Christmas gold, p.431
Christmas Gold, page 431
And Harry came up to him.
“Shew me your tongue, Harry,” said he.
“What for?” said Harry; “you’re not a doctor.”
“Do as I tell you,” said the hot-tempered gentleman; and as Harry saw his hand moving, he put his tongue out with all possible haste. The hot-tempered gentleman sighed. “Ah!” he said in depressed tones; “I thought so!—Polly, come and let me look at yours.”
Polly, who had crept up during this process, now put out hers. But the hot-tempered gentleman looked gloomier still, and shook his head.
“What is it?” cried both the children. “What do you mean?” And they seized the tips of their tongues in their fingers, to feel for themselves.
But the hot-tempered gentleman went slowly out of the room without answering; passing his hands through his hair, and saying, “Ah! Hum!” and nodding with an air of grave foreboding.
Just as he crossed the threshold, he turned back, and put his head into the room. “Have you ever noticed that your tongues are growing pointed?” he asked.
“No!” cried the children with alarm. “Are they?”
“If ever you find them becoming forked,” said the gentleman in solemn tones, “let me know.”
With which he departed, gravely shaking his head.
In the afternoon the children attacked him again. “Do tell us what’s the matter with our tongues.”
“You were snapping and squabbling just as usual this morning,” said the hot-tempered gentleman.
“Well, we forgot,” said Polly. “We don’t mean anything, you know. But never mind that now, please. Tell us about our tongues. What is going to happen to them?”
“I’m very much afraid,” said the hot-tempered gentleman, in solemn measured tones, “that you are both of you—fast—going—to—the—”
“Dogs?” suggested Harry, who was learned in cant expressions.
“Dogs!” said the hot-tempered gentleman, driving his hands through his hair. “Bless your life, no! Nothing half so pleasant! (That is, unless all dogs were like Snap, which mercifully they are not.) No, my sad fear is, that you are both of you—rapidly—going—to the Snap-Dragons!”
And not another word would the hot-tempered gentleman say on the subject.
Christmas Eve
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In the course of a few hours Mr and Mrs Skratdj recovered their equanimity. The punch was brewed in a jug, and tasted quite as good as usual. The evening was very lively. There were a Christmas-tree, Yule cakes, log, and candles, furmety, and snap-dragon after supper. When the company was tired of the tree, and had gained an appetite by the hard exercise of stretching to high branches, blowing out “dangerous” tapers, and cutting ribbon and pack-thread in all directions, supper came, with its welcome cakes and furmety and punch. And when furmety somewhat palled upon the taste (and it must be admitted to boast more sentiment than flavour as a Christmas dish), the Yule candles were blown out and both the spirits and the palates of the party were stimulated by the mysterious and pungent pleasures of snap-dragon.
Then, as the hot-tempered gentleman warmed his coat-tails at the Yule-log, a grim smile stole over his features as he listened to the sounds in the room. In the darkness the blue flames leaped and danced, the raisins were snapped and snatched from hand to hand, scattering fragments of flame hither and thither. The children shouted as the fiery sweetmeats burnt away the mawkish taste of the furmety. Mr Skratdj cried that they were spoiling the carpet; Mrs Skratdj complained that he had spilled some brandy on her dress. Mr Skratdj retorted that she should not wear dresses so susceptible of damage in the family circle. Mrs Skratdj recalled an old speech of Mr Skratdj on the subject of wearing one’s nice things for the benefit of one’s family, and not reserving them for visitors. Mr Skratdj remembered that Mrs Skratdj’s excuse for buying that particular dress when she did not need it, was her intention of keeping it for the next year. The children disputed as to the credit for courage and the amount of raisins due to each. Snap barked furiously at the flames; and the maids hustled each other for good places in the doorway, and would not have allowed the man-servant to see at all, but he looked over their heads.
