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The door developed a most obstreperous and noxious habit of being blown into the middle of the house during the night, with much hideous clatter and clamour. We stopped that at last by nailing it up altogether, and making a new entrance through the side of the chimney-place. Then, each particular board in the sides of the shanty has somehow warped itself out of place.
A heavy chair was standing directly in front of it, but curiously enough, with its back to what must have been once a cheery blaze. They moved around it carefully and bent to examine the pretty Delft tiles that framed the yawning chimney-place, below the mantel. Then Joyce stepped back to look at the plates and vases on the mantel. Suddenly she gave a little cry: "Hello! That's queer!
In that weird, blended light the face of the sick girl shone like a fading star. Lynde was conscious of no other presence, though Mrs. Denham and Dr. Pendegrast with a third person were standing near the chimney-place.
At these terrible words the Slavonian and the other who were sleeping on the floor clambered up into the chimney-place, the host disappeared into the cellar, banging the door after him, while the servant hid herself under the bench; then the robber stepped up to the table and extinguished both candles with his hat, so that there remained no light on the table save that of the burning spirit.
Nevertheless, just for the joy of the eyes and, through the eyes, of the depressed spirit, she was glad to-day of the big fire dancing and crackling in Aurora's chimney-place.
Her trusting, insistent affection made her a clog upon him, and he grew impatient of it. Ah, little Sister! he learned its value one day. The great wood fire was all aflare in the deep chimney-place. Savory odors came from the gridiron and the skillet and the hoe, on the live coals drawn out on the broad hearth.
"I am not moneyless," he exclaims "not I!" and he staggers to the great chimney-place, rebounding to the floor, saying, "Take that-bring her in-quench my burning thirst!" Tom is the only surviving, and now the outcast, member of a somewhat respectable family, that has moved in the better walks of society.
Its level is necessarily sunk a little below that of the shanty floor, which is raised on the piles, so the edge of the flooring forms a bench to sit on in front of the fire. The fire used simply to be built up on the stones, in the middle of this chimney-place; but, after a year or two, we imported an American stove, with its useful appliances, from Auckland.
"You you're joking." There was a crack in Pell's voice. "Joking?" "You must be!" huskily. "I thought so all along now I'm sure of it." The bandit faced him, and threw his cigarette over his shoulder in the chimney-place. "Do I look like a joker?" "You sit there, like that, and talk of killing me in cold blood?" Lopez took him in through half-closed lids. "I do not like you. Nobody like you.
Such as it is, our library is more than every establishment like ours can boast of. There is precious little time for reading or writing in the bush. The smaller half of the shanty, divided from the rest and from the chimney-place by the incomplete partition already spoken of, is termed by us the dairy.
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