by Edith Nesbit
After tea father came in, and he played “Letters” with them and the girls, and it was a little better; but while late dinner was going on — I shall never forget it. Oswald felt like the hero of a book—”almost at the end of his resources.” I don’t think I was ever glad of bedtime before, but that time I was.
When they had gone to bed (Daisy had to have all her strings and buttons undone for her, Dora told me, though she is nearly ten, and Denny said he couldn’t sleep without the gas being left a little bit on) we held a council in the girls’ room. We all sat on the bed — it is a mahogany four-poster with green curtains very good for tents, only the housekeeper doesn’t allow it, and Oswald said:
“This is jolly nice, isn’t it?”
“They’ll be better to-morrow,” Alice said; “they’re only shy.”
Dicky said shy was all very well, but you needn’t behave like a perfect idiot.
“They’re frightened. You see, we’re all strange to them,” Dora said.
“We’re not wild beasts or Indians; we sha’n’t eat them. What have they got to be frightened of?” Dicky said this.
Noël told us he thought they were an enchanted prince and princess who’d been turned into white rabbits, and their bodies had got changed back, but not their insides.
But Oswald told him to dry up.
“It’s no use making things up about them,” he said. “The thing is: what are we going to do? We can’t have our holidays spoiled by these snivelling kids.”
“No,” Alice said, “but they can’t possibly go on snivelling forever. Perhaps they’ve got into the habit of it with that Murdstone aunt. She’s enough to make any one snivel.”
“All the same,” said Oswald, “we jolly well aren’t going to have another day like to-day. We must do something to rouse them from their snivelling leth — what’s its name? — something sudden and — what is it? — decisive.”
“A booby trap,” said H. O., “the first thing when they get up, and an apple-pie bed at night.”
But Dora would not hear of it, and I own she was right.
“Suppose,” she said, “we could get up a good play — like we did when we were Treasure Seekers.”
We said, “Well, what?” But she did not say.
“It ought to be a good long thing — to last all day,” Dicky said; “and if they like they can play, and if they don’t—”
“If they don’t, I’ll read to them,” Alice said.
But we all said: “No, you don’t; if you begin that way you’ll have to go on.”
And Dicky added: “I wasn’t going to say that at all. I was going to say if they didn’t like it they could jolly well do the other thing.”
We all agreed that we must think of something, but we none of us could, and at last the council broke up in confusion because Mrs. Blake — she is the housekeeper — came up and turned off the gas.
But next morning when we were having breakfast, and the two strangers were sitting there so pink and clean, Oswald suddenly said:
“I know; we’ll have a jungle in the garden.”
And the others agreed, and we talked about it till brek was over. The little strangers only said “I don’t know” whenever we said anything to them.
After brekker Oswald beckoned his brothers and sisters mysteriously apart and said:
“Do you agree to let me be captain to-day, because I thought of it?”
And they said they would.
Then he said: “We’ll play jungle-book, and I shall be Mowgli. The rest of you can be what you like — Mowgli’s father and mother, or any of the beasts.”
“I don’t suppose they know the book,” said Noël. “They don’t look as if they read anything, except at lesson times.”
“Then they can go on being beasts all the time,” Oswald said. “Any one can be a beast.”
So it was settled.
And now Oswald — Albert’s uncle has sometimes said he is clever at arranging things — began to lay his plans for the jungle. The day was indeed well chosen. Our Indian uncle was away; father was away; Mrs. Blake was going away, and the housemaid had an afternoon off. Oswald’s first conscious act was to get rid of the white mice — I mean the little good visitors. He explained to them that there would be a play in the afternoon, and they could be what they liked, and gave them the jungle-book to read the stories he told them to — all the ones about Mowgli. He led the strangers to a secluded spot among the sea-kale pots in the kitchen garden and left them. Then he went back to the others, and we had a jolly morning under the cedar talking about what we would do when Blakie was gone. She went just after our dinner.
When we asked Denny what he would like to be in the play, it turned out he had not read the stories Oswald told him at all, but only the “White Seal” and “Rikki Tikki.”
