Page:Lorna Doone - a romance of Exmoor (IA lornadooneromanc691blac).pdf/142

asked, with both hands on his knees (for she had taken to him wonderfully), "Is it meant for girls then, cousin Tom?" But she had better not have asked, for he gave it her to try, and she shut both eyes and sucked at it. One breath however was quite enough, for it made her cough so violently, that Lizzie and I must thump her back until she was almost crying. To atone for that, cousin Tom set to, and told us whole pages of stories, not about his own doings at all; but strangely enough they seemed to concern almost everyone else we had ever heard of. Without halting once for a word or a deed, his tales flowed onward as freely and brightly as the flames of the wood up the chimney, and with no smaller variety. For he spoke with the voices of twenty people, giving each person the proper manner and the proper place to speak from; so that Annie and Lizzie ran all about, and searched the clock and the linen-press. And he changed his face every moment so, and with such power of mimicry, that without so much as a smile of his own, he made even mother laugh so that she broke her new tenpenny waistband; and as for us children we rolled on the floor, and Betty Muxworthy roared in the wash-up.