by Edith Nesbit
“I thought not. But it was as well to ask. Some childish prank, I expect.” Another inspector said:
“Quite so, sir. Boys will be boys. I mean girls, that is to say. Quite so, sir.” And we came away.
Then we began to look for Madeline. We looked and we looked and we looked. It was dreadful. There are quite a lot of streets in Charrington. All exactly alike. At first we kept thinking we might see her round the next corner, and the next, and the next. And by and by Clifford’s inside mind said to him:
“You won’t find her round any corner. You see if you do.”
And of course we didn’t.
It was dreadful, as I said. But it was very exciting, too. I don’t mean that we enjoyed it. Of course we couldn’t have. But it was more like that than anything else.
For hours we looked. The uncle told every policeman what we were looking for. And at last he said:
“Well, you kids must go to bed, anyhow.” We did not see this at all. We said we would gladly stay up all night and go on looking for our long-lost cousin.
But Uncle Edward was deaf to our unselfish protestings. So we all went home.
We had supper. I hope it was not unfeeling of us to eat quite a lot. But it was cold beef and pickles, and you know from Tom Brown’s Schooldays how boys feel about them. But though our hero was not at all off his oats, yet his heart was sad for the missing child.
When he passed her bedroom door on his way to bed he went in through the partly opened door and lit the gas on purpose to say:
“Poor Madeline, I wonder where she is?”
And then he got the shock of his life. For she was there. Sitting up in bed and looking at him.
He yelled. He scorns to deny it. Any chap would have. And the boots of the others were heard upon the stairs.
Directly afterwards the room was full of Uncle, Martin, Mrs. Peard and the author.
“Where have you been?” the uncle sternly asked Madeline.
“In — in the boot cupboard,” said the embedded Madeline. “You said you wouldn’t be at home all day.”
“Why did you hide?” Uncle Edward asked, still as stern as stern.
“To be even with the boys. To scare them,” said Madeline, pale but spiteful. “To be even with them for going out and leaving me all alone here. And I did it, too!”
The uncle looked sterner than ever — like the headmaster when he tells you it hurts him more than it does you. He spoke with withering sarcasm.
“I suppose that’s why you mixed the different bottles of medicine. Do you know you might have killed someone?”
“Oh, you sneaks! You hateful sneaks!” cried the incumbent Madeline; “and I didn’t mix the bottles of medicine, anyhow.”
“You said you did,” said Clifford, who wasn’t going to be called sneaks for nothing.
“I never did,” said Madeline, who was in bed; “I said I had mixed up what was in the bottles on the bench. There weren’t only two. They were soaking. They were just being washed out. Now then!”
“But you knew we thought...”
“Why did you want us to believe...?” said our hero and his brother together.
“To pay you out for leaving me alone,” said Madeline. “You always say I never think of anything, and that I’m a white rabbit or a mouse. But you see I can think of things, only I don’t always do what I think of. And I don’t care what you do to me. So there!”
With these words she burrowed under her bedclothes and from the blankety mound we heard sniffs and snivellings. The uncle took us by the collar and turned us out of the room.
We went downstairs and told each other that it wasn’t our fault anyhow, and Madeline was a duffer.
When the uncle came down he said:
“I thought you could be trusted to be jolly to that poor kid, and her mother in India and all. But I see I was wrong.”
Our hero nearly burst into feelings of boiled-up unjustness, and Martin said: “She ought to have five hundred lines. But I suppose it’s our fault, as usual.”
“Don’t be cheeky,” said Uncle Edward, much more kindly though. “I think it is your fault. She’s a girl, you see.”
“Yes,” said Clifford, “I see we ought to have remembered she was only a girl.”
“She’s the stranger within your gates, too,” said the uncle. “What’s more, she’s a highly-strung, imaginative child. Just think — you must have some imagination — how unhappy she must have been to invent and carry out a plan like this.”