We then agreed to make the jungle first and dress up for our parts afterwards. Oswald was a little uncomfortable about leaving the strangers alone all the morning, so he said Denny should be his aide-de-camp, and he was really quite useful. He is rather handy with his fingers, and things that he does up do not come untied. Daisy might have come too, but she wanted to go on reading, so we let her, which is the truest manners to a visitor. Of course the shrubbery was to be the jungle, and the lawn under the cedar a forest glade, and then we began to collect the things. The cedar lawn is just nicely out of the way of the windows. It was a jolly hot day — the kind of day when the sunshine is white and the shadows are dark gray, not black like they are in the evening.
We all thought of different things. Of course first we dressed up pillows in the skins of beasts and set them about on the grass to look as natural as we could. And then we got Pincher, and rubbed him all over with powdered slate-pencil, to make him the right color for Gray Brother. But he shook it all off, and it had taken an awful time to do. Then Alice said:
“Oh, I know!” and she ran off to father’s dressing-room, and came back with the tube of crème d’amande pour la barbe et les mains, and we squeezed it on Pincher and rubbed it in, and then the slate-pencil stuff stuck all right, and he rolled in the dust-bin of his own accord, which made him just the right color. He is a very clever dog, but soon after he went off and we did not find him till quite late in the afternoon. Denny helped with Pincher, and with the wild-beast skins, and when Pincher was finished he said:
“Please, may I make some paper birds to put in the trees? I know how.”
And of course we said “Yes,” and he only had red ink and newspapers, and quickly he made quite a lot of large paper birds with red tails. They didn’t look half bad on the edge of the shrubbery.
While he was doing this he suddenly said, or rather screamed, “Oh!”
And we looked, and it was a creature with great horns and a fur rug — something like a bull and something like a minotaur — and I don’t wonder Denny was frightened. It was Alice, and it was first-class.
Up to now all was not yet lost beyond recall. It was the stuffed fox that did the mischief — and I am sorry to own it was Oswald who thought of it. He is not ashamed of having thought of it. That was rather clever of him. But he knows now that it is better not to take other people’s foxes and things without asking, even if you live in the same house with them.
It was Oswald who undid the back of the glass case in the hall and got out the fox with the green and gray duck in its mouth, and when the others saw how awfully like life they looked on the lawn, they all rushed off to fetch the other stuffed things. Uncle has a tremendous lot of stuffed things. He shot most of them himself — but not the fox, of course. There was another fox’s mask, too, and we hung that in a bush to look as if the fox was peeping out. And the stuffed birds we fastened on to the trees with string. The duck-bill — what’s its name? — looked very well sitting on his tail with the otter snarling at him. Then Dicky had an idea; and though not nearly so much was said about it afterwards as there was about the stuffed things, I think myself it was just as bad, though it was a good idea too.
He just got the hose and put the end over a branch of the cedar-tree. Then we got the steps they clean windows with, and let the hose rest on the top of the steps and run. It was to be a water-fall, but it ran between the steps and was only wet and messy; so we got father’s mackintosh and uncle’s and covered the steps with them, so that the water ran down all right and was glorious, and it ran away in a stream across the grass where we had dug a little channel for it — and the otter and the duck-bill thing were as if in their native haunts. I hope all this is not very dull to read about. I know it was jolly good fun to do. Taking one thing with another, I don’t know that we ever had a better time while it lasted.
We got all the rabbits out of the hutches and put pink paper tails on to them, and hunted them with horns, made out of the Times. They got away somehow, and before they were caught next day they had eaten a good many lettuces and other things. Oswald is very sorry for this. He rather likes the gardener.
Denny wanted to put paper tails on the guinea-pigs, and it was no use our telling him there was nothing to tie the paper on to. He thought we were kidding until we showed him, and then he said, “Well, never mind,” and got the girls to give him bits of the blue stuff left over from their dressing-gowns.
