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CHAPTER 7. BEING BEAVERS; OR, THE YOUNG EXPLORERS (ARCTIC OR OTHERWISE)
You read in books about the pleasures of London, and about how people
who live in the country long for the gay whirl of fashion in town
because the country is so dull. I do not agree with this at all. In
London, or at any rate Lewisham, nothing happens unless you make it
happen; or if it happens it doesn't happen to you, and you don't know
the people it does happen to. But in the country the most interesting
events occur quite freely, and they seem to happen to you as much as to
anyone else. Very often quite without your doing anything to help.
The natural and right ways of earning your living in the country are
much jollier than town ones, too; sowing and reaping, and doing things
with animals, are much better sport than fishmongering or bakering or
oil-shopping, and those sort of things, except, of course, a plumber's
and gasfitter's, and he is the same in town or country—most interesting
and like an engineer.
I remember what a nice man it was that came to cut the gas off once
at our old house in Lewisham, when my father's business was feeling
so poorly. He was a true gentleman, and gave Oswald and Dicky over
two yards and a quarter of good lead piping, and a brass tap that only
wanted a washer, and a whole handful of screws to do what we liked with.
We screwed the back door up with the screws, I remember, one night when
Eliza was out without leave. There was an awful row. We did not mean
to get her into trouble. We only thought it would be amusing for her to
find the door screwed up when she came down to take in the milk in the
morning. But I must not say any more about the Lewisham house. It is
only the pleasures of memory, and nothing to do with being beavers, or
any sort of exploring.
I think Dora and Daisy are the kind of girls who will grow up very good,
and perhaps marry missionaries. I am glad Oswald's destiny looks at
present as if it might be different.
We made two expeditions to discover the source of the Nile (or the North
Pole), and owing to their habit of sticking together and doing dull and
praiseable things, like sewing, and helping with the cooking, and taking
invalid delicacies to the poor and indignant, Daisy and Dora were wholly
out of it both times, though Dora's foot was now quite well enough to
have gone to the North Pole or the Equator either. They said they did
not mind the first time, because they like to keep themselves clean; it
is another of their *** ways. And they said they had had a better time
than us. (It was only a clergyman and his wife who called, and hot cakes
for tea.) The second time they said they were lucky not to have been in
it. And perhaps they were right. But let me to my narrating. I hope you
will like it. I am going to try to write it a different way, like the
books they give you for a prize at a girls' school—I mean a 'young
ladies' school', of course—not a high school. High schools are not
nearly so silly as some other kinds. Here goes:
'"Ah, me!" sighed a slender maiden of twelve summers, removing her
elegant hat and passing her tapery fingers lightly through her fair
tresses, "how sad it is—is it not?—to see able-bodied youths and young
ladies wasting the precious summer hours in idleness and luxury."
'The maiden frowned reproachingly, but yet with earnest gentleness, at
the group of youths and maidens who sat beneath an umbragipeaous beech
tree and ate black currants.
'"Dear brothers and sisters," the blushing girl went on, "could we not,
even now, at the eleventh hour, turn to account these wasted lives of
ours, and seek some occupation at once improving and agreeable?"
'"I do not quite follow your meaning, dear sister," replied the
cleverest of her brothers, on whose brow—'
It's no use. I can't write like these books. I wonder how the books'
authors can keep it up.
What really happened was that we were all eating black currants in the
orchard, out of a cabbage leaf, and Alice said—
'I say, look here, let's do something. It's simply silly to waste a day
like this. It's just on eleven. Come on!'
And Oswald said, 'Where to?'
This was the beginning of it.
The moat that is all round our house is fed by streams. One of them is
a sort of open overflow pipe from a good-sized stream that flows at the
other side of the orchard.
It was this stream that Alice meant when she said—
'Why not go and discover the source of the Nile?'
Of course Oswald knows quite well that the source of the real live
Egyptian Nile is no longer buried in that mysteriousness where it lurked
undisturbed for such a long time. But he was not going to say so. It is
a great thing to know when not to say things.
'Why not have it an Arctic expedition?' said Dicky; 'then we could take
an ice-axe, and live on blubber and things. Besides, it sounds cooler.'
'Vote! vote!' cried Oswald. So we did. Oswald, Alice, Noel, and Denny
voted for the river of the ibis and the crocodile. Dicky, H. O., and the
other girls for the region of perennial winter and rich blubber.
So Alice said, 'We can decide as we go. Let's start anyway.'
The question of supplies had now to be gone into. Everybody wanted to
take something different, and nobody thought the other people's things
would be the slightest use. It is sometimes thus even with grown-up
expeditions. So then Oswald, who is equal to the hardest emergency that
ever emerged yet, said—
'Let's each get what we like. The secret storehouse can be the shed in
the corner of the stableyard where we got the door for the raft. Then
the captain can decide who's to take what.'
