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The woman screamed, and struck at it with the fire-tongs; the children tumbled over one another in their efforts to catch the Duckling; and they laughed and they screamed! well it was that the door stood open, and the poor creature was able to slip out between the shrubs into the newly-fallen snow there it lay quite exhausted.
"Cooks, men and women, have the happiest lot of all serving mortals!" thought I, as, with a secret desire to play that fire- tending game, I contemplated the well-fed dame, amid iron pots and stewpans, standing there like an empress in the glory of the firelight, and with the fire-tongs sceptre rummaging about majestically in the glowing realm.
Yet, but for her, Arthur Wells would have gone to his grave bearing the stigma of moral cowardice, of suicide. The solution, when it came, was amazing, but remarkably simple. Like most mysteries. I have in my own house, for instance, an example of a great mystery, founded on mere absentmindedness. This is what my wife terms the mystery of the fire-tongs.
He saw the flock of them sailing the Desert like weird grey solemn ships that make no earthly port. And he imagined them as one: multiple expressions of some single unearthly portent they adumbrated in mighty form dead symbols of some spiritual conception long vanished from the world. "I mustn't dream like this," he laughed, "or I shall get absent-minded and pack fire-tongs instead of boots.
"I am not a curious woman," she put in incisively, "but when my husband spends an evening out, and returns minus his overcoat, with his hat mashed, a lump the size of an egg over his ear, and puts a pair of fire-tongs in the umbrella stand under the impression that it is an umbrella, I have a right to ask at least if he intends to continue his life of debauchery." I made a mistake then.
When the procession reached their compartment, E23 was counting his beads with a steady jerk of the wrist; while Kim jeered at him for being so drugged as to have lost the ringed fire-tongs which are the Saddhu's distinguishing mark. The lama, deep in meditation, stared straight before him; and the farmer, glancing furtively, gathered up his belongings.
At the chamber door I met the landlord, armed with the fire-tongs and a light. "What's all this noise about?" he cried in an angry tone. I assured him that I was as ignorant as himself of the cause of the disturbance. Here the singing master again sung out "Landlord! landlord! there's a man under the bed. Cum! somebody cum!"
"Suppose we'll see you tonight?" "Not unless you ring off and let me do some work," I said irritably. He rang off. I was ruffled, I admit; but I was uneasy, also. To tell the truth, the affair of the fire-tongs had cost me my self-confidence. I called up my wife, and she said Herbert was a fool and Sperry also. But she made an exhaustive search of the premises, without result.
It also gave me an opportunity to return the fire-tongs, a proceeding which I had considered would assist in a return of the entente cordiale at home, but which most unjustly appeared to have exactly the opposite effect. It has been my experience that the most innocent action may, under certain circumstances, assume an appearance of extreme guilt.
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