“I’ll make them sashes to tie round their little middles,” he said. And he did, and the bows stuck up on the tops of their backs. One of the guinea-pigs was never seen again, and the same with the tortoise when we had done his shell with vermilion paint. He crawled away and returned no more. Perhaps some one collected him and thought he was an expensive kind, unknown in these cold latitudes.
The lawn under the cedar was transformed into a dream of beauty, what with the stuffed creatures and the paper-tailed things and the water-fall. And Alice said:
“I wish the tigers did not look so flat.” For of course with pillows you can only pretend it is a sleeping tiger getting ready to make a spring out at you. It is difficult to prop up tiger-skins in a life-like manner when there are no bones inside them, only pillows and sofa-cushions. “What about the beer-stands?” I said. And we got two out of the cellar. With bolsters and string we fastened insides to the tigers — and they were really fine. The legs of the beer-stand did for tigers’ legs. It was indeed the finishing touch.
Then we boys put on just our bathing drawers and vests — so as to be able to play with the water-fall without hurting our clothes. I think this was thoughtful. The girls only tucked up their frocks and took their shoes and stockings off. H. O. painted his legs and his hands with Condy’s fluid — to make him brown, so that he might be Mowgli, although Oswald was captain and had plainly said he was going to be Mowgli himself. Of course the others weren’t going to stand that. So Oswald said:
“Very well. Nobody asked you to brown yourself like that. But now you’ve done it, you’ve simply got to go and be a beaver, and live in the dam under the water-fall till it washes off.”
He said he didn’t want to be beavers. And Noël said:
“Don’t make him. Let him be the bronze statue in the palace gardens that the fountain plays out of.”
So we let him have the hose and hold it up over his head. It made a lovely fountain, only he remained brown. So then Dicky and Oswald did ourselves brown too, and dried H. O. as well as we could with our handkerchiefs, because he was just beginning to snivel. The brown did not come off any of us for days.
Oswald was to be Mowgli, and we were just beginning to arrange the different parts. The rest of the hose that was on the ground was Kaa, the Rock Python, and Pincher was Gray Brother, only we couldn’t find him. And while most of us were talking, Dicky and Noël got messing about with the beer-stand tigers.
And then a really sad event instantly occurred, which was not really our fault, and we did not mean to.
That Daisy girl had been mooning indoors all the afternoon with the jungle books, and now she came suddenly out, just as Dicky and Noël had got under the tigers and were shoving them along to fright each other. Of course, this is not in the Mowgli book at all: but they did look jolly like real tigers, and I am very far from wishing to blame the girl, though she little knew what would be the awful consequence of her rash act. But for her we might have got out of it all much better than we did.
What happened was truly horrid.
“WE LET THE HOSE PLAY PERSEVERINGLY”
As soon as Daisy saw the tigers she stopped short, and uttering a shriek like a railway whistle, she fell flat on the ground.
“Fear not, gentle Indian maiden,” Oswald cried, thinking with surprise that perhaps after all she did know how to play, “I myself will protect thee.” And he sprang forward with the native bow and arrows out of uncle’s study.
The gentle Indian maiden did not move.
“Come hither,” Dora said, “let us take refuge in yonder covert while this good knight does battle for us.”
Dora might have remembered that we were savages, but she did not. And that is Dora all over. And still the Daisy girl did not move.
Then we were truly frightened. Dora and Alice lifted her up, and her mouth was a horrid violet color and her eyes half shut. She looked horrid. Not at all like fair fainting damsels, who are always of an interesting pallor. She was green, like a cheap oyster on a stall.
We did what we could, a prey to alarm as we were. We rubbed her hands and let the hose play gently but perseveringly on her unconscious brow. The girls loosened her dress, though it was only the kind that comes down straight without a waist. And we were all doing what we could as hard as we could, when we heard the click of the front gate. There was no mistake about it.
“I hope whoever it is will go straight to the front door,” said Alice. But whoever it was did not. There were feet on the gravel, and there was the uncle’s voice, saying, in his hearty manner:
“This way. This way. On such a day as this we shall find our young barbarians all at play somewhere about the grounds.”
