Inside the big fine house there couldn’t be any fun either. Only those stately halls and magnificent rooms, one after another, with handsome furniture upholstered in silk damask, with great gold-framed mirrors, but with the shades always drawn down. The rooms were so immense that every footstep echoed in them. And oh! how careful one had to be for the sake of that miserable china that Uncle Isaac had collected so much of. In the cabinets it was no trouble, but when it stood on tiny little tables, Johnny Blossom did not like it at all. He scarcely dared to breathe when he went anywhere near the tables lest he should knock something off. Uncle Isaac had once shown him all the china and explained how old and rare and precious it was.
“This cup Marie Antoinette drank from, and this vase belonged to the Bonapartes. This flagon is from an English royal palace of the sixteenth century.”
Johnny Blossom stood and stared. For his part he would rather have his own mug at home with “For a Good Boy” upon it than all these fine antiques that so many old mouths had drunk from!
Poor Uncle Isaac! He was sick now again—worse, in fact. He had heart disease, Mother said. Jeremias the wood-cutter also talked of a pain in his heart, but since he had begun to rub himself all over with kerosene, he had become much better. It smelled dreadfully in Jeremias’s little hut, but he was better. Johnny Blossom would certainly write to Uncle Isaac and tell him that all he had to do to cure himself of the pain was to rub himself with kerosene.
To this point in his meditations had Johnny Blossom come just as he reached the telephone pole whence he could see the big entrance gates to Kingthorpe Park; and there was the handsome new carriage rolling out through the gates that very moment! Carlstrom sat on the box. My! How stylish he looked today! His moustache ends stood out in the air more stiffly than usual, and he never once glanced at Johnny Blossom standing below in the dusty road. Back in the carriage sat Miss Melling, Uncle Isaac’s housekeeper, with a white feather in her hat waving up and down. At her side lay a queer package of many yellow sticks tied together. What in the world could that be?
Johnny Blossom took off his hat and bowed. Carlstrom looked straight ahead; but when Miss Melling caught sight of Johnny, there was a great to-do.
“Why, there he is! Stop, Carlstrom, stop! Johnny Blossom! Johnny Blossom!” she called, twisting herself round in the carriage. “You are just the person I was going to town to see,” she continued. “I had a letter from your Uncle Isaac saying that you were to have this fishing rod at once.”
Johnny Blossom looked very small standing in the road beside the big carriage. The crown and brim of his hat gaped widely apart on one side, and out of the opening stuck a lock of dark brown hair. His blue and white striped blouse had a daub of pitch in the middle of the front; and since Johnny Blossom knew it was there, he held a little brown hand over it, while he gazed up at the double chin of the imposing Miss Melling.
“See here! Why shouldn’t you take it right now? To tell the truth, I can’t imagine what a little boy like you should be doing with such a handsome fishing rod as this. I won’t say how much it cost—it was very expensive, you may be sure. Well, perhaps you had better ride with us back to town again, although you are so dirty, you are scarcely fit for the carriage.”
Johnny Blossom looked up wistfully but dubiously. Probably he was too dirty.