'Tottie's a dood little girl!' as if indorsing a statement made by her grandfather. But Tottie's thoughts are not upon the good little girl; at the present moment she resembles a savage. She has tasted blood, and thirsts for more.
'It's a fatter stomach than mine,' proceeds Ben, laying his hand upon his stomach of flesh, the stomach he came into the world with; 'it's rounder and plumper, and would fit the Lord Mayor or an alderman, but it'll do, I daresay. Now for my neck.'
He picks up the thickest piece of cinnamon, and measures it with his eye, breaking the stick in two. 'I mustn't make my neck too long--nor too short--and I take the thickest piece, Tottie, because it's got to support my head. Like this.' He makes a hole in the end of the lemon-peel, and sticks the cinnamon in firmly. 'Now to stick my head on, Tottie.'
He selects the largest of the fat figs, and attaches it to his neck. 'What's the next thing? My eyes, to be sure. Currants.' Remarkably like eyes do they look when they are inserted in the face of the fat fig. Then he takes a clove for his nose, and, making a thin slit in the fig for his mouth, inserts an appropriate morsel of mace. All this being successfully accomplished, he holds himself up (as far as he goes) for his own and Tottie's inspection and approval. Tottie claps her hands, and laughs, but subsides into a quieter humour at a guilty thought that steals into her mind. She thinks what a delightful thing it would be to take her grandfather (as far as he goes) and eat him bit by bit.
'I begin to look ship-shape,' observes Ben Sparrow, gazing admiringly at the unfinished effigy of himself. 'You see, Tottie, what the people want nowadays is novelty--something new, something they haven't seen before. Give them that, and you're all right' (Which vague generality appears to satisfy him.) 'Now, here it is--here's novelty--here's something they've never seen before; and if this don't bring custom, I don't know what will.'
Tottie gives a grave and silent assent; she cannot speak, for her mind is bent upon cannibalism. She is ready to tear the old man limb from limb.
'But,' continues Ben Sparrow, unconscious of the horrible thought at work in the mind of the apparently innocent child before him, 'I must get along with myself, or I shall never be finished. I haven't been in any battle that I know of, and I wasn't born a cripple, so my limbs must be all right when I appear in public. Now for my arms. More cinnamon! I think I may call cinnamon my bones.'
When two pieces of cinnamon are stuck into the sides of the candied lemon-peel, they look so naked that he says,
'I must put sleeves on my arms.'
And impales raisins upon them, and sticks five small slips of mace in each of the last raisins, which serve for fingers.