he was running up stairs, just as he passed the door of the sand-box, he
heard a faint piping. He thought it was some young chicken that had strayed
there, and was raising cries of distress; but it was the General’s little
daughter, decked out in lace and finery.
“Don’t tell papa and mamma,” she whimpered; “they would be angry.”
“What’s the matter, little missie?” asked George.
“It’s all on fire!” she answered. “It’s burning with a bright flame!”
George hurried up stairs to the General’s apartments; he opened the door of
the nursery. The window curtain was almost entirely burnt, and the wooden
curtain-pole was one mass of flame. George sprang upon a chair he brought
in haste, and pulled down the burning articles; he then alarmed the people.
But for him, the house would have been burned down.
The General and his lady cross-questioned little Emily.
“I only took just one lucifer-match,” she said, “and it was burning
directly, and the curtain was burning too. I spat at it, to put it out; I spat at it
as much as ever I could, but I could not put it out; so I ran away and hid
myself, for papa and mamma would be angry.”
“I spat!” cried the General’s lady; “what an expression! Did you ever hear
your papa and mamma talk about spitting? You must have got that from
down stairs!”
And George had a penny given him. But this penny did not go to the
baker’s shop, but into the savings-box; and soon there were so many
pennies in the savings-box that he could buy a paint-box and color the
drawings he made, and he had a great number of drawings. They seemed to
shoot out of his pencil and out of his fingers’ ends. His first colored pictures
he presented to Emily.
“Charming!” said the General, and even the General’s lady acknowledged
that it was easy to see what the boy had meant to draw. “He has genius.”
Those were the words that were carried down into the cellar.
