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In his mind stood a pile of fir-cones, and dried sticks, and old olive wood, which the merest touch of experience would set in a blaze of practical conclusion. But the workhouse was so near that his reflections before he reached it amounted only to this that there are worse places than a prison when you have done nothing to deserve being put in it. A palace may be one of them.
This, of course, was not discovered at first, and the honour and glory of obtaining the specimen was considerable, if only there had been some one to take it. Rawson-Clew did not consider himself the person. Julia was collecting fir-cones.
As I passed the boy's room Guy called out to me: "Halloa! Uncle Phineas, is it a fine morning? for I want to go down into the wood and get a lot of beech-nuts and fir-cones for sister. It's her birthday to-day, you know." It WAS, for her. But for us Oh, Muriel, our darling darling child! Let me hasten over the story of that morning, for my old heart quails before it still.
Their tops are evergreen and laden with the heavy cones, from which Ravenna draws considerable wealth. Scores of peasants are quartered on the outskirts of the forest, whose business it is to scale the pines and rob them of their fruit at certain seasons of the year. Afterwards they dry the fir-cones in the sun, until the nuts which they contain fall out.
At last, however, all was done, and Julia began to arrange for to-morrow. The Captain was sulky and sure that he would have rheumatism and so not be able to go out. His daughter did not seem to be greatly troubled; she told him of some easy work in the house he could do, or if he liked and felt able, he would perhaps go and get more fir-cones; there were plenty, and they saved other fuel.
It is the triumph of landscape gardening, and never more beautiful than in this autumn sunset, lighting up the ruddy beech and the spotted sycamore, and gilding the shining fir-cones that hang so thickly amongst the dark pines. The robins are singing around us, as if they too felt the magic of the hour.
The chief that should be found in the cupboards, round the walls, or scattered about the room, are bricks of all sizes and shapes, skittles, balls and bats or rackets, hoops, reins, spades and other garden tools; pails and patty pans for the sand-heap; pipes for bubbles, shells, fir-cones, buttons, acorns, and any collection of small articles for handling; all kinds of vehicles that can be pushed, such as carts, barrows, prams, engines; drums and other musical instruments; materials for construction and expression, such as chalks, boards, paints and paper.
"I was not waiting," she said indignantly, "I was picking fir-cones for the schoolroom fire " "Fir-cones, my dear, do not grow on cedars, and schoolroom fires were not made in June in my young days." "And anyhow it isn't the same cedar." "It has made me fond of all cedars for its sake," he answered, "and it reminds me that you are the same young girl still "
In all of these 'pineapple' is rendered as though it signified not the anana, but this cone of the pine; and not very long ago, the Journal des Debats made some uncomplimentary observations on the voracity of the English, who could wind up a Lord Mayor's banquet with fir-cones for dessert.
There was the rough wooden block on which Alan used to sit while he first frightened us with bogey-stories, and then calmed our excited nerves by rapid sallies of wild nonsense. There was the plank from behind which, erected as a barrier across the doorway, he would defend the castle against our united assault, pelting us with fir-cones and sods of earth.
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