wisted, and after a time
it acquired the habit of suddenly, and with an unpleasant oscillatory
laughing noise, opening of its own accord and proclaiming its horrid
secret to Euphemia's best visitors. An air of wickedness, at once
precocious and senile, came upon it; it gaped and leered at Euphemia as
the partner of her secret with such a familiar air of "I and you" that
she could stand it no longer, and this depraved piece of furniture was
banished at last from her presence, and relegated to its proper sphere
of sham gentility below stairs, where it easily passed itself upon the
cook as an exquisite. Euphemia tried to be sensible then, and
determined, since she must have coal in her room, to let no false
modesty intervene, but to openly proclaim its presence to all the world.

The next thing, therefore, was a cylinder of brass, broadly open above,
saying to the world, as it were, "Look! I contain coal." And there were
brass tongs like sugar tongs wherewith Euphemia would regale the fire
and brighten it up, handing it a lump at a time in the prettiest way.
But brass dints. The brazen thing was quiet and respectable enough
upstairs, but ever and again it went away to be filled. What happened on
these holiday jaunts Euphemia has never ascertained. But a chance blow
or worse cause ran a crease athwart the forehead of the thing, and
below an almost imperceptible bulging hinted at a future corpulency. And
there was complaint of the quantity of polishing it needed, and an
increasing difficulty in keeping it bright. And except when it was full
to the brim, the lining was unsightly; and this became more so. One day
Ithuriel must have visited Euphemia's apartment, and the tarnished
brilliancy of the thing stood confessed. For some days there was an
interregnum, and a coal-scuttle from downstairs--a black unstable thing
on flat foot and with a vast foolish nether lip--did its duty with
inelegant faithfulness.

Then Euphemia had a really pretty fancy. She procured one of those big
open garden baskets and painted it a pleasant brown, and instead of a
garden fork she had a little half horticultural scoop. In this basket
she kept her coals, and she tied a pink ribbon on the handle. One might
fancy she had been in some dewy garden and had dug a few coals as one
might dig up bulbs, and brought them in and put them down. It attracted
attention from all her visitors, and set a kind of fashion in the
neighbourhood. For a time Euphemia was