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Updated: May 28, 2025
"It isn't every boy I would trust," said Mr. Bullfinch. Both Mr. and Mrs. Bullfinch had been to an auction in Georgetown. They had bought a pair of hand-wrought andirons shaped like little lighthouses, but Jerry did not stop to admire them. As soon as he had changed the five-dollar bill he was off like a shot. Mrs. Martin had the electric mixer going but she could scold above the noise.
A couple of logs burned on the brass andirons of the fireplace with an aromatic odor that suggested deep pine woods. Before them a couch was drawn, upon which Joyce nestled lazily amid a nest of pillows. At a table, little withdrawn, Ellen was reading aloud from a late magazine, the rosy light making her look almost young and handsome to-night.
When her breakfast was finished, she turned slowly to the window, and, while her eyes did not refill, a slight twitching of the upper lids made him believe that she was going over the whole scene again in her mind; whereupon he began to move briskly about the room with a busy air, picking up her napkin, dusting a chair with his hand, exchanging the position of the andirons in the fireplace; and, apparently discovering that the por-trait of Georges Meilhac was out of line, he set it awry, then straight again, the while he hummed an old "spiritual" of which only the words "Chain de Lion Down" were allowed to be quite audible.
If there is a flash of a few faggots in the chimney that just scorches one a little, no lady goes near it, but sits at the other end of a high-roofed room, the wind whistling round her ears, and her feet upon a perforated brass box, filled with wood embers, which the cavalier fervente pulls out from time to time, and replenishes with hotter ashes raked out from between the andirons.
Friar John, who lay snug all this while, by that time perceiving the rout and hurlyburly, set open the doors of his sow and sallied out with his merry Greeks, some of them armed with iron spits, others with andirons, racks, fire-shovels, frying-pans, kettles, grid-irons, oven forks, tongs, dripping pans, brooms, iron pots, mortars, pestles, all in battle array, like so many housebreakers, hallooing and roaring out all together most frightfully, Nabuzardan, Nabuzardan, Nabuzardan.
Grace was a little choky and homesick for her mother, now that all the danger was over, but the week of the house party was almost up, so she concealed her impatience to be home again. The softly shaded candles shed a warm glow over their faces, and the logs crackled on the brass andirons. They looked into each others' eyes and smiled sleepily.
The Poker stood erect and stiff, looking grimly ahead of him, as if resolved to meet his fate bravely; the Bellows threw himself flat upon the glacier and panted; while the two Andirons, standing guard on either side of Tom, peered anxiously about for the rescuer of their little guest, nor did they look in vain, for in a few moments the huge figure of a St Bernard appeared below them, rushing with all his might and main to their side.
Our old friends rebelled at this, and asked what they had done to be treated so, and complained so bitterly that gradually we let them into the secret that there was a great south room, which I had taken for my study, where we all sat; where the old carpet was down; where the sun shone in at the great window; where my wife's plants flourished, and the canary-bird sang, and my wife had her sofa in the corner, and the old brass andirons glistened, and the wood fire crackled, in short, a room to which all the household fairies had emigrated.
Many useful things, as a candle-stick, a pair of andirons, a chair, are wrought in the spirit of art; into them goes something of the maker's joy in his work; they become the expression of his emotion: and they are so far beautiful.
Then they turned their attention to pictures, bits of jade and bronze, a few rare pieces of furniture, a wonderful old bronze lamp with a great dragon on a sea of wonderful blue enamel, with a shade that cast an amber light; brass andirons and fender, and a lot of other little things that go to make a lovely home.
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