Clifford rolled and unrolled the corner of the hearthrug with his foot and said he always thought revenge was wrong. And his uncle said he was a prig. I have forgiven him now.
Then he lectured us. And we hated it. And he saw we did.
And at last he said:
“Look here, old chaps. If you’d heard what Madeline said to me you wouldn’t take it like this. Don’t you see that it’s because she’s so fond of you that she hated you leaving her alone so. You don’t understand girls yet. But you take it from me that it’s so. And let’s forgive and forget and not say any more about it, any of us. Shall we?”
Of course we said yes. But meeting next day with the now repentant Madeline was more than you can possibly imagine. It was like taking part in a play when you have forgotten your part.
But in the afternoon the uncle took us to the Hippodrome, and after that all was really forgotten and forgiven.
When Clifford thought it over afterwards he saw that though very wrong of Madeline it was really rather clever. For she didn’t tell any lies. And yet she made us awfully uncomfortable. It was what Boers call slim, I think.
We were as nice to her as we knew how, and the next Sunday after she said:
“Look here, I’m sorry. I’ll never do anything like it again. But if you’d only sometimes be kind to me I wouldn’t mind what you did.”
“What do you mean by kind?” said Clifford coldly. “If you’d only say what you want there’d be some chance of your getting it.”
“I like it when you say ‘Mads, old boy.’ Or ‘Mads, old chap,’” she said, “and thump me on the back.”
So now we say and do these things as often as we can remember to. Because after all she is our cousin, and India is a long way off.
CHAPTER EIGHT. THE MYSTERIOUS HOUSE IN THE WOOD
What the author is about to relate happened in the summer holidays. Miss Knox was staying with us. When she has been staying in the house a little while every one gets restless. And you feel that it is silly to stay at home when there are so many other places in the world where Miss Knox isn’t. People who invite her to stay with them ought to have several establishments so that they can go and stay at the other ones during her visits.
“It is rum,” said Clifford, who is often the one to begin to talk of new objects, “how you feel about things. The Knox is a vampire, I think.”
“What’s a vampire?” Carlie asked.
Olive very quickly said, “A bat, dear,” and winked frownfully through the leaves. We were in the Blenheim-orange tree — secure from anyone creeping up behind. I do not mean to say that the Knox means to be always behind you, but she has an idea that she must take care of us, and so somehow she too often is.
“What I mean is,” said Clifford, “she sucks your patience out of you and lives on it herself. That’s why people call her a sweet, patient, earnest worker. That beady lady who called yesterday in the brougham did.”
“It’s not so much your patience — it’s your temper that goes,” said Olive, and Martin owned that Miss Knox made him want to scream and go mad before her eyes. “I feel it most at meal times,” he added darkly.
“Whatever’s the use of jawing,” Alan said, “when you know quite well you’ve just got to stick it? Let’s go fishing.”
“Yes, let’s,” said the others, even Madeline, who has grown in sense while living with us. But Clifford did not.
“I was thinking,” he said, dreamily dropping a little hard apple on the head of Alan �
�� which could not have injured the softest brain, and scrapping in an apple-tree is dangerous, and I told him so. When peace was restored I went on. “I was thinking what if we could build a hut in the woods and spend our spare time in it like the Swiss Family Robinson.”
“Yes, and have it a secret, of course, so that we can always escape the patient sweetness of the Knox-bird. Rather. I vote we do,” said Martin.
No one wanted to go fishing after that. There is something about a new house that is far above rubies. Even a proper brick one, and even if you’re not going to live in it yourself. When Aunt Kitty was married I went with her to look at houses — and I should have liked to take them all. But when it comes to a house in the woods that you’re going to build yourself, rubies are simply not in it.
