CHAPTER IV

THE BIG HOUSE OF PORTENTS

In this big white house the little boys had been born again to a life that
was all strange. Novel was the outer house with its high portico and
fluted pillars, its vast areas of white wall set with shutters of
relentless green; its stout, red chimneys; its surprises of gabled window;
its big front door with the polished brass knocker and the fan-light
above. Quite as novel was the inner house, and quite as novel was this new
life to its very center.

For one thing, while the joy of living had hitherto been all but flawless
for the little boys, the disadvantages of being dead were now brought
daily to their notice. In morning and evening prayer, in formal homily,
informal caution, spontaneous warning, in the sermon at church, and the
lesson of the Sabbath-school, was their excessive liability to divine
wrath impressed upon them "when the memory is wax to receive and marble
to retain."

Within the home Clytie proved to be an able coadjutor of the old man, who
was, indeed, constrained and awkward in the presence of the younger child,
and perhaps a thought too severe with the elder. But Clytie, who had said
"I'll make my own of them," was tireless and not without ingenuity in
opening the way of life to their little feet.

Allan, the elder, gifted with a distinct talent for memorising, she taught
many instructive bits chosen from the scrap-book in which her literary
treasures were preserved. His rendition of a passage from one of Mr.
Spurgeon's sermons became so impressive under her drilling that the aroma
of his lost youth stole back to the nostrils of the old man while he
listened.

"There is a place," the boy would declaim loweringly, and with fitting
gesture, with hypnotic eye fastened on the cowering Bernal, "where the
only music is the symphony of damned souls. Where howling, groaning,
moaning, and gnashing of teeth make up the horrible concert. There is a
place where demons fly swift as air, with whips of knotted burning wire,
torturing poor souls; where tongues on fire with agony burn the roofs of
mouths that shriek in vain for drops of water--that water all denied. When
thou diest, O Sinner--"

But at this point the smaller boy usually became restless and would have
to go to the kitchen for a drink of water. Always he became thirsty here.
And he would linger over his drink till Clytie called him back to admire
his brother in the closing periods.

--"but at the resu