Chapter XII

It is the practice of Providence often to ignore the claims of poetic justice. Properly, the Symford children ought to have been choked by Priscilla's cakes; and if they had been, the parents who had sent them merrymaking on a Sunday would have been well punished by the undeniable awfulness of possessing choked children. But nobody was choked; and when in the early days of the following week there were in nearly every cottage pangs being assuaged, they were so naturally the consequence of the strange things that had been eaten that only Mrs. Morrison was able to see in them weapons being wielded by Providence in the cause of eternal right. She, however, saw it so plainly that each time during the next few days that a worried mother came and asked advice, she left her work or her meals without a murmur, and went to the castor-oil cupboard with an alacrity that was almost cheerful; and seldom, I suppose, have such big doses been supplied and administered as the ones she prescribed for suffering Symford.

But on this dark side of the picture I do not care to look; the party, anyhow, had been a great success, and Priscilla became at one stroke as popular among the poor of Symford as she had been in Lothen-Kunitz. Its success it is true was chiefly owing to the immense variety of things to eat she had provided; for the conjuror, merry-go-round, and cocoa-nuts to be shied at that she had told young Vickerton to bring with him from Minehead, had all been abandoned on Tussie's earnest advice, who instructed her innocent German mind that these amusements, undoubtedly admirable in themselves and on week days, were looked upon askance in England on Sundays.

"Why?" asked Priscilla, in great surprise.

"It's not keeping the day holy," said Tussie, blushing.

"How funny," said Priscilla.

"Oh, I don't know."

"Why," said Priscilla, "in Kun--" but she pulled herself up just as she was about to give him a description of the varied nature of Sunday afternoons in Kunitz.

"You must have noticed," said Tussie, "as you have lived so long in London, that everything's shut on Sundays. There are no theatres and things--certainly no cocoa-nuts."

"No, I don't remember any cocoa-nuts," mused Priscilla, her memory going over those past Sundays she had spent in England.

Tussie tried to make amends for having obstructed her plans by exerting himself to the utmost to entertain the children as far as decorum allowed. He encouraged them to sing, he who felt every ugliness in sound like a blow; he urged them to recite for prizes of sixpences, he on whose soul Casabianca and Excelsior had much the effect of scourges on a tender skin; he led them out into a field between tea and supper and made them run races, himself setting the example, he who caught cold so easily that he knew it probably meant a