by E. Nesbit
“There, there,” she said, patting Alice and Noël and as much of the others as she could get hold of. “Don’t you worry, dears, don’t. I’ll make it all right with Sir James. Let’s all sit down in a comfy heap, and get our breaths again. I am so glad to see you all. My husband met your father at lunch the other day. I meant to come over and see you to-morrow.”
You cannot imagine the feelings of joy and safeness that we felt now we had found someone who knew we were Bastables, and not vagrant outcasts like the Police thought.
The door had now been answered. We saw the base Police talking to the person who answered it. Then he came towards us, very red in the face.
“Leave off bothering the lady,” he said, “and come along of me. Sir James is in his library, and he’s ready to do justice on you, so he is.”
Mrs. Red House jumped up, and so did we. She said with smiles, as if nothing was wrong—
“Good morning, Inspector!”
He looked pleased and surprised, as well he might, for it’ll be long enough before he’s within a mile of being that.
“Good morning, miss, I’m sure,” he replied.
“I think there’s been a little mistake, Inspector,” she said. “I expect it’s some of your men—led away by zeal for their duties. But I’m sure you’ll understand. I am staying with Lady Harborough, and these children are very dear friends of mine.”
The Police looked very silly, but he said something about hawking without a license.
“Oh no, not hawking,” said Mrs. Red House, “not hawking, surely! They were just playing at it, you know. Your subordinates must have been quite mistaken.”
Our honesty bade us say that he was his own only subordinate, and that he hadn’t been mistaken; but it is rude to interrupt, especially a lady, so we said nothing.
The Police said firmly, “You’ll excuse me, miss, but Sir James expressly told me to lay a information directly next time I caught any of ’em at it without a license.”
“But, you see, you didn’t catch them at it.” Mrs. Red House took some money out of her purse. “You might just give this to your subordinates to console them for the mistake they’ve made. And look here, these mistakes do lead to trouble sometimes. So I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll promise not to tell Sir James a word about it. So nobody will be blamed.”
We listened breathless for his reply. He put his hands behind him—
“Well, miss,” he said at last, “you’ve managed to put the Force in the wrong somehow, which isn’t often done, and I’m blest if I know how you make it out. But there’s Sir James a-waiting for me to come before him with my complaint. What am I a-goin’ to say to him?”
“Oh, anything,” said Mrs. Red House; “surely some one else has done something wrong that you can tell him about?”
“There was a matter of a couple of snares and some night lines,” he said slowly, drawing nearer to Mrs. Red House; “but I couldn’t take no money, of course.”
“Of course not,” she said; “I beg your pardon for offering it. But I’ll give you my name and address, and if ever I can be of any use to you——”
She turned her back on us while she wrote it down with a stumpy pencil he lent her; but Oswald could swear that he heard money chink, and that there was something large and round wrapped up in the paper she gave him.
“Sorry for any little misunderstanding,” the Police now said, feeling the paper with his fingers; “and my respects to you, miss, and your young friends. I’d best be going.”
And he went—to Sir James, I suppose. He seemed quite tamed. I hope the people who set the snares got off.
“So that’s all right,” said Mrs. Red House. “Oh, you dear children, you must stay to lunch, and we’ll have a splendid time.”
“What a darling Princess you are!” Noël said slowly. “You are a witch Princess, too, with magic powers over the Police.”
“It’s not a very pretty sort of magic,” she said, and she sighed.
“Everything about you is pretty,” said Noël. And I could see him beginning to make the faces that always precur his poetry-fits. But before the fit could break out thoroughly the rest of us awoke from our stupor of grateful safeness and began to dance round Mrs. Red House in a ring. And the girls sang—
“The rose is red, the violet’s blue,
Carnation’s sweet, and so are you,”
over and over again, so we had to join in; though I think “She’s a jolly good fellow would have been more manly and less like a poetry book.”
Suddenly a known voice broke in on our singing.
“Well!” it said. And we stopped dancing. And there were the other two ladies who had politely walked off when we first discovered Mrs. Red House. And one of them was Mrs. Bax—of all people in the world! And she was smoking a cigarette. So now we knew where the smell of tobacco came from, in the White House.
We said, “Oh!” in one breath, and were silent.
“Is it possible,” said Mrs. Bax, “that these are the Sunday-school children I’ve been living with these three long days?”
“We’re sorry,” said Dora, softly; “we wouldn’t have made a noise if we’d know you were here.”
“So I suppose,” said Mrs. Bax. “Chloe, you seem to be a witch. How have you galvanised my six rag dolls into life like this?”
“Rag dolls!” said H.O., before we could stop him. “I think you’re jolly mean and ungrateful; and it was sixpence for making the organs fly.”
“My brain’s reeling,” said Mrs. Bax, putting her hands to her head.
“H.O. is very rude, and I am sorry,” said Alice, “but it is hard to be called rag dolls, when you’ve only tried to do as you were told.”
