Tactfully and unfailingly she administered it at those times.
Grandmother Bradley, with whom Jimmy lived, ran Grandmother Toppan a very close race. Her favorite remedy for our troubles (certain hollow feelings which often afflicted us) was sugar-gingerbread. I will leave it to any one if it is possible to choose between two such excellent women.
The farm was, of course, a centre of attractions. Grandmother Bradley's domain, on a principal street of the town, was naturally circumscribed. Yet it contained one object of overwhelming interest.
In the basement stood a green chest. It was bumped and scarred, and, worse than all, it was locked.
Lovely things dwelt within it, so Jimmy said.
It had come across the seas with some far-off great-uncle, and it was never opened. But if the cover should ever be raised, he who stood by should be envied of all boys. For inside was a large tank, filled with some liquid, the exact nature of which Jimmy never explained. In this silvery fluid swam or floated all manner of fairy shapes. There were mermaids, tiny golden fishes, and other strange inhabitants of the ocean. Enormous turtles reposed on the sands at the bottom, and gay little ships with bright rigging sailed overhead.
All of these delectable objects were made, by the cunning of some foreign workman, out of glass. The golden hair of the mermaids, the scales of the fish, the sand, the sea-shells, the monstrous whales, the sword of the swordfish, the flippers of the turtles, the little lighthouse that stood on the shore, the beautifully colored seaweeds that clustered about the rocks, all of these—even the thread-like ropes and shrouds of the bobbing vessels—all were fashioned from brittle glass.
Did a boy ever have a more tantalizing vision dancing before his eyes?
I stood and gazed at that green chest. A more stolid, unyielding affair cannot be imagined. It was dusty, and the corners of it were worn and rounded. The green paint which had covered it was faded, and in many spots knocked off altogether. Sailors' boots had kicked it, perhaps, or it had rocked about some cabin or hold when the waves of the real ocean had started a miniature tempest on the little sea within. What, then, had prevented collisions between the glass ships, or kept the mermaids from being shivered to bits on the reef?