There
was too a grim picture of the Guards at Inkerman fighting in their
greatcoats with clubbed muskets against thousands of sinister dark green
Russians looming in the snow; and there was an attractive picture of a
regiment crossing the Alma and eating the grapes as they clambered up
the banks where they grew. Finally there was the Redan, a mysterious
wall, apparently of wickerwork, with bombs bursting and broken
scaling-ladders and dead English soldiers in the open space before it.
Mark did not feel that he wanted to look through the book again, and he
put it away, wondering how long that murmur of voices rising and falling
from his father's study below would continue. He wondered whether Dora
would be annoyed if he went down to the kitchen. She had been
discouraging on the last two or three occasions he had visited her, but
that had been because he could not keep his fingers out of the currants.
Fancy having a large red jar crammed full of currants on the floor of
the larder and never wanting to eat one! The thought of those currants
produced in Mark's mouth a craving for something sweet, and as quietly
as possible he stole off downstairs to quench this craving somehow or
other if it were only with a lump of sugar. But when he reached the
kitchen he found Dora in earnest talk with two women in bonnets, who
were nodding away and clicking their tongues with pleasure.
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