And then, in answer to Mrs. Red House’s questions, we told how father had begged us to be quiet, and how we had earnestly tried to. When it was told, Mrs. Bax began to laugh, and so did Mrs. Red House, and at last Mrs. Bax said—
“Oh, my dears! you don’t know how glad I am that you’re really alive! I began to think—oh—I don’t know what I thought! And you’re not rag dolls. You’re heroes and heroines, every man jack of you. And I do thank you. But I never wanted to be quiet like that. I just didn’t want to be bothered with London and tiresome grown-up people. And now let’s enjoy ourselves! Shall it be rounders, or stories about cannibals?”
“Rounders first and stories after,” said H.O. And it was so.
Mrs. Bax, now that her true nature was revealed, proved to be A1. The author does not ask for a jollier person to be in the house with. We had rare larks the whole time she stayed with us.
And to think that we might never have known her true character if she hadn’t been an old school friend of Mrs. Red House’s, and if Mrs. Red House hadn’t been such a friend of ours!“Friendship,” as Mr. William Smith so truly says in his book about Latin, “is the crown of life.”
THE POOR AND NEEDY
“What shall we do to-day, kiddies?” said Mrs. Bax. We had discovered her true nature but three days ago, and already she had taken us out in a sailing-boat and in a motor car, had given us sweets every day, and taught us eleven new games that we had not known before; and only four of the new games were rotters. How seldom can as much be said for the games of a grown-up, however gifted!
The day was one of cloudless blue perfectness, and we were all basking on the beach. We had all bathed. Mrs. Bax said we might. There are points about having a grown-up with you, if it is the right kind. You can then easily get it to say “Yes” to what you want, and after that, if anything goes wrong it is their fault, and you are pure from blame. But nothing had gone wrong with the bathe, and, so far, we were all alive, and not cold at all, except our fingers and feet.
“What would you like to do?” asked Mrs. Bax. We were far away from human sight along the beac
h, and Mrs. Bax was smoking cigarettes as usual.
“I don’t know,” we all said politely. But H.O. said—
“What about poor Miss Sandal?”
“Why poor?” asked Mrs. Bax.
“Because she is,” said H.O.
“But how? What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Bax.
“Why, isn’t she?” said H.O.
“Isn’t she what?” said Mrs. Bax.
“What you said why about,” said H.O.
She put her hands to her head. Her short hair was still damp and rumpled from contact with the foaming billows of ocean.
“Let’s have a fresh deal and start fair,” she said; “why do you think my sister is poor?”
“I forgot she was your sister,” said H.O., “or I wouldn’t have said it—honour bright I wouldn’t.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Mrs. Bax, and began throwing stones at a groin in amiable silence.
We were furious with H.O., first because it is such bad manners to throw people’s poverty in their faces, or even in their sisters’ faces, like H.O. had just done, and second because it seemed to have put out of Mrs. Bax’s head what she was beginning to say about what would we like to do.
So Oswald presently remarked, when he had aimed at the stump she was aiming at, and hit it before she did, for though a fair shot for a lady, she takes a long time to get her eye in.
“Mrs. Bax, we should like to do whatever you like to do.” This was real politeness and true too, as it happened, because by this time we could quite trust her not to want to do anything deeply duffing.
“That’s very nice of you,” she replied, “but don’t let me interfere with any plans of yours. My own idea was to pluck a waggonette from the nearest bush. I suppose they grow freely in these parts?”
“There’s one at the ‘Ship,’” said Alice; “it costs seven-and-six to pluck it, just for going to the station.”
“Well, then! And to stuff our waggonette with lunch and drive over to Lynwood Castle, and eat it there.”
“A picnic!” fell in accents of joy from the lips of one and all.
“We’ll also boil the billy in the castle courtyard, and eat buns in the shadow of the keep.”
“Tea as well?” said H.O., “with buns? You can’t be poor and needy any way, whatever your——”
We hastily hushed him, stifling his murmurs with sand.
“I always think,” said Mrs. Bax dreamily, “that ‘the more the merrier,’ is peculiarly true of picnics. So I have arranged—always subject to your approval, of course—to meet your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Red House, there, and——”
We drowned her conclusive remarks with a cheer. And Oswald, always willing to be of use, offered to go to the ‘Ship’ and see about the waggonette. I like horses and stable-yards, and the smell of hay and straw, and talking to ostlers and people like that.
There turned out to be two horses belonging to the best waggonette, or you could have a one-horse one, much smaller, with the blue cloth of the cushions rather frayed, and mended here and there, and green in patches from age and exposition to the weather.
Oswald told Mrs. Bax this, not concealing about how shabby the little one was, and she gloriously said—
“The pair by all means! We don’t kill a pig every day!”
“No, indeed,” said Dora, but if “killing a pig” means having a lark, Mrs. Bax is as good a pig-killer as any I ever knew.
It was splendid to drive (Oswald, on the box beside the driver, who had his best coat with the bright buttons) along the same roads that we had trodden as muddy pedestrinators, or travelled along behind Bates’s donkey.
