Q-241208



Format: Single

‘All right. You two play it again,’ said Beetle, who, in a gray skirt and a wig of chestnut sausage-curls, set slantwise above a pair of spectacles mended with an old boot-lace, represented the Widow Twankey. He waved one leg in time to the hammered refrain, and the banjos grew louder.

  

This is from “Slaves of the Lamp Part 1” collected in Stalky & Co. (1899) and later included in The Complete Stalky & Co. (1929) This was the first ‘Stalky’ story to be published, and possibly the first to be written.

The rival house-master Mr. King is just about to enter and put a halt to their pantomime ambitions, after which the ‘Slaves of the Lamp’ (mainly through Stalky) plan and exact their revenge.