The mashed potato and the rather faded pimpernel were carefully concealed under the more attractive offerings.
‘It looks fine,’ Charles said, and what he said they all thought.
Nothing much happened except smoke.
It is very hard to make small pieces of green things burn in a cocoa-tin lid in the open air by means of a box of matches, and the fragments of a potato-dampened envelope from an aunt in Italy. Nothing much happened except smoke, and the head of a match burnt Charles’s finger.
‘There’s no more paper,’ said he, ‘except the bit we’ve written his name on.’
‘There’s the match-box,’ said Caroline; ‘let’s make a little bonfire with twigs and then put the incense things on when it’s burnt up.’ This they did; and the starry gold of St. John’s wort, the gay brightness of Indian pinks, and the feathery greenness of the tamarisks twisted and writhed amid flames and smoke.
‘Now we’ll leave it. Please, Murdstone man, let your crimes and your animosity and your aversion be burnt away, and may you lie on beds of roses really as soon as you are changed and amiable. Then when you are truly benevolent, Rupert and us will esteem you, and the hazel is for reconciliation. Now let’s go away and leave the incense to do its healing work, and to-morrow we’ll come and put a fresh rose-bed and burn new incense.’ Thus Caroline. The others agreed, and after having put on the box the label with the Murdstone man’s name, so that Destiny could not pretend to make any mistake as to who the witchcraft was meant for, they went away through green coverts, in Indian file, to build a wigwam in another part of the wood with three hop poles, three red blankets, and their three mackintoshes.