This was done. You may think it but the work of a moment to fit out an
expedition, but this is not so, especially when you know not whether
your exploring party is speeding to Central Africa or merely to the
world of icebergs and the Polar bear.
Dicky wished to take the wood-axe, the coal hammer, a blanket, and a
mackintosh.
H. O. brought a large *** in case we had to light fires, and a pair
of old skates he had happened to notice in the box-room, in case the
expedition turned out icy.
Noel had nicked a dozen boxes of matches, a spade, and a trowel, and had
also obtained—I know not by what means—a jar of pickled onions.
Denny had a walking-stick—we can't break him of walking with it—a book
to read in case he got tired of being a discoverer, a butterfly net and
a box with a cork in it, a tennis ball, if we happened to want to play
rounders in the pauses of exploring, two towels and an umbrella in the
event of camping or if the river got big enough to bathe in or to be
fallen into.
Alice had a comforter for Noel in case we got late, a pair of scissors
and needle and cotton, two whole candles in case of caves.
And she had thoughtfully brought the tablecloth off the small table in
the dining-room, so that we could make all the things up into one bundle
and take it in turns to carry it.
Oswald had fastened his master mind entirely on grub. Nor had the others
neglected this.
All the stores for the expedition were put down on the tablecloth and
the corners tied up. Then it was more than even Oswald's muscley arms
could raise from the ground, so we decided not to take it, but only the
best-selected grub. The rest we hid in the straw loft, for there are
many ups and downs in life, and grub is grub at any time, and so are
stores of all kinds. The pickled onions we had to leave, but not for
ever.
Then Dora and Daisy came along with their arms round each other's necks
as usual, like a picture on a grocer's almanac, and said they weren't
coming.
It was, as I have said, a blazing hot day, and there were differences of
opinion among the explorers about what eatables we ought to have taken,
and H. O. had lost one of his garters and wouldn't let Alice tie it up
with her handkerchief, which the gentle sister was quite willing to do.
So it was a rather gloomy expedition that set off that bright sunny day
to seek the source of the river where Cleopatra sailed in Shakespeare
(or the frozen plains Mr Nansen wrote that big book about).
But the balmy calm of peaceful Nature soon made the others less
cross—Oswald had not been cross exactly but only disinclined to do
anything the others wanted—and by the time we had followed the stream
a little way, and had seen a water-rat and shied a stone or two at him,
harmony was restored. We did not hit the rat.
You will understand that we were not the sort of people to have lived so
long near a stream without plumbing its depths. Indeed it was the same
stream the sheep took its daring jump into the day we had the circus.
And of course we had often paddled in it—in the shallower parts. But
now our hearts were set on exploring. At least they ought to have
been, but when we got to the place where the stream goes under a wooden
sheep-bridge, Dicky cried, 'A camp! a camp!' and we were all glad to sit
down at once. Not at all like real explorers, who know no rest, day or
night, till they have got there (whether it's the North Pole, or the
central point of the part marked 'Desert of Sahara' on old-fashioned
maps).
The food supplies obtained by various members were good and plenty
of it. Cake, hard eggs, sausage-rolls, currants, lemon cheese-cakes,
raisins, and cold apple dumplings. It was all very decent, but Oswald
could not help feeling that the source of the Nile (or North Pole) was a
long way off, and perhaps nothing much when you got there.
So he was not wholly displeased when Denny said, as he lay kicking into
the bank when the things to eat were all gone—
'I believe this is clay: did you ever make huge platters and bowls out
of clay and dry them in the sun? Some people did in a book called Foul
Play, and I believe they baked turtles, or oysters, or something, at the
same time.'
He took up a bit of clay and began to mess it about, like you do putty
when you get hold of a bit. And at once the heavy gloom that had hung
over the explorers became expelled, and we all got under the shadow of
the bridge and messed about with clay.
'It will be jolly!' Alice said, 'and we can give the huge platters to
poor cottagers who are short of the usual sorts of crockery. That would
really be a very golden deed.'
It is harder than you would think when you read about it, to make huge
platters with clay. It flops about as soon as you get it any size,
unless you keep it much too thick, and then when you turn up the edges
they crack. Yet we did not mind the trouble. And we had all got our
shoes and stockings off. It is impossible to go on being cross when your
feet are in cold water; and there is something in the smooth messiness
of clay, and not minding how dirty you get, that would soothe the
savagest breast that ever beat.
After a bit, though, we gave up the idea of the huge platter and tried
little things. We made some platters—they were like flower-pot saucers;
and Alice made a bowl by doubling up her fists and getting Noel to slab
the clay on outside. Then they smoothed the thing inside and out with
wet fingers, and it was a bowl—at least they said it was. When we'd
made a lot of things we set them in the sun to dry, and then it seemed
a pity not to do the thing thoroughly. So we made a bonfire, and when it
had burnt down we put our pots on the soft, white, hot ashes among the
little red sparks, and kicked the ashes over them and heaped more fuel
over the top. It was a fine fire.
