And he can't come down the chimney--at
least, he can't get out of the fireplace."
"Why not?" asked Roderick, who was busy with an "all-day sucker" and
not inclined to take a gloomy view of anything.
"Goosey!" cried Ernest, in great disdain. "I'll show you!" and he led
Roderick, with his sucker, right into the best parlour, where the
fireplace was, and showed him an awful thing.
Of course, to the ordinary observer, there was nothing awful about the
fireplace. Everything in the way of bric-a-brac possessed by the Santa
Maria flatters was artistic. It may have been in the Lease that only
people with esthetic tastes were to be admitted to the apartments.
However that may be, the fireplace, with its vases and pictures and
trinkets, was something quite wonderful. Indian incense burned in a
mysterious little dish, pictures of purple ladies were hung in odd
corners, calendars in letters nobody could read, served to decorate, if
not to educate, and glass vases of strange colours and extraordinary
shapes stood about filled with roses. None of these things were awful.
At least no one would have dared say they were. But what was awful was
the formation of the grate. It was not a hospitable place with
andirons, where noble logs of wood could be laid for the burning, nor
did it have a generous iron basket where honest anthracite could glow
away into the nights.
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