Argosy (UK), January 1955 — page 106: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

104 MARGARET BONHAM ‘““T got enough,” said George recklessly, and he touched the largest bell with his finger and a ghostly sound came from it, and Albert, seeing himself defeated, gave way; he gave way © uneasily, because he was strict about money and disapproved of squandering the carol fund in advance, but he coveted the bells very much. George loaded his string bag again and walked home musically through the dark, in the falling leaves and the smell of bonfires, to the rosy lights of his cottage. In the morning he took the bells to the farm and asked Mr. Copley to leave them with Ferring & Son in the town, with instructions on how they were to be done and inquiries as to cost and importunate messages about doing them quickly. The next day he abstracted his Post-Office book out of the dresser and drew three pounds in a furtive way that made the Post-Office girl look at him sharply, and put the book back behind his toolbox in the cupboard under the stairs, hoping his. wife wouldn’t miss it till Christmas. Albert went into the town with the money three weeks later and fetched the bells. It was by then past mid-December. He brought them round to show George the same evening, but George was out at a darts match, and so Albert, sniffing with faint disapproval, for he was a teetotaller, left them, but had the sense not to leave George’s change as well. George came in after closing time, glowing with beer, victory, and the frosty night. He was furious when his wife would not let him ring the bells and wake the children and the geese and old Mrs. Lovell in the next cottage. * No,” she said, ‘‘ not even one! I should think not, indeed.” She was small and looked fragile, but her hair was reddish and electrically curling, and George sulked but obeyed. He cuta heel of bread and spread it with dripping and amber meat-jelly, and sat on the kitchen chair, chewing resentfully and staring at his row of bells, which he thought of (not unnaturally since he had found them and so far paid for them) as his entirely. Ferring & Son had methods of cleaning that were beyond George’s wife’s capacity, and the metal had now a sheen like a butterfly’s wing. ‘The handles were loops of thick pale leather, undarkened by age and agricultural sweat, and springing erect and resilient. ‘The shape of each bell, engraved with elegant Regency lettering, was as pure and satisfying as twelve perfect notes of music in an ascending scale. George stared, masticated, subsided from anger into a dreamlike contentment; his brain hummed with carols. comicloooks.comn