Twelve Days
by Charles Lacey
Chapter 2
Saturday 14th December
In the morning, we found out that Papa had arranged a great treat for us. We were to go to the Pantomime at Drury Lane. I am sure you can understand that the day went by very slowly as we anticipated this tremendous event. But eventually the time came to go. We were all wrapped up warmly by Mamma, for it was frosty weather. We wore our heaviest overcoats, with woollen gloves and a long woollen comforter around our necks, together with those furred travelling caps which have a flap over each ear. I told David his made him look like a little furry bear, at which he retorted that I looked like a cross between a Dachshund and an elf. But we were much too excited about the prospect of the pantomime to quarrel. Not that we would have quarrelled, in any case; we just enjoyed scoring points off one another.
The Pantomime was a tremendous success. Mr Dan Leno took the hilarious lead as the Widow Twankey, with Mr Herbert Campbell as Abanazar and Miss Ada Blanche as Aladdin playing alongside them. Of course we all joined heartily in the songs, cheered the heroes and hissed the villains. We left the theatre in a state of high excitement, preparing ourselves for a brisk walk back to Enmore Gardens. I think Papa's idea was that the walk would tire us out so that we would not be chattering all night long!
As we walked along, striding out briskly to keep warm, we passed a boy with a tray hanging from his neck, selling matches. He looked to be about the same age as me – that is, fourteen – but painfully thin.
"Papa," I said quickly, "can we not give that boy something?"
Papa cuffed the side of my head – very gently – and paused, feeling in his pocket. The boy had a very small stock of matches on his tray; I could not see how he was going to make even enough money for a single meal. But of course his trade in matches was only a cover for begging, so that he would not be taken up as a vagrant. Papa gave him a penny, and David and I each gave him a halfpenny. Or so I thought. With my woollen gloves on, I could not feel the coins properly, and in the dim gas lighting I could not see them. As it turned out, I had given him a shilling. When I saw the brilliant smile that lit up his face, and realised my mistake, I could not bear to take it back and give him the halfpenny instead. So we walked on, discussing the production that we had seen, and came presently home. A cup of hot fruit punch and a biscuit awaited us, and then to bed, to dream, no doubt, of Aladdin and the wonderful Slave of the Lamp. Though I don't remember that.
Authors deserve your feedback. It's the only payment they get. If you go to the top of the page you will find the author's name. Click that and you can email the author easily.* Please take a few moments, if you liked the story, to say so.
[For those who use webmail, or whose regular email client opens when they want to use webmail instead: Please right click the author's name. A menu will open in which you can copy the email address (it goes directly to your clipboard without having the courtesy of mentioning that to you) to paste into your webmail system (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc). Each browser is subtly different, each Webmail system is different, or we'd give fuller instructions here. We trust you to know how to use your own system. Note: If the email address pastes or arrives with %40 in the middle, replace that weird set of characters with an @ sign.]
* Some browsers may require a right click instead