It was a perfect day, as I said before. We were all clean and had our second-best things on. I think second-bests are much more comfy than first-bests. You feel equivalent to meeting any one, and have “a heart for any fate,” as it says in the poetry-book, and yet you are not starched and booted and stiffened and tightened out of all human feelings.
Lynwood Castle is in a hollow in the hills. It has a moat all round it with water-lily leaves on it. I suppose there are lilies when in season. There is a bridge over the moat—not the draw kind of bridge. And the castle has eight towers—four round and four square ones, and a courtyard in the middle, all green grass, and heaps of stones—stray bits of castle, I suppose they are—and a great white may-tree in the middle that Mrs. Bax said was hundreds of years old.
Mrs. Red House was sitting under the may-tree when we got there, nursing her baby, in a blue dress and looking exactly like a picture on the top of a chocolate-box.
The girls instantly wanted to nurse the baby so we let them. And we explored the castle. We had never happened to explore one thoroughly before. We did not find the deepest dungeon below the castle moat, though we looked everywhere for it, but we found everything else you can think of belonging to castles—even the holes they used to pour boiling lead through into the eyes of besiegers when they tried to squint up to see how strong the garrison was in the keep—and the little slits they shot arrows through, and the mouldering remains of the portcullis. We went up the eight towers, every single one of them, and some parts were jolly dangerous, I can tell you. Dicky and I would not let H.O. and Noël come up the dangerous parts. There was no lasting ill-feeling about this. By the time we had had a thorough good explore lunch was ready.
It was a glorious lunch—not too many meaty things, but all sorts of cakes and sweets, and grapes and figs and nuts.
We gazed at the feast, and Mrs. Bax said—
“There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread you’ve got.”
“They had currant wine,” said Noël, who has only just read the book by Mr. Charles Dickens.
“Well, so have you,” said Mrs. Bax. And we had. Two bottles of it.
“I never knew any one like you,” said Noël to Mrs. Red House, dreamily with his mouth full, “for knowing the things people really like to eat, not the things that are good for them, but what they like, and Mrs. Bax is just the same.”
“It was one of the things they taught at our school,” said Mrs. Bax. “Do you remember the Saturday night feasts, Chloe, and how good the cocoanut ice tasted after extra strong peppermints?”
“Fancy you knowing that!” said H.O. “I thought it was us found that out.”
“I really know much more about things to eat than she does,” said Mrs. Bax. “I was quite an old girl when she was a little thing in pinafores. She was such a nice little girl.”
“I shouldn’t wonder if she was always nice,” said Noël, “even when she was a baby!”
Everybody laughed at this, except the existing baby, and it was asleep on the waggonette cushions, under the white may-tree, and perhaps if it had been awake it wouldn’t have laughed, for Oswald himself, though possessing a keen sense of humour, did not see anything to laugh at.
Mr. Red House made a speech after dinner, and said drink to the health of everybody, one after the other, in currant wine, which was done, beginning with Mrs. Bax and ending with H.O.
Then he said—
“Somnus, avaunt! What shall we play at?” and nobody, as so often happens, had any idea ready. Then suddenly Mrs. Red House said—
“Good gracious, look there!” and we looked there, and where we were to look was the lowest piece of the castle wall, just beside the keep that the bridge led over to, and what we were to look at was a strange blobbiness of knobbly bumps along the top, that looked exactly like human heads.
It turned out, when we had talked about cannibals and New Guinea, that human heads were just exactly what they were. Not loose heads, stuck on pikes or things like that, such as there often must have been while the castle stayed in the olden times it was built in and belonged to, but real live heads with their bodies still in attendance on them.
> They were, in fact, the village children.
“Poor little Lazaruses!” said Mr. Red House.
“There’s not such a bad slice of Dives’ feast left,” said Mrs. Bax. “Shall we——?”
So Mr. Red House went out by the keep and called the heads in (with the bodies they were connected with, of course), and they came and ate up all that was left of the lunch. Not the buns, of course, for those were sacred to tea-time, but all the other things, even the nuts and figs, and we were quite glad that they should have them—really and truly we were, even H.O.!
They did not seem to be very clever children, or just the sort you would choose for your friends, but I suppose you like to play, however little you are other people’s sort. So, after they had eaten all there was, when Mrs. Red House invited them all to join in games with us we knew we ought to be pleased. But village children are not taught rounders, and though we wondered at first why their teachers had not seen to this, we understood presently. Because it is most awfully difficult to make them understand the very simplest thing.
But they could play all the ring games, and “Nuts and May,” and “There Came Three Knights”—and another one we had never heard of before. The singing part begins:—
“Up and down the green grass,
This and that and thus,
Come along, my pretty maid,
And take a walk with us.
You shall have a duck, my dear,
And you shall have a drake,
And you shall have a handsome man
For your father’s sake.”
I forget the rest, and if anybody who reads this knows it, and will write and tell me, the author will not have laboured in vain.
The grown-ups played with all their heart and soul—I expect it is but seldom they are able to play, and they enjoy the novel excitement. And when we’d been at it some time we saw there was another head looking over the wall.