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Updated: May 1, 2025
Or was it that grown-up people could tell lies and children mustn't?... He tumbled into the warm, lighted nursery half asleep. There was Hamlet watching in front of the Jampot's sewing machine. He would have things to think about for years and years and years... There was the Jampot. "I'm sorry I called you a beastly woman," he said. She sniffed. "Well, I hope you'll be a good boy now," she said.
We could see his lips move, and concluded he was saying something to imaginary persons, for he would put a jampot on his tray, and pour into it from the bottle, and then replace it. Sometimes he would go quickly to his bed, which we saw represented the dinner-wagon, or sideboard, and bring imaginary dishes from there and hand them.
In his shirt and his short blue trousers, his hair on end, tugging at his braces, he stood in the doorway and shouted: "Helen, there are sausages because it's my birthday. Aren't you glad?" And even when the only response to his joyous invitation was Helen's voice crossly admonishing the Jampot: "Oh, you do pull so; you're hurting!" his charity was not checked.
That he should go to Footing's, which was on the farther side of the town, alone and unattended, seemed to no one peculiar; and yet, only six months ago, a walk without Miss Jones was undreamt of; and, before her, no more than nine months back, there was the Jampot! He was delighted to go; but, of course, he did not show his delight. All he said was: "Yes, Mother."
The silence deepened, the last light flamed on the river and died upon the hill. "Now, children, come along do," said the Jampot who had been held in spite of herself, and would pay for it, she knew, in rheumatism to-morrow. It was then that Jeremy's God-flung sense of power, born from that moment early in the day when he had sat in the wicker chair, reached its climax.
He had met one of them once at a Children's Dance, and she had whirled him around until, with a terrified scream, he broke, howling, from her arms, and hid himself in the large bosom of the Jampot.
"We saw him from the window," said Jeremy quickly, "and he was shivering like anything, so we called him in to warm him." "My dear Alice, you surely don't mean " began Aunt Amy, and the Jampot said: "I really think, Mum-," and Mr. Jellybrand, in his rich voice, murmured: "Is it quite wise, dear Mrs. Cole, do you think?" With thoughts of Miss Maple she smiled upon them all.
His beard afforded him the air of an ambassador, and his grave, melancholy eyes the absorbed introspection of a Spanish hidalgo; his tail, however, in its upright, stumpy jocularity, betrayed his dignity. "There he is," said Jeremy, with a glance half of terror, half of delight, at the Jampot. "Isn't he lovely?" "Lovely. My word!" Uncle Samuel's smile broadened.
She stayed for a little arranging the things on the breakfast-table then suddenly, without a word, she turned into Jeremy's bedchamber. His heart began to hammer. There was an awful pause; he heard from miles away Mary's voice: "Do do that button, Helen, I can't get it!" and Helen's "Oh, bother!" Then, like Judgment, the Jampot appeared again. She stood in the doorway, looking across at him.
It was not until the word was spoken that he realised that he had not. He flushed. The Jampot eyed him with a sudden sharp suspicion. He was then and ever afterwards a very bad hand at a lie... He would have taken the word back, he wanted to take it back but something held him as though a stronger than he had placed his hand over his mouth. His face flamed. "You've truly cleaned them?" she said.
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