Then tea-time seemed as if it ought to be near, and we decided to come
back next day and get our pots.
As we went home across the fields Dicky looked back and said—
'The bonfire's going pretty strong.'
We looked. It was. Great flames were rising to heaven against the
evening sky. And we had left it,a smouldering flat heap.
'The clay must have caught alight,' H. O. said. 'Perhaps it's the kind
that burns. I know I've heard of fireclay. And there's another sort you
can eat.'
'Oh, shut up!' Dicky said with anxious scorn.
With one accord we turned back. We all felt THE feeling—the one that
means something fatal being up and it being your fault.
'Perhaps, Alice said, 'a beautiful young lady in a muslin dress was
passing by, and a spark flew on to her, and now she is rolling in agony
enveloped in flames.'
We could not see the fire now, because of the corner of the wood, but we
hoped Alice was mistaken.
But when we got in sight of the scene of our pottering industry we saw
it was as bad nearly as Alice's wild dream. For the wooden fence leading
up to the bridge had caught fire, and it was burning like billy oh.
Oswald started to run; so did the others. As he ran he said to himself,
'This is no time to think about your clothes. Oswald, be bold!'
And he was.
Arrived at the site of the conflagration, he saw that caps or straw hats
full of water, however quickly and perseveringly given, would never put
the bridge out, and his eventful past life made him know exactly the
sort of wigging you get for an accident like this.
So he said, 'Dicky, soak your jacket and mine in the stream and chuck
them along. Alice, stand clear, or your silly girl's clothes'll catch as
sure as fate.'
Dicky and Oswald tore off their jackets, so did Denny, but we would not
let him and H. O. wet theirs. Then the brave Oswald advanced warily to
the end of the burning rails and put his wet jacket over the end bit,
like a linseed poultice on the throat of a suffering invalid who has
got bronchitis. The burning wood hissed and smouldered, and Oswald fell
back, almost choked with the smoke. But at once he caught up the other
wet jacket and put it on another place, and of course it did the trick
as he had known it would do. But it was a long job, and the smoke in his
eyes made the young hero obliged to let Dicky and Denny take a turn
as they had bothered to do from the first. At last all was safe; the
devouring element was conquered. We covered up the beastly bonfire with
clay to keep it from getting into mischief again, and then Alice said—
'Now we must go and tell.'
'Of course,' Oswald said shortly. He had meant to tell all the time.
So we went to the farmer who has the Moat House Farm, and we went at
once, because if you have any news like that to tell it only makes it
worse if you wait about. When we had told him he said—
'You little —-.' I shall not say what he said besides that, because
I am sure he must have been sorry for it next Sunday when he went to
church, if not before.
We did not take any notice of what he said, but just kept on saying how
sorry we were; and he did not take our apology like a man, but only
said he daresayed, just like a woman does. Then he went to look at his
bridge, and we went in to our tea. The jackets were never quite the same
again.
Really great explorers would never be discouraged by the daresaying of
a farmer, still less by his calling them names he ought not to. Albert's
uncle was away so we got no double slating; and next day we started
again to discover the source of the river of cataracts (or the region of
mountain-like icebergs).
We set out, heavily provisioned with a large cake Daisy and Dora had
made themselves, and six bottles of ginger-beer. I think real explorers
most likely have their ginger-beer in something lighter to carry than
stone bottles. Perhaps they have it by the cask, which would come
cheaper; and you could make the girls carry it on their back, like in
pictures of the daughters of regiments.
We passed the scene of the devouring conflagration, and the thought
of the fire made us so thirsty we decided to drink the ginger-beer and
leave the bottles in a place of concealment. Then we went on, determined
to reach our destination, Tropic or Polar, that day.
Denny and H. O. wanted to stop and try to make a fashionable
watering-place at that part where the stream spreads out like a
small-sized sea, but Noel said, 'No.' We did not like fashionableness.
'YOU ought to, at any rate,' Denny said. 'A Mr Collins wrote an Ode to
the Fashions, and he was a great poet.'
'The poet Milton wrote a long book about Satan,' Noel said, 'but I'm not
bound to like HIM.' I think it was smart of Noel.
'People aren't obliged to like everything they write about even, let
alone read,' Alice said. 'Look at "Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!"
and all the pieces of poetry about war, and tyrants, and slaughtered
saints—and the one you made yourself about the black beetle, Noel.'
By this time we had got by the pondy place and the danger of delay was
past; but the others went on talking about poetry for quite a field and
a half, as we walked along by the banks of the stream. The stream was
broad and shallow at this part, and you could see the stones and
gravel at the bottom, and millions of baby fishes, and a sort of
skating-spiders walking about on the top of the water. Denny said the
water must be ice for them to be able to walk on it, and this showed we
were getting near the North Pole. But Oswald had seen a kingfisher by
the wood, and he said it was an ibis, so this was even.
