We do not like dear Father to be called bad-tempered. He comes home
cross sometimes, and then we have to be very quiet, and keep out of
the way; and sometimes he goes out rather cross, but not always. It
was what Chris said about that that pleased Lady Catherine so much.
It was one day when Father came home cross, and was very much vexed to
find us playing about the house. Arthur had got a new Adventure Book,
and he had been reading to us about the West Coast of Africa, and
niggers, and tom-toms, and "going Fantee;" and James gave him a lot of
old corks out of the pantry, and let him burn them in a candle. It
rained, and we could not go out; so we all blacked our faces with
burnt cork, and played at the West Coast in one of the back passages,
and at James being the captain of a slave ship, because he tried to
catch us when we beat the tom-toms too near him when he was cleaning
the plate, to make him give us rouge and whitening to tattoo with.
Dear Father came home rather earlier than we expected, and rather
cross. Chris did not hear the front door, because his ears were
pinched up with tying curtain rings on to them, and just at that
minute he shouted, "I go Fantee!" and tore his pinafore right up the
middle, and burst into the front hall with it hanging in two pieces by
the armholes, his eyes shut, and a good grab of James's rouge-powder
smudged on his nose, yelling and playing the tom-tom on what is left
of Arthur's drum.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25