Jeremy by Sir Hugh Walpole
page 61 of 322 (18%)
page 61 of 322 (18%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
helped with the boots and the knives, he was always restrained and
courteous. He did indeed growl at Aunt Amy, but always with such a sense of humour that everyone (except Aunt Amy) was charmed, and he never actually supported the children in their rebellions against the Jampot, although you could see that he liked and approved of such things. The Jampot hated him with a passion that caused the nursery to quiver with emotion. Was he not the cause of her approaching departure, his first appearance having led her into a tempest of passion that had caused her to offer a "notice" that she had never for an instant imagined would be accepted? Was he not a devilish dog who, with, his quiet movements and sly expressions, was more than human? "Mark my words," she said in the kitchen, "there's a devil in that there animal, and so they'll find before they're many years older--'Amlet indeed--a 'eathenish name and a 'eathenish beast." Her enemy had discovered that in one corner of the nursery there were signs and symbols that witnessed to something in the nature of a mouse or a rat. That nursery corner became the centre of all his more adventurous instincts. It happened to be just the corner where the Jampot kept her sewing machine, and you would think, if you came to the nursery as a stranger, and saw him sitting, his eyes fixed beamingly upon the machine, his tail erect, and his body here and there quivering a little, that from duties of manly devotion he was protecting the Jampot's property. She knew better; she regarded, in some undefined way, this continued contemplation by him of her possessions as an ironical insult. She did everything possible to drive him from the corner; he inevitably returned, and as he always delicately stepped aside when she approached, it could not be said that he was in her way. Once she struck him; he looked at her in |
|