“St! St! At it! At it!” chuckled the hot-tempered gentleman in undertones. And when he said this, it seemed as if the voices of Mr and Mrs Skratdj rose higher in matrimonial repartee, and the children’s squabbles became louder, and the dog yelped as if he were mad, and the maids’ contest was sharper; whilst the snap-dragon flames leaped up and up, and blue fire flew about the room like foam.
At last the raisins were finished, the flames were all but out, and the company withdrew to the drawing-room. Only Harry lingered.
“Come along, Harry,” said the hot-tempered gentleman.
“Wait a minute,” said Harry.
“You had better come,” said the gentleman.
“Why?” said Harry.
“There’s nothing to stop for. The raisins are eaten, the brandy is burnt out—”
“No, it’s not,” said Harry.
“Well, almost. It would be better if it were quite out. Now come. It’s dangerous for a boy like you to be alone with the Snap-Dragons to-night.”
“Fiddle-sticks!” said Harry.
“Go your own way, then!” said the hot-tempered gentleman; and he bounced out of the room, and Harry was left alone.
He crept up to the table, where one little pale blue flame flickered in the snap-dragon dish.
“What a pity it should go out!” said Harry. At this moment the brandy bottle on the side-board caught his eye.
“Just a little more,” murmured Harry to himself; and he uncorked the bottle, and poured a little brandy on to the flame.
Now of course, as soon as the brandy touched the fire, all the brandy in the bottle blazed up at once, and the bottle split to pieces; and it was very fortunate for Harry that he did not get seriously hurt. A little of the hot brandy did get into his eyes, and made them smart, so that he had to shut them for a few seconds.
But when he opened them again, what a sight he saw! All over the room the blue flames leaped and danced as they had leaped and danced in the soup-plate with the raisins. And Harry saw that each successive flame was the fold in the long body of a bright blue Dragon, which moved like the body of a snake. And the room was full of these Dragons. In the face they were like the dragons one sees made of very old blue and white china; and they had forked tongues, like the tongues of serpents. They were most beautiful in colour, being sky-blue. Lobsters who have just changed their coats are very handsome, but the violet and indigo of a lobster’s coat is nothing to the brilliant sky-blue of a Snap-Dragon.
How they leaped about! They were for ever leaping over each other, like seals at play. But if it was “play” at all with them, it was of a very rough kind; for as they jumped, they snapped and barked at each other, and their barking was like that of the barking Gnu in the Zoological Gardens; and from time to time they tore the hair out of each other’s heads with their claws, and scattered it about the floor. And as it dropped it was like the flecks of flame people shake from their fingers when they are eating snap-dragon raisins.
Harry stood aghast.
“What fun!” said a voice close by him; and he saw that one of the Dragons was lying near, and not joining in the game. He had lost one of the forks of his tongue by accident, and could not bark for awhile.
“I’m glad you think it funny,” said Harry, “I don’t.”
“That’s right. Snap away!” sneered the Dragon. “You’re a perfect treasure. They’ll take you in with them the third round.”
“Not those creatures?” cried Harry.
“Yes, those creatures. And if I hadn’t lost my bark, I’d be the first to lead you off,” said the Dragon. “Oh, the game will exactly suit you.”
“What is it, please?” Harry asked.
“You’d better not say ‘please’ to the others,” said the Dragon, “if you don’t want to have all your hair pulled out. The game is this. You have always to be jumping over somebody else, and you must either talk or bark. If anybody speaks to you, you must snap in return. I need not explain what snapping is. You know. If anyone by accident gives a civil answer, a claw-full of hair is torn out of his head to stimulate his brain. Nothing can be funnier.”
“I dare say it suits you capitally,” said Harry; “but I’m sure we shouldn’t like it. I mean men and women and children. It wouldn’t do for us at all.”
“Wouldn’t it?” said the Dragon. “You don’t know how many human beings dance with dragons on Christmas Eve. If we are kept going in a house till after midnight, we can pull people out of their beds, and take them to dance in Vesuvius.”
“Vesuvius!” cried Harry.
