Algernon Blackwood

“ The time passed happily; some one turned the lamp out, and Daddy, regardless of expense--he had been grumbling about it ten minutes before--heaped on the bricks of peat. Riquette, a bit of movable furniture without which the room seemed incomplete, deftly slipped in between the circle of legs and feet, and curled up upon Jinny's lap. Her snoring, a wheezy noise that made Jimbo wonder 'why it didn't scrape her,' was as familiar as the ticking of the clock. Old Mere Riquette knew her rights. And she exacted them. Jinny's lap was one of these. ”

“ He's making up,' piped Jimbo.
'I do know,' came the belated explanation, as he put the crumb into the bowl of his extinguished pipe with a solemnity that delighted them, but puzzled Jane Anne, who suggested it would taste 'like toast smelt.' 'People who take bread that doesn't belong to them end by having no dinner---'
'But that isn't anything about thinness,' interrupted Jinny, still uncomforted. Some one wasted by love was in her mind perhaps. ”

“ Her flushed face was very happy; it even wore a touch of proud superiority. Her talents were domestic rather than intellectual.
'Excuse me, Daddy,' she said gravely, in a pause that followed presently. 'But what is a wedge, exactly? And I think I'd like to copy that poetry in my book, please.' For she kept a book in which his efforts were neatly inscribed in a round copy-book handwriting, and called by Monkey 'The Muddle Book.' There his unappreciated doggerels found fame, though misunderstood most of all by the affectionate child who copied them so proudly. ”

“ None of the children had the faintest idea what it meant to be afraid of their father.
'People who waste bread,' he began, 'end by getting so thin themselves that they double up like paper and disappear.'
'But how thin, Daddy?' asked Jane Anne, ever literal to the death. ”

“ W. E. HENLEY. In a southern-facing room on the first floor of La Citadelle the English family sat after tea. The father, a spare, mild-eyed man, his thatch of brown hair well sprinkled with grey above the temples, was lighting his pipe for the tenth time-the tenth match, but the same pipeful of tobacco; and his wife, an ample, motherly woman, slightly younger than himself, was knitting on the other side of the open fireplace, in which still glowed a mass of peat ashes. ”

“ And she was accustomed to the noise and laughter. The scene then finished, as it usually did, by the mother washing up, Jane Anne drying, and Daddy hovering to and fro in the background making remarks in his beard about the geraniums, the China tea, the indigestible new bread, the outrageous cost of the necessaries of life, or the book he was at work on at the moment. He often enough gave his uncertain assistance in the little menial duties connected with the preparation or removal of the tea-things, and had even been known to dry. Only washing-up he never did. ”

“ Life, for all that, was a severe problem to them, and the difficulty of making both ends come in sight of each other, let alone meeting, was an ever-present one. That they jogged along so well was due more than the others realised to the untiring and selfless zeal of the Irish mother, a plucky, practical woman, and a noble one if ever such existed on this earth. ”

“ He might bring the peat in, fill the lamps, arrange and dust the scanty furniture, but washing-up was not a possibility even. As an author it was considered beneath his dignity altogether, almost improper--it would have shocked the children. Mother could do anything; it was right and natural that she should---poor soul I But Daddy's profession set him in an enclosure apart, and there were certain things in this servantless menage he could not have done without disgracing the entire family. Washing-up was one; carrying back the empty basket of tea-things to the Pension was another. ”

“ There was commotion by that window for a moment but it soon subsided again, for things that Jinny said never provoked dissension, and Jimbo and Monkey just then were busy with a Magic Horse who had wings of snow, and was making fearful leaps from the peaks of the Dent du Midi across the Blumlisalp to the Jungfrau.
'Will you please carry the samovar for me?' exclaimed Jane Anne, addressing both her parents, as though uncertain which of them would help her. 'You filled it so awfully full to-day, I can't lift it. I advertise for help.'
Her father slowly rose. ”

“ Daddy wrote books. As Jane Anne put it forcibly and finally once, 'Shakespeare never washed up or carried a tea-basket in the street!'--which the others accepted as a conclusive statement of authority. ”

“ True nonsense is for grown-ups only. Jane Anne stared steadily at him with a puzzled frown. Her face wore an expression like a moth.
'Thank you, Daddy, very much,' she said, certain as ever that the fault if any was her own, since all that Daddy said and did was simply splendid. Whereupon the others fairly screamed with delight, turning attention thereby from the dismal failure.
'She doesn't understand it, but she's always so polite!' cried Monkey.
Her mother quickly intervened. 'Never mind, Jane Anne,' she soothed her, lest her feelings should be ruffled; 'you shall never want a dinner, lovey ”

“ The peasants, however, rather pitied the hard-working author who 'had to write all those books,' than paid him honourable tribute for his work. It seemed so unnecessary. Vineyards produced wine a man could drink and pay for, but books---! ”