Page:Christopher Morley--Where the blue begins.djvu/221

Rh {|
 * “An aunbile!” ||rowspan=3|exclaimed|| rowspan=3| ||Groups
 * “An elphunt!” ||Bunks
 * “A little train with hammers!” ||Yelpers
 * }
 * “A little train with hammers!” ||Yelpers
 * }
 * }
 * }

“A little train with hammers?” asked Gissing. “What does he mean?”

“Oh,” said Groups and Bunks, with condescending pity, “he means a typewriter. He calls it a little train because it moves on a track when you hit it.”

A painful apprehension seized him, and he went hastily to his study. He had not noticed the typewriter, which Mrs. Spaniel had—too late—put out of reach. Half the keys were sticking upright, jammed together and tangled in a whirl of ribbon; the carriage was strangely dislocated. And yet even this mischance, which would once have horrified him, left him unperturbed. It's my own fault, he thought: I shouldn't have left it where they could play with it. Perhaps God thinks the same when His creatures make a mess of the dangerous laws of life.

“A Christmas story!” the children were clamouring.

Can it really be Christmas Eve? Gissing