“Be off with yourself, boy!” he would always say if Johnny Blossom but put his nose in at the stable door.

 

Carlstrom was a Swede, with a big black moustache whose ends stuck straight out in the air. He looked exactly like a stylish² colonel to say the least—a very cross colonel though! No, there was no use going to the stable.

 

The cow-barn was under the rule of a Swiss who was almost as cross as Carlstrom. He always said that the cows ought to be sleeping; so Johnny Blossom got the idea that the cows at Kingthorpe never did anything but lie and sleep.

 

Inside the big fine house there couldn’t be any fun either. Only those stately halls and magnificent rooms, one after another, with handsome furniture upholstered in silk damask, with great gold-framed mirrors, but with the shades always drawn³ down. The rooms were so immense that every footstep echoed in them. And oh! how careful one had to be for the sake of that miserable⁴ china that Uncle Isaac had collected so much of. In the cabinets it was no trouble, but when it stood on tiny little tables, Johnny Blossom did not like it at all. He scarcely dared to breathe when he went anywhere near the tables lest he should knock something off. Uncle Isaac had once shown him all the china and explained how old and rare and precious it was.

 

“This cup Marie Antoinette drank from, and this vase belonged to the Bonapartes. This flagon is from an English royal palace of the sixteenth century.”

 

Johnny Blossom stood and stared. For his part he would rather have his own mug at home with “For a Good Boy” upon it than all these fine antiques that so many old mouths had drunk from!

 

Poor Uncle Isaac! He was sick now again—worse, in fact. He had heart disease, Mother said. Jeremias the wood-cutter also talked of a pain in his heart, but since he had begun to rub himself all over with

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