“Yes, Vesuvius. We come from Italy originally, you know. Our skins are the colour of the Bay of Naples. We live on dried grapes and ardent spirits. We have glorious fun in the mountain sometimes. Oh! what snapping, and scratching, and tearing! Delicious! There are times when the squabbling becomes too great, and Mother Mountain won’t stand it, and spits us all out, and throws cinders after us. But this is only at times. We had a charming meeting last year. So many human beings, and how they can snap! It was a choice party. So very select. We always have plenty of saucy children, and servants. Husbands and wives too, and quite as many of the former as the latter, if not more. But besides these, we had two vestry-men, a country postmaster, who devoted his talents to insulting the public instead of to learning the postal regulations, three cabmen and two ‘fares,’ two young shop-girls from a Berlin wool shop in a town where there was no competition, four commercial travellers, six landladies, six Old Bailey lawyers, several widows from almshouses, seven single gentlemen and nine cats, who swore at everything; a dozen sulphur-coloured screaming cockatoos; a lot of street children from a town; a pack of mongrel curs from the colonies, who snapped at the human beings’ heels, and five elderly ladies in their Sunday bonnets with Prayer-books, who had been fighting for good seats in church.”
“Dear me!” said Harry.
“If you can find nothing sharper to say than ‘Dear me,’” said the Dragon, “you will fare badly, I can tell you. Why, I thought you’d a sharp tongue, but it’s not forked yet, I see. Here they are, however. Off with you! And if you value your curls—Snap!”
And before Harry could reply, the Snap-Dragons came on on their third round, and as they passed they swept Harry with them.
He shuddered as he looked at his companions. They were as transparent as shrimps, but of this lovely cerulaean blue. And as they leaped they barked—“Howf! Howf?”—like barking Gnus; and when they leaped Harry had to leap with them. Besides barking, they snapped and wrangled with each other; and in this Harry must join also.
“Pleasant, isn’t it?” said one of the blue Dragons.
“Not at all,” snapped Harry.
“That’s your bad taste,” snapped the blue Dragon.
“No, it’s not!” snapped Harry.
“Then it’s pride and perverseness. You want your hair combing.”
“Oh, please don’t!” shrieked Harry, forgetting himself. On which the Dragon clawed a handful of hair out of his head, and Harry screamed, and the blue Dragons barked and danced.
“That made your hair curl, didn’t it?” asked another Dragon, leaping over Harry.
“That’s no business of yours,” Harry snapped, as well as he could for crying.
“It’s more my pleasure than business,” retorted the Dragon.
“Keep it to yourself, then,” snapped Harry.
“I mean to share it with you, when I get hold of your hair,” snapped the Dragon.
“Wait till you get the chance,” Harry snapped, with desperate presence of mind.
“Do you know whom you’re talking to?” roared the Dragon; and he opened his mouth from ear to ear, and shot out his forked tongue in Harry’s face; and the boy was so frightened that he forgot to snap, and cried piteously,—
“Oh, I beg your pardon, please don’t!”
On which the blue Dragon clawed another handful of hair out of his head, and all the Dragons barked as before.
How long the dreadful game went on Harry never exactly knew. Well practised as he was in snapping in the nursery, he often failed to think of a retort, and paid for his unreadiness by the loss of his hair. Oh, how foolish and wearisome all this rudeness and snapping now seemed to him! But on he had to go, wondering all the time how near it was to twelve o’clock, and whether the Snap-Dragons would stay till midnight and take him with them to Vesuvius.
At last, to his joy, it became evident that the brandy was coming to an end. The Dragons moved slower, they could not leap so high, and at last one after another they began to go out.
“Oh, if they only all of them get away before twelve!” thought poor Harry.
At last there was only one. He and Harry jumped about and snapped and barked, and Harry was thinking with joy that he was the last, when the clock in the hall gave that whirring sound which some clocks do before they strike, as if it were clearing its throat.
“Oh, please go!” screamed Harry in despair.
