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looked at him. It was a strange-looking flame, a flattish salmon
colour, redly streaked. It was so queer and quiet mannered that the
sight of it held Mr. Polly agape.
"Whuff!" went the can of paraffine below, and boiled over with
stinking white fire. At the outbreak the salmon-coloured flames
shivered and ducked and then doubled and vanished, and instantly all
the staircase was noisily ablaze.
Mr. Polly sprang up and backwards, as though the uprushing tongues of
fire were a pack of eager wolves.
"Good Lord!" he cried like a man who wakes up from a dream.
He swore sharply and slapped again at a recrudescent flame upon his
leg.
"What the Deuce shall I do? I'm soaked with the confounded stuff!"
He had nerved himself for throat-cutting, but this was fire!
He wanted to delay things, to put them out for a moment while he did
his business. The idea of arresting all this hurry with water occurred
to him.
There was no water in the little parlour and none in the shop. He
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