There
were hundreds of very fat, furry spiders who crawled about solemnly and
fell with heavy bodies down swift silken threads as Marcella opened the
door of the bedroom.
For the next few days they certainly did not earn their wages. They were
like two children with a new doll's house, and at the end of the week
the hut was unrecognizable. Louis, unskilfully busy with saw, hammer and
nails put up a shelf for the box of books they were going to get from
Mrs. King's as soon as someone went into Cook's Well to take a letter.
Marcella wished a little that she had some money to buy things for her
house, but it was the sort of wish she found it easy to conquer and
when, in a spirit of mischief she took the tar brush with which Louis
had been caulking the sides of the hut, and tarred CASTLE LASHCAIRN on
the corrugated roof, she _saw_ Castle Lashcairn rising there.
"After all, imaginary castles are the best," she told Louis after two
days spent in clearing away dust and spiders, and limewashing the
interior. "It only needs imaginary cleaning."
He was surveying his new white shelf on which the matronly Mrs. Beeton
seemed to incline towards the sober black New Testament and give a cold
shoulder to the lean-looking "Questing Cells" and the slim "Parsifal."
He had made and patented a very wonderful reflector for their little
lamp by cutting and bending a kerosene tin in such a way that it
mirrored six times the light inside.
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