The
men jumped to their feet and balanced themselves, and looked half wild,
half stupid. The women sat, and began to scream: for they had heard a
word that has terrors for us all: peculiar terrors for them.
This alarm was due to a personage hitherto undervalued in the
establishment.
Mr. Francis Beverley had been THINKING. So now, finding all the patients
boxed up, and their attendants romping in the drawing-room, he lighted
seven fires, skilfully on the whole, for practice makes perfect; but,
singular oversight, he omitted one essential ingredient in the fire, and
that was the grate.
To be plain, Mr. Francis made seven bonfires of bed-curtains, chairs, and
other combustibles in the servants' garrets, lighted them
contemporaneously, and retired to the basement, convinced he had taken
the surest means to deliver his friend out of Drayton House: and with a
certain want of candour that characterises the weak, proceeded to black
his other bad master's shoes with singular assiduity.
There was no wind to blow the flame; but it was a clear frost; and soon
fiery tongues shot out of three garret-windows into the night, and lurid
gleams burnished four more, and the old house was burning merrily
overhead, and ringing with hilarity on the first floor.
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