The dresser-drawer yielded a hammer, and Edred took it away, to return almost at once with—
“I suppose there aren’t any tacks——?”
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Honeysett, laughing, “there ain’t much sense locking that still-room door on the inside when it ain’t me that keeps all a-popping in, but you that keeps all a-popping out.”
However, she gave him the tacks—rusty ones, in a damp screw of paper.
When he had hammered his fingers a good deal and the tacks a little the tacks consented to hold up the curtain, or the curtain condescended to be held up by the tacks.
“And now,” said Edred, shutting the door, “it really is——”
Dark, he meant. But of course it wasn’t. There was a gap under the door so wide, as Elfrida said, that you could have almost crawled through it. That meant another appeal to Mrs. Honeysett for another curtain, and this time Mrs. Honeysett told him to go along with him for a little worrit, and threw a handful of downy soft white feathers at him. But she laughed, too, and gave him the curtain.
At last it really was dark, and then they had to unbolt the door again, because Elfrida had forgotten where she had put the matches.
You will readily understand that, after all this preparation, the children were at the last point of impatience, and everything seemed to go slowly. The lamp with the red shade burned up presently, and then the four pie-dishes were filled with water that looked pink in that strange light.
“One good thing,” said Edred, “the hypo has had time to melt.”