When these friendly greetings had passed between them, they settled down comfortably for the morning.
By the fireplace in Granny’s room was a small cupboard, and in this cupboard Tommy’s Saturday playtoys were kept. One of his favourite toys was a massive bedroom candlestick in shining brass.
Granny had many stories to tell a little boy about that candlestick. The very night that Tommy’s father was brought to her, years and years ago, she had stuck a lighted dip in the brass candlestick and had put it in this very bedroom window, because Granfäather Tregennis was out on a rough, wild sea catching pilchards.
There was no light at the end of the Frying Pan then, for the pier was not yet built and the men in the boats looked to the cottage windows for guidance. When Granfäather came home, very cold and very wet, in the grey light of the dawn, the candle was just guttering out. In the candlestick were little runnings of grease, and in the big fourposter bed, along with Granny, was a son.
Tommy could picture Granfäather’s great surprise when he came upstairs and found a new boy in the house. It was disconcerting to feel that new children might appear in this way at any moment. Whenever Tommy had been away from home for some hours, he was always just a little apprehensive lest another child should have come in his absence, knowing, as he did, how very suddenly his own father had been brought to Granny on the night of the storm.
Among the playtoys, too, were a pair of wee, patent-leather slippers. They were cracked now and stiff with age, and the tiny buckles that used to be so bright were quite yellow. These were the first leather shoes that Tommy’s Daddy had ever worn. Tommy knew exactly how his Daddy had tried to walk in them holding on to the horse-hair sofa downstairs, and how he had sat down suddenly in the middle and sucked the patent-leather toes.
“And then my Daddy tried to get up again,” Tommy would say, “but he was so very, very little that he rolled right over ’n hit his head on the sofy leg, ’n had brown paper on the big lump, ’n vinegar.”
When Granny had duly corroborated this version of the accident, they set aside the worn old slippers and passed on to another toy.
At eleven o’clock quite punctually Aunt Keziah Kate brought up a glass of hot milk for Granny. This was the signal for Tommy to go downstairs and help with the pastry. Quickly he ran down the twists and turns of the quaint old-fashioned stairway, so that he might be the first to get to the kitchen and hide behind the roller-towel before Aunt Keziah Kate saw him.
Like the ostrich Tommy was perfectly contented in his hiding-place, utterly oblivious of the fact that the towel, hanging from the kitchen door, only covered the upper part of him; from his knees downwards he was exposed to the full view of the public.