Algernon Blackwood by A Prisoner in Fairyland Page B

'because I only dried. It was Monkey who washed up.' They
talked French and English all mixed up together.
    But Monkey was too busy looking at the Alps through an old pair of
opera-glasses, relic of her father's London days that served for
telescope, to think reply worth while. Her baptismal names were also
rather wonderful, though neither of her parents could have supplied
them without a moment's reflection first. 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. 'I'll do it, child,' he said kindly, but with
a patience, almost resignation, in his tone suggesting that it was
absurd to expect such a thing of him. 'Then do exactly as you think
best,' he let fall to his wife as he went, referring to the chaos of
expenses she had been discussing with him. 'That'll be all right.' For
his mind had not yet sorted the jumble of peat, oil, boots, school-
books, and the rest. 'We can manage THAT at any rate; you see it's
francs, not shillings,' he added, as Jane Anne pulled him by the
sleeve towards the steaming samovar. He held the strings of an ever
empty purse.
    'Daddy, but you've
always
got a crumb in your beard,' she was
saying, 'and if it isn't a crumb, it's ashes on your coat or a match
on the floor.' She brushed the crumb away. He gave her a kiss. And
between them they nearly upset the old nickel-plated samovar that was
a present from a Tiflis Armenian to whom the mother once taught
English. They looked round anxiously as though afraid of a scolding;
but Mother had not noticed. 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. Somehow his
vocation rendered him immune from that. 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. 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.
    And, meantime, the two younger children, who knew how to amuse each
other for hours together unaided, had left the Magic Horse in its
stables for the night—an enormous snow-drift—and were sitting side
by side upon the sofa conning a number of
Punch
some English aunt
had sent them. The girl read out the jokes, and her brother pointed
with a very dirty finger to the pictures. None of the jokes were
seized by either, but Jimbo announced each one with, 'Oh! I say!' and
their faces were grave and sometimes awed; and when Jimbo asked, 'But
what does THAT mean?' his