking followed, which I did not in the least resent, and I was told to go to bed till I was sorry. I never was sorry--for it was demoniacal possession--but I suppose that some time I must have got up again. Friendships had sprung up between us and other children at Mrs. Giles’s day-school, and among these was May Copeland, who was Nellie’s particular friend, and told us that she was descended from Oliver Cromwell. This was very distinguished, and I fully meant to marry her. There was also a girl whose name I forget, and she was responsible for one of the greatest surprises of my young life, for one day while she and I were looking for a tennis ball in the bushes, she took my hands and drew them upwards against her bosom. I found to my astonishment that instead of being flat, she had two swellings there, and I asked her if they were bruises. She seemed rather offended and said that they certainly were not. Then there was Willie Burton to whom I told, in the spirit of bravado, what I had done to the sheepskin hearthrug, and he thought it very magnificent. He used to get phosphorus matches from his father’s table, which was grand, for we only used Bryant and May’s safety matches, and our great game was to retire into the blackness of the tool-house, wet the palms of our hands, and rub on the phosphorus which glowed with a mysterious light. He had an awful story which I entirely believed of an aunt of his on whom a practical joker played a dreadful trick, for he wrote up in phosphorus above his aunt’s bed the text, “This night shall thy soul be required of thee.” On which his poor aunt went raving mad, and I got a general distrust of phosphorus.... Willie Burton was dressed in sailor clothes, and I in a short jacket and knickerbockers, and one day with a sense of almost excessive adventure, we undressed in the tool-house and each put on the other’s clothes. We then opened the door in order to let daylight behold this