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Fortunately, the wind carried the flame and sparks away from the tavern and barns, or the whole establishment might have burned down. The crackling was terrific; the firs as well as the witches' brooms burned. Great gusts of flame and vapor rose, writhing and twisting in the wind. Any one might have imagined them to be witches of the olden time, riding wildly away up toward the half-obscured moon!
There was a battalion of Red Indians, Negroes, Esquimaux, Ballet Girls, Angels, Sweeps, Romans, Sailors, Pierrots, Savages, Bogeymen, Ancient Britons, Bishops, Zulus, Pantaloons, Beef-eaters, Tramps, Life-Guards, Washerwomen, Ghosts, Clowns and God-knows-what, armed with jezails, umbrellas, brooms, catapults, pikes, brickbats, kukeries, pokers, clubs, axes, horse-pistols, bottles, dead fowls, polo-sticks, assegais and bombs.
At a given signal the different columns advanced to the assault; the night was tolerably clear, and the enemy evidently expected us; for, as soon as we turned the corner of the convent-wall, the space between us and the breach became one blaze of light with their fire-balls, which, while they lighted us on to glory, lightened not a few of their lives and limbs; for the whole glacis was in consequence swept by a well directed fire of grape and musketry, and they are the devil's own brooms; but our gallant fellows walked through it, to the point of attack, with the most determined steadiness, excepting the Portuguese sack-bearers, most of whom lay down behind their bags, to wait the result, while the few that were thrown into the ditch looked so like dead bodies, that, when I leapt into it, I tried to avoid them.
The water is not so deep as we thought it was, and you can walk out to the point where the roof comes down on to the water without getting out of your depth." It did not take them long to cut a number of switches to serve as brooms, and a couple of handles. They carried them up into the house, and lashed the switches firmly on to the handles.
And outside, ahead of them, the lean, gaunt willows, around whose very trunks the hard paving had been laid, shot up into the black sky like witches' brooms that the wind was combing out. Bright, cheerful lights glowed in every cottage window. In some it was only the light of a fire that leaped a ruddy dance on the whitewashed walls, and caught reflections in the lintels of the windows.
"'Though heart of oak be ne'er so stout, Keep me dry and I'll see him out. "The poplar has been highly praised, for every part of this tree answers some good purpose. The bark, being light, like cork, serves to support the nets of fishermen; the inner bark is used by the Kamschadales as a material for bread; brooms are made from the twigs, and paper from the cottony down of the seeds.
Towards evening, the flocks were fed, the stables were cleansed and sprinkled with water with laurel brooms, and laurel boughs were hung about them as adornments. Sulphur, incense, rosemary, and fir-wood were burned, and the smoke made to pass through the stalls to purify them, and even the flocks themselves were submitted to the same cleansing fumes.
"All their brooms seem to be new," I reflected. "I wonder what the stepson is like?" "Luckily it doesn't matter much to me," said the chauffeur indifferently. "Nor to me. But his name's Herbert." "His surname?" "I don't know. There's a Herbert lurking somewhere. It always suggests to me oily hair parted in the middle and smeared down on each side of a low, narrow forehead.
One or two of the committee of arrangements scurried around until they secured brooms, but by this time the mice had hidden in corners, whence they scurried out occasionally, to the great fright of the girls. The dance had come to a sudden end, for the girls, even after comparative quiet was restored, refused to venture on the floor. Even Alice, who was braver than most girls, stayed in a corner.
Safe and closets and desk and doors, I tried them all. Coming at last to the bathroom, it opened at once. It was the housemaid's doing. She had evidently taken advantage of my having abandoned the room to give it "a thorough spring cleaning," and I anathematized her. The furniture was all piled together and veiled with sheets, the carpet and felt curtain were gone, there were new brooms about.
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