Only one more visit had to be paid, and that was to a pretty whitewashed and thatched cottage, standing in its little garden, which teemed with fruit and flowers,—bright crimson Prince of Wales’s feathers, cockscombs, stocks, wallflowers, and roses; while gooseberries and currants were bending the trees down to the earth with the weight heaped upon the boughs. The window of this cottage was decorated with about half a dozen glass jars, wherein reposed, in all their sticky richness, the toffee, lemon stick, and candy which old Mrs Birch used to make for the delectation of the boys and girls round. She had no brilliantly-coloured sweets; no sticks veined with blue, green, yellow, and red upon pure white ground; no crystallised drops, or those of clear rose-colour, for all her “suckers,” as they were called in the neighbourhood, were home-made, and she used to show all her customers the golden bright brass pan which hung upon the wall by the fire, as the one in which all her succulent sweets were made. And where indeed were there such others? Even town-bred Fred, who had feasted on Parisian bonbons, and made himself ill by eating strange fruits off Christmas-trees, owned to the purity and delectability of old Mrs Birch’s “butterscotch;” while, as to the brown lemon stick, it was beyond praise. Capital customers were the boys to the dame, who was a wonderful business-like old body in her spotted blue print dress, and clean white muslin handkerchief pinned tightly over her neck; and she told the boys in confidence what a wonderfully extended trade she might do if she gave credit; but how determined she was never to carry on business except upon ready-money principles; which had been her intention ever since William, the butcher’s boy, ran up a score of tenpence three-farthings,—a score that had never been paid to that day, and, what was more, the old lady expected that it never would be.
The boys then returned in a state of cloyey stickiness, and very soon finished their preparations for the following day; and at last, by dint of coaxing, Philip persuaded Cook to make a little paste; Harry borrowed the housemaid’s scissors, and then obtained from the tool-shed a couple of straight laths. These he fashioned to his required size, and then, by means of a piece of waxed twine, securely bound one to the other in the form of a Latin cross, the upright limb being about eight inches longer than the others. These were now kept in their places by a tightly-tied string passing from one extremity to the other of the limbs of the cross; and then by means of a loop of string the whole was balanced, and found to be equal in weight as far as the two side limbs of the cross were concerned.
“Why, you are going to make a kite,” said Fred.
“To be sure we are,” said Harry.
“But the top ought to be round, and not made like that. That won’t be half a kite.”
“Won’t it?” said Harry: “it will be more than that, for it will be a whole one.”
“But it won’t fly,” said Fred.
“Fly!” said Philip. “It will fly twice as well as your stupid London-made kites; you see if it don’t.”
Harry was not a bit disturbed by his cousin’s criticism, but continued his job to the end, pasting away in the most spirited manner, till he had made a very respectable-looking kite, half blue and half white, which he then stood on one side to dry, just as the dinner-bell rang.
Directly after dinner the boys set to work to make a tail for the kite, and also fitted it with wings—Fred being employed meanwhile in winding the string off the ball on to a stick, and joining any pieces that might exist, in case of an accident when the kite was up, as it would have been no joke for it to have broken loose. But Fred was not very well up in his task, and somehow or other made a perfect Laocoon of himself with the string, and got at last into a regular tangle, so that fully half an hour was taken up in endeavours to get it right again, which was only done at last with a knife, and at the expense of many yards of string.