The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice

By E. V. LUCAS

LONDON: GRANT RICHARDS 1900

First printed October 1897 Reprinted December 1897 " August 1899 " December 1900

CONTENTS

The Flamp I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI

The Ameliorator

I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X

The Schoolboy's Apprentice

The Dumpy Books for Children.

The Flamp

TO MOLLY AND HILDA.

Once upon a time there dwelt in a far country two children, a sister and a brother, named Tilsa and Tobene. Tilsa was twelve and Tobene was ten, and they had grown up, as it were, hand in hand. Their father died when Tobene was only a little piece of pink dimpled dough, and when their mother died too, a few years after, old Alison was told to pack up the things and journey with Tilsa and Tobene to the children's grandfather, the Liglid (or Lord Mayor) of Ule, whom they had never yet seen.

Old Alison was their nurse, and she had been their father's nurse before them. Nothing worth knowing was unknown to old Alison: she could tell them where the fairies danced by night, and the names and habits of the different people who live in the stars, and the reason why thrushes' eggs have black spots and hedge sparrows' none, and how to make Toffee of Paradise, and a thousand useful and wonderful things beside.

Alison was old and wrinkled and bent, but there was not a warmer heart in all the world, and no tongue could say kinder words than hers, and no hands minister so lovingly to those who needed help. It was said that Alison had only to look at a sore place and it was healed again. If any one loved her more than Tilsa it was Tobene; and if any one loved her more than Tobene it was Tilsa; and old Alison's love for them was as strong.

On the day appointed, the three travellers set forth in a chariot driven by postilions, and in the course of a week's journeying through strange countries came at last to Ule.

At the southern gate they were met by the Liglid. They discovered him to be more than a mere person—a Personage!—with white hair, and little beady eyes, and a red nose, and a gold-laced hat.

'Welcome,' said he, 'welcome, Tilsa and Tobene, to the city or Ule.' And then he kissed the air an inch or two from the cheek of his grandchildren and led the way to his house.

II

Ule was a little city in the midst of a wide plain, and round about it was a stout wall. One straight, white road crossed the plain from end to end, entering the city at the northern gate and leaving it by the southern gate. The borders of the plain were blue mountains whose peaks reached the sky, and among these peaks the sun made his bed. At least, so said the good people of Ule.

Nothing could shake their faith, for did they not every morning see him rise from the eastern peaks, fresh and ready for the day's work of warming the air of Ule, and encouraging the trees of Ule to bear fruit and the buds of Ule to spread into flowers? And every evening did they not see him, tired and faint, sink to rest amid the western peaks? The rare strangers who came now and then to the city and heard this story, were apt to smile unbelievingly and ask laughingly how, after laying his head among the pillows on the western side of the plain, the sun was able to wake up on the opposite side, many miles distant?

But this question presented no difficulty to the good people of Ule. 'Why,' they would reply a little irritably, for they liked to think that the sun was theirs and theirs only, 'surely the sun can walk in his sleep as well—nay, better—than ordinary folk? A baby could see that!' they would add with a laugh.

So it was settled that the sun spent all his time in the neighbourhood of Ule. If the citizens had ever travelled away from their native part, perhaps they would have thought otherwise; but they rarely, or never, did.

'What!' they would say, in pained astonishment, 'leave Ule! Why?'

'To see the world,' the rash stranger who had made the suggestion might reply.

'The world? This is the world,' would be the answer.

And they really believed that it was. The knowledge that thousands of other places, no whit less happy than themselves, or even more happy, were in existence would have made the Ulians quite bad-tempered. And beyond doubt they were in need of no other cause to excite their anger, for had they not the Flamp?

III

The Flamp was a monster who dwelt in a cave somewhere in the mountains that surrounded the plain. Once every year, on Christmas night, the Flamp came into the city and threw the population into a frenzy of terror. That on this night of the year, a night set apart for joyfulness and festivity, the Loathly Beast (for so he was called by orators in the City Council when they had used the word Flamp often enough) should invade their city, seeking his prey, seemed to the Ulians an act of the grossest cruelty and injustice. Almost as soon as darkness had fallen on Christmas Day, the noises in the city would cease, and the house-holders and their families would sit within barred doors, with uplifted fingers, holding their breath, and listening, listening. Then in the far distance flob! flob! faint, FLOB!! FLOB!! less faint, FLOB!!! FLOB!!! less faint, every moment louder, coming nearer and nearer, until the earth shook, and the Flamp's flobbing, flamping feet filled the air with deafening thuds.

All keys were turned, all bolts were drawn, all blinds were down, by the time he entered the city. Not a light was visible. The Flamp was heard sniffing at this door, fumbling at the handle of that, knocking at another, while the shuff! shuff! of his sides against the walls was quite audible. Now and then he would sit down in the road and sigh deeply, and the trembling listeners near by could hear the splashing of his tears on the stones.