There was another voyage, rich in its promise of ultimate rewards,
but so perilous that it would only be undertaken under escort.
That was to the housekeeper's room through a maze of basement
passages. On the road two fiercely-gleaming roaring pits of fire
had to be encountered. Grown-ups said this was the furnace that
heated the house, but the little boy had his own ideas on the
subject. Every Sunday his nurse used to read to him out of a
little devotional book, much in vogue in the "sixties," called The
Peep of Day, a book with the most terrifying pictures. One Sunday
evening, so it is said, the little boy's mother came into the
nursery to find him listening in rapt attention to what his nurse
was reading him.
"Emery is reading to me out of a good book," explained the small
boy quite superfluously.
"And do you like it, dear?"
"Very much indeed."
"What is Emery reading to you about? Is it about Heaven?"
"No, it's about 'ell," gleefully responded the little boy, who had
not yet found all his "h's."
Those glowing furnace-bars; those roaring flames .
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