Ashley Sterne Getting Into Hot Water

A short trifle from Ashley Sterne, republished on 25 September 1920 in the Richmond Guardian, Victoria.


Amongst the presents I received at Christmas was a most acceptable one in the shape of a hot-water bottle from my Aunt Louisa. Not only was it in the shape of a hot-water bottle, but it actually was a hot-water bottle.

Aunt Louisa always gives useful presents; I still cherish a blotting-book she gave me a few years ago, the cover of which is of wood decorated in pokerwork with a pelican swallowing a soused mackerel. I keep handkerchiefs in it, as the blotting-paper with which it is supplied must, I fancy, have come out of a post-office. It blots beautifully.  Yon couldn't blot a letter better if you rubbed your sleeve over it.

Then, too, I have a gorgeous knitted tie which I have preserved for many years, its rich variety of hues would put Joseph's coat to shame. It's the best pen-wiper I ever had.

I was delighted, of course, with the hot-water bottle. It was one of the kind that I had always coveted—india-rubber encased in a nice, red, fluffy jacket. During, the winter months I suffer agonies with frozen feet, especially in bed. I am certain that my feet could not possibly get colder if I used chunk of the North Pole as a hassock.

Before the bottle arrived I used to take my cat up to bed with me and induce it to repose on the eiderdown over my feet. But this device had its drawbacks, as the cat frequently imagined that my toes were mice. Twice in one night the animal killed my big toe, and after toying with it for half an hour tried to bite its head off through the bedclothes.

However, with the advent of Aunt Louisa's present, my troubles, I felt sure, would be at an end. They were. I'll tell you which end directly.

Now Aunt Louisa has a positive mania for working initials. I remember how it required all Uncle Peter’s tact and diplomacy to prevent her embroidering his initials on the cloth of his billiard-table. Consequently I was not surprised to find my own initials worked upon the red, fluffy jacket of the hot-water bottle.

Anxious to try its efficacy, I filled it with the hottest water I could produce.  I placed the bottle in my bed so that it could get busy putting up the temperature while I was undressing. This latter operation took me rather longer than usual because in my hurry I got knots in both my bootlaces. However, I got into bed eventually and switched off the light.

The bed was beautifully warm. I could have grown orchids or peaches in it.  It was quite nice to feel my feet again, notwithstanding that Charles — a chilblain which I thought I had drowned in iodine some weeks before — suddenly revived and began to tickle me. I soon dropped off to sleep.

An hour later I awoke to find the bed full of icicles and frost and snowballs. The cause of the trouble was, of course, the hot-water bottle. I had not omitted to screw the bottle's neck, though I admit there was another neck I badly wanted to screw when I at length discovered just what had occurred. Aunt Louisa in her excessive zeal had embroidered my initials not merely on the red, fluffy jacket, but with every stitch she took she had pierced the india-rubber cover, too.