CHAPTER XX
‘This is him,’ cried Jonah breathlessly, pointing with a hand that wore ink like a funeral glove. ‘I’ve got him this time. Look!’ And he waved a half-sheet of paper in his uncle’s face.
‘I’ve made one too—oh, a beauty!’ echoed Toby; ‘and I haven’t made half such a mess as you.’ Three of her fingers were in mourning. A crape-like line running from the nose to the corner of the mouth, lent her a certain distinction. She, too, waved a bit of paper in the air.
‘Mine’s the real Jack-of-the-Inkpot though, isn’t he, Uncle Paul?’ exclaimed the boy, leaving the schoolroom table, and running up to show it.
‘They’re all real—as real as your awful fingers,’ decreed Paul.
He had been explaining how to make the figure of the Ink Sprite that leaves blots wherever he goes, blackens penholders and fingers, and leaves his crawly marks across even the neatest page of writing. Two blots and a line-then fold the paper. Open it again and the ink has run into the semblance of an outlandish figure with countless legs and arms, and a fantastic head; something between a spider, a centipede, and a sprite.
‘It’s Jack-of-the-Inkpot,’ he told them. ‘Half the time he does his dirty work invisibly, and if he touches blotting-paper—he vanishes altogether.’
Jonah skipped about the room, waving his hideous creation in the air. Toby, in her efforts to make a still better one, almost climbed into the ink-stand. Nixie sat on the window-sill, dangling her legs and looking on.
‘Very little ink does it,’ explained Paul, frightened at the results of his instruction. ‘You needn’t pour it on! He works with the smallest possible material, remember!’ His own fingers were no longer as spotless as they might have been.
‘Look!’ shouted Jonah, standing on a chair and ignoring the rebuke. ‘There he goes—just like a black spider flying!’ He let his half-sheet drop through the air, ink running down its side as it fell, while Toby watched with the envy of despair.