E V Lucas

The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice E V Lucas

Once upon a time there dwelt in a far country two children, a sister and a brother, namedTilsa and Tobene. Tilsa was twelve and Tobene was ten, and they had grown up, as it were, hand in hand. Their father died when Tobene was only a little piece of pink dimpled dough, and when their mother died too, a few years after, old Alison was told to pack up the thingsand journey with Tilsa and Tobene to the children's grandfather, the Liglid (or Lord Mayor)of Ule, whom they had never yet seen. Old Alison was their nurse, and she had been their father's nurse before them. Nothingworth knowing was unknown to old Alison: she could tell them where the fairies danced bynight, and the names and habits of the different people who live in the stars, and the reasonwhy thrushes' eggs have black spots and hedge sparrows' none, and how to make Toffee ofParadise, and a thousand useful and wonderful things besid