The blue Dragon leaped up, and took such a claw-full of hair out of the boy’s head, that it seemed as if part of the skin went too. But that leap was his last. He went out at once, vanishing before the first stroke of twelve. And Harry was left on his face on the floor in the darkness.
Conclusion
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When his friends found him there was blood on his forehead. Harry thought it was where the Dragon had clawed him, but they said it was a cut from a fragment of the broken brandy bottle. The Dragons had disappeared as completely as the brandy.
Harry was cured of snapping. He had had quite enough of it for a lifetime, and the catch-contradictions of the household now made him shudder. Polly had not had the benefit of his experiences, and yet she improved also.
In the first place, snapping, like other kinds of quarrelling, requires two parties to it, and Harry would never be a party to snapping any more. And when he gave civil and kind answers to Polly’s smart speeches, she felt ashamed of herself, and did not repeat them.
In the second place, she heard about the Snap-Dragons. Harry told all about it to her and to the hot-tempered gentleman.
“Now do you think it’s true?” Polly asked the hot-tempered gentleman.
“Hum! Ha!” said he, driving his hands through his hair. “You know I warned you, you were going to the Snap-Dragons.”
Harry and Polly snubbed “the little ones” when they snapped, and utterly discountenanced snapping in the nursery. The example and admonitions of elder children are a powerful instrument of nursery discipline, and before long there was not a “sharp tongue” amongst all the little Skratdjs.
But I doubt if the parents ever were cured. I don’t know if they heard the story. Besides, bad habits are not easily cured when one is old.
I fear Mr and Mrs Skratdj have yet got to dance with the Dragons.
Old Father Christmas
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Chapter 1
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“Can you fancy, young people,” said Godfather Garbel, winking with his prominent eyes, and moving his feet backwards and forwards in his square shoes, so that you could hear the squeak-leather half a room off—“can you fancy my having been a very little boy, and having a godmother? But I had, and she sent me presents on my birthdays too. And young people did not get presents when I was a child as they get them now. Grumph! We had not half so many toys as you have, but we kept them twice as long. I think we were fonder of them too, though they were neither so handsome, nor so expensive as these new-fangled affairs you are always breaking about the house. Grumph!
“You see, middle-class folk were more saving then. My mother turned and dyed her dresses, and when she had done with them, the servant was very glad to have them; but, bless me! your mother’s maids dress so much finer than their mistress, I do not think they would say ‘thank you’ for her best Sunday silk. The bustle’s the wrong shape. Grumph!
“What’s that you are laughing at, little miss? It’s pannier, is it? Well, well, bustle or pannier, call it what you like; but only donkeys wore panniers in my young days, and many’s the ride I’ve had in them.
“Now as I say, my relations and friends thought twice before they pulled out five shillings in a toy-shop, but they didn’t forget me, all the same.
“On my eighth birthday my mother gave me a bright blue comforter of her own knitting.
“My little sister gave me a ball. My mother had cut out the divisions from various bits in the rag bag, and my sister had done some of the seaming. It was stuffed with bran, and had a cork inside which had broken from old age, and could no longer fit the pickle jar it belonged to. This made the ball bound when we played ‘prisoner’s base.’
“My father gave me the broken driving-whip that had lost the lash, and an old pair of his gloves, to play coachman with; these I had long wished for, since next to sailing in a ship, in my ideas, came the honour and glory of driving a coach.
“My whole soul, I must tell you, was set upon being a sailor. In those days I had rather put to sea once on Farmer Fodder’s duck-pond than ride twice atop of his hay-waggon; and between the smell of hay and the softness of it, and the height you are up above other folk, and the danger of tumbling off if you don’t look out—for hay is elastic as well as soft—you don’t easily beat a ride on a hay-waggon for pleasure. But as I say, I’d rather put to sea on the duck-pond, though the best craft I could borrow was the pigsty-door, and a pole to punt with, and the village boys jeering when I got aground, which was most of the time—besides the duck-pond never having a wave on it worth the name, punt as you would, and so shallow you could not have got drowned in it to save your life.
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