“Come,” she cried, suddenly, with the eagerness of one whose cheque has just been honoured; “let’s play at Doan of Ak! You will be Doan, and I will be the naughty men. I’ll bu’n you! You mustn’t squeal, or kick up a wumpus, you know, but be dood.”
Having made this stipulation, our little heroine placed the black martyr on an old-fashioned straw-bottomed chair near the window, and getting hold of a quantity of paper and some old cotton dresses, she piled the whole round Blackie to represent faggots. This done, she stepped back and surveyed her work as an artist might study a picture.
“You’ve dot your best muslin fock on, da’ling, an it’ll be spoiled; but I don’t care for zat. Now, say your pays, Doan.”
With this admonitory remark, Flo screwed up a piece of paper, went to the fireplace, made a very long arm through the fender, and lighted it. Next moment she applied the flame to the faggots, which blazed up with surprising rapidity.
Stepping quickly back, the dear little child gazed at her work with intense delight beaming from every feature.
“Now be dood, Blackie. Don’t make a wumpus!” she said; and as she said it, the flames caught the window curtains and went up with a flare that caused Flo to shout with mingled delight and alarm.
“I wonder,” remarked Mrs Gordon, who chanced to be in the drawing-room on the windward side of the nursery, “what amuses Flo so much!”
She arose and went, leisurely, to see.
Roderick, the groom, being in the harness-room on the lee side of the nursery at the time, made a remark with the same opening words.
“I wonder,” said he, “what that wull pe!” A sniffing action of the nose told what “that” meant. “Don’t you smell a smell, Tonal’?”