So we talked about it through tea and after tea, and then Clifford said he would be a deputation to Father about it. He was. And when Clifford explained to Father that it would be nice to be able to avoid the insistency of Miss Knox sometimes, Father suddenly became sympathetic and said all right, but where should we get the building materials from? And I said the old chicken-house. And he said all right, but the boards were to be scrubbed because hens are not so particular as they look outside their feathers, and William might do it. William is the under-gardener, and he said it wasn’t his job. But he did do it. And then we went to look for a place in the woods.
Father owns quite a lot of ground with wood and pasture, and he said we might make our house anywhere we liked. He is never one to do things by halves — in which pleasing trait he resembles his eldest son — and he went with me to Hillicks and bought us a hammer and a lot of nails and some screws and a screw-driver and a gimlet and an awl. They were A1, with shiny yellowy handles, and he cut K for Kiddies on the handles and filled it up with ink to show that they were our very own. Then he went to Ireland to fish. Mother said it was not because of Miss Knox. But perhaps Mother does not know Father quite as well as we do. You see, she only married into our family — I am jolly glad she did though — but of course it is not the same as a blood relation, and we ought to understand Father best, being his own noble race.
Even if we had never had our house we should have had a ripping time, for Mother let us go out all day long and take lunch in the donkey and cart. And just the getting away from Miss Knox was alone an absolute beano.
It was much more difficult than you would have thought to find exactly the right place for a house. There was a willow wood close by the river — but Olive thought it would be damp, although your boots only went in about an inch and not right over your ankles as you would have thought to hear the way she went on about it. Clifford suggested a house on posts, but we had to chuck it because the cart couldn’t get through the woods unless we had cut down all the trees — and we did not want to waste time being woodcutters or carrying the chicken-house planks one at a time like silly old beavers.
There was some idea of having the house up a tree — and we did actually begin in an oak, but there was a big branch in the way, and after a whole morning we hadn’t got more than a couple of inches into it, and then the saw stuck — and Martin thought he could get it out and he broke it. So we borrowed another saw and gave up the tree idea. Part of the saw is still imbedded in that branch. Antiquarians in later years will find it and think it so interesting.
And then after three or four days of as first-class exploring as ever I wish to see, we found it. Not just the place for a house — but...
It was like this. Our noble steed was unharnessed and tethered in a grassy spot with a few thistles in reach because we know donkeys like them, and though ours always eats grass instead we never know when he may feel that he simply must have a thistle. The girls were arranging the lunch on another grassy vicinity. Alan had got hold of the Swiss Family Robinson, the only book we allowed on exploring expeditions, because when people get into books they can’t be got out for work or play or anything else. So Martin and I just went for an explore on our own. And unlike some other explorers I can think of, we explored right bang into the middle of something.
Deep in the heart of what appeared to be an enchanted wood we came on a bit of paling — all grown over with briers and wild honseysuckle, but still a paling. With grim boots and undaunted hearts the young explorers followed its career, and so came out from behind an elder-bush right on to a cleared space in the wood, where there had been a garden and was still a house. The j oiliest house you ever saw. It was quite little — not much bigger than a decent sized summer-house, with a thatched roof and a real chimney and lattice windows, and two stories, an upstairs and a downstairs. Nettles rose high and strong like a magic forest between it and us. And there was the paling, too. But we found a gate in the paling and pressed forward through the nettles, trampling the fallen foes sideways.
They made fine Saracens, and we cut off their heads with our good swords — which were just sticks before — shouting “St. George for Merrie England!” and so made a path over these prostrate infidels right up to the downstairs window, and looked in.
“Oh, crikey!” said Martin. So Clifford pulled him away and had a squint himself. Then he observed, “You may well say crikey.”
And indeed he might. Anyone might have. There was another window besides the one we were squinting through, there was a fireplace with old ashes and half-burnt sticks in it, and daylight came down the chimney on to the ashes, showing that no evil bird had built its nest there.
There was a broken basket and a coalscuttle with a hole in it, and a fixed wooden seat by the fireplace, something like the settle in our kitchen at home. And there was a broom, very nearly bald, but not quite — and two cupboards and the beginnings of a flight of stairs that we felt sure led up to the first floor.
