"It's too full of everything. To make a fire you begin with paper."
"Haven't I begun with paper? There are at least six newspapers at the bottom of that grate; it's stuffed full of paper."
"That's just it; I believe it's stuffed too full. And I feel sure that you don't want to start with a whole forest full of wood. And it looks to me as if you had emptied a whole scuttle full of coals on the top of all the rest."
"I have."
"Then how ridiculous of you. How can you expect it to burn? I think I can show you how it ought to be."
She showed me. I ought not to have let her; I do not need to be told that, but I did. I held the scuttle while she put back into it nearly all the coal; then she removed about five-sixths of the wood and nine-tenths of the paper, and started to lay that fire all over again. And she kept talking all the time.
"Have you had your breakfast?"
"I emphatically haven't."
"I haven't had any either."
It struck me that there was a suggestiveness about her tone.