And then, without further warning, the uncle, three other gentlemen, and two ladies burst upon the scene.
We had no clothes on to speak of — I mean us boys. We were all wet through. Daisy was in a faint or a fit, or dead, none of us then knew which. And all the stuffed animals were there staring the uncle in the face. Most of them had got a sprinkling, and the otter and the duck-bill brute were simply soaked. And three of us were dark brown. Concealment, as so often happens, was impossible.
The quick brain of Oswald saw, in a flash, exactly how it would strike the uncle, and his brave young blood ran cold in his veins. His heart stood still.
“What’s all this — eh, what?” said the tones of the wronged uncle.
Oswald spoke up and said it was jungles we were playing, and he didn’t know what was up with Daisy. He explained as well as any one could, but words were now in vain.
The uncle had a Malacca cane in his hand, and we were but ill prepared to meet the sudden attack. Oswald and H. O. caught it worst. The other boys were under the tigers — and, of course, my uncle would not strike a girl. Denny was a visitor and so got off. But it was bread and water for us for the next three days, and our own rooms. I will not tell you how we sought to vary the monotonousness of imprisonment. Oswald thought of taming a mouse, but he could not find one. The reason of the wretched captives might have given way but for the gutter that you can crawl along from our room to the girls’. But I will not dwell on this because you might try it yourselves, and it really is dangerous. When my father came home we got the talking to, and we said we were sorry — and we really were — especially about Daisy, though she had behaved with muffishness, and then it was settled that we were to go into the country and stay till we had grown into better children.
Albert’s uncle was writing a book in the country; we were to go to his house. We were glad of this — Daisy and Denny too. This we bore nobly. We knew we had deserved it. We were all very sorry for everything, and we resolved that for the future we would be good.
I am not sure whether we kept this reso
lution or not. Oswald thinks now that perhaps we made a mistake in trying so very hard to be good all at once. You should do everything by degrees.
P.S. — It turned out Daisy was not really dead at all. It was only fainting — so like a girl.
N.B. — Pincher was found on the drawing-room sofa.
Appendix. — I have not told you half the things we did for the jungle — for instance, about the elephants’ tusks and the horse-hair sofa-cushions and uncle’s fishing-boots.
THE WOULDBEGOODS
When we were sent down into the country to learn to be good we felt it was rather good business, because we knew our being sent there was really only to get us out of the way for a little while, and we knew right enough that it wasn’t a punishment, though Mrs. Blake said it was, because we had been punished thoroughly for taking the stuffed animals out and making a jungle on the lawn with them, and the garden hose. And you cannot be punished twice for the same offence. This is the English law; at least I think so. And at any rate no one would punish you three times, and we had had the Malacca cane and the solitary confinement; and the uncle had kindly explained to us that all ill-feeling between him and us was wiped out entirely by the bread and water we had endured. And what with the bread and water and being prisoners, and not being able to tame any mice in our prisons, I quite feel that we had suffered it up thoroughly, and now we could start fair.
I think myself that descriptions of places are generally dull, but I have sometimes thought that was because the authors do not tell you what you truly want to know. However, dull or not, here goes — because you won’t understand anything unless I tell you what the place was like.
The Moat House was the one we went to stay at. There has been a house there since Saxon times. It is a manor, and a manor goes on having a house on it whatever happens. The Moat House was burned down once or twice in ancient centuries — I don’t remember which — but they always built a new one, and Cromwell’s soldiers smashed it about, but it was patched up again. It is a very odd house: the front door opens straight into the dining-room, and there are red curtains and a black-and-white marble floor like a chess-board, and there is a secret staircase, only it is not secret now — only rather rickety. It is not very big, but there is a watery moat all round it with a brick bridge that leads to the front door. Then, on the other side of the moat there is the farm, with barns and oast-houses and stables, or things like that. And the other way the garden lawn goes on till it comes to the church-yard. The church-yard is not divided from the garden at all except by a little grass bank. In the front of the house there is more garden, and the big fruit-garden is at the back.