“Coo-ee!” shouted the others, meaning lunch. What a moment to choose for lunch! We took no notice, but looked at each other. Then we listened. The wood was very still.
“I don’t care,” said Clifford. And he picked up a stone and broke one of the little diamond panes. (We mended if afterwards with oiled paper, like peasants in history.) It fell with a sweet tinkling sound like fairy bells leading us on. So Clifford put his hand through the hole and turned the catch and opened the window. And we got in. Clifford was first to set foot in that beautiful spot. We got the door open — it stuck a bit with moss and damp, and there were pale earwigs and woodlice, and a centipede that looked very unusual, and I put it out of its misery. There was a broken plate in one of the cupboards and a rusty cake-tin and two clothes pegs in the other. And upstairs there were two little rooms, slopy about the roof, but otherwise fit for princes to sleep in. Not till we had explored every cupboard and sat on the little bench did we condescend to cry “Coo-ee!” and to go back to the others and lunch.
I don’t think I ever enjoyed a meal more. It was sausage-rolls. Not those flimsy things you get in shops, but long solid ones, with home-made sausage inside, and plenty of it — as well as jam tarts and gooseberries and ginger-beer. Besides this there was our secret. They say hunger is the best sauce, but I think a secret is better. Of course we didn’t tell the others for quite a long time, though it is useless to say we did not let them see there was something up. When it came to the jam tarts they could bear it no longer, so we told.
The others were almost as pleased as the first adventurers, and it was very nice for them having us to show them everything and telling them where not to bump their heads and where not to walk on rotten boards.
“We needn’t build a house now,” said Olive.
“Whether we build or not,” said Alan, “we’d better cart the old hen roost along. Else William will begin asking questions about why he had to clean those boards if nobody wanted them.”
We saw this — and we got William to bring the boards to a vicinity spot in the luggage cart and then we carried them ourselves with the donkey’s help to the spot and stacked them against the wall. We got a penny tin of enamel and we painted the house’s name on the door. We call
ed it “Mon Abri,” which a friend of ours calls her cottage at Cromer. It means “My Refuge” — and after it we put F.M.K., to show who it was our refuge from. And we gathered a lot of sticks and made a fire. It didn’t smoke so very much.
“We must furnish it,” said Olive; “there’s a bit of old carpet in the box-room.”
“And some chairs,” said Alan.
“And a towel-horse,” said Madeline.
Mother let us have all the things we wanted. She didn’t even say, “Hadn’t you better get your house built first?” which was what we had rather feared. It is a great gift when a chap has a brick for his mother. And all the things she gave us William carried for us in the luggage-cart to that vicinity spot I told you about.
It is impossible to carry much furniture through a wood without making a path. We did not want a path. Paths lead to discovery — or to secret houses, which is just as bad. We tried to coax the ferns and bushes and things back over the path we had not been able to help making.
In three days our house was furnished. The girls made curtains for the windows out of an old red-and-white quilt Mother gave us. There was a carpet and a table — it had only two legs, but we nailed boards on it and it stood quite nicely, and when there was a tablecloth on it you hardly noticed the flatness of its legs. There were two chairs, one without a back, but that only made it a stool, and more suitable for a cottage in a wood; and cups and saucers and plates we bought ourselves at Killicks. Mauvy blobs on white, very cottagy. So was the blue-and-red table-cover. We bought that ourselves, too. We had a kettle and two teaspoons, and a crockery dog and a geranium in a pot on the window-ledge. It was as beautiful as a Christmas card, and all our own. And then Madeline, who can always be trusted to be a little different from us, said she didn’t think it was nearly as comfortable as the Red House at Yalding! Comfortable! As if the Source of the Nile, or the North Pole, or Robinson Crusoe, or anything really worth having ever came of being comfortable.