When Oswald had had as much poetry as he could bear he said, 'Let's be
beavers and make a dam.' And everybody was so hot they agreed joyously,
and soon our clothes were tucked up as far as they could go and our legs
looked green through the water, though they were pink out of it.
Making a dam is jolly good fun, though laborious, as books about beavers
take care to let you know.
Dicky said it must be Canada if we were beavers, and so it was on the
way to the Polar system, but Oswald pointed to his heated brow, and
Dicky owned it was warm for Polar regions. He had brought the ice-axe
(it is called the wood chopper sometimes), and Oswald, ever ready and
able to command, set him and Denny to cut turfs from the bank while we
heaped stones across the stream. It was clayey here, or of course dam
making would have been vain, even for the best-trained beaver.
When we had made a ridge of stones we laid turfs against them—nearly
across the stream, leaving about two feet for the water to go
through—then more stones, and then lumps of clay stamped down as hard
as we could. The industrious beavers spent hours over it, with only one
easy to eat cake in. And at last the dam rose to the level of the bank.
Then the beavers collected a great heap of clay, and four of them lifted
it and dumped it down in the opening where the water was running. It did
splash a little, but a true-hearted beaver knows better than to mind a
bit of a wetting, as Oswald told Alice at the time. Then with more clay
the work was completed. We must have used tons of clay; there was quite
a big long hole in the bank above the dam where we had taken it out.
When our beaver task was performed we went on, and Dicky was so hot he
had to take his jacket off and shut up about icebergs.
I cannot tell you about all the windings of the stream; it went through
fields and woods and meadows, and at last the banks got steeper and
higher, and the trees overhead darkly arched their mysterious branches,
and we felt like the princes in a fairy tale who go out to seek their
fortunes.
And then we saw a thing that was well worth coming all that way for; the
stream suddenly disappeared under a dark stone archway, and however much
you stood in the water and stuck your head down between your knees you
could not see any light at the other end.
The stream was much smaller than where we had been beavers.
Gentle reader, you will guess in a moment who it was that said—
'Alice, you've got a candle. Let's explore.' This gallant proposal met
but a cold response. The others said they didn't care much about it, and
what about tea?
I often think the way people try to hide their cowardliness behind their
teas is simply beastly.
Oswald took no notice. He just said, with that dignified manner, not at
all like sulking, which he knows so well how to put on—
'All right. I'M going. If you funk it you'd better cut along home and
ask your nurses to put you to bed.' So then, of course, they agreed
to go. Oswald went first with the candle. It was not comfortable; the
architect of that dark subterranean passage had not imagined anyone
would ever be brave enough to lead a band of beavers into its inky
recesses, or he would have built it high enough to stand upright in. As
it was, we were bent almost at a right angle, and this is very awkward
if for long.
But the leader pressed dauntlessly on, and paid no attention to the
groans of his faithful followers, nor to what they said about their
backs.
It really was a very long tunnel, though, and even Oswald was not sorry
to say, 'I see daylight.' The followers cheered as well as they could as
they splashed after him. The floor was stone as well as the roof, so it
was easy to walk on. I think the followers would have turned back if it
had been sharp stones or gravel.
And now the spot of daylight at the end of the tunnel grew larger and
larger, and presently the intrepid leader found himself blinking in the
full sun, and the candle he carried looked simply silly. He emerged,
and the others too, and they stretched their backs and the word 'krikey'
fell from more than one lip. It had indeed been a cramping adventure.
Bushes grew close to the mouth of the tunnel, so we could not see much
landscape, and when we had stretched our backs we went on upstream and
nobody said they'd had jolly well enough of it, though in more than one
young heart this was thought.
It was jolly to be in the sunshine again. I never knew before how cold
it was underground. The stream was getting smaller and smaller.
Dicky said, 'This can't be the way. I expect there was a turning to
the North Pole inside the tunnel, only we missed it. It was cold enough
there.'
But here a twist in the stream brought us out from the bushes, and
Oswald said—
'Here is strange, wild, tropical vegetation in the richest profusion.
Such blossoms as these never opened in a frigid what's-its-name.'
It was indeed true. We had come out into a sort of marshy, swampy place
like I think, a jungle is, that the stream ran through, and it was
simply crammed with *** plants, and flowers we never saw before or
since. And the stream was quite thin. It was torridly hot, and softish
to walk on. There were rushes and reeds and small willows, and it was
all tangled over with different sorts of grasses—and pools here and
there. We saw no wild beasts, but there were more different kinds of
wild flies and beetles than you could believe anybody could bear, and
dragon-flies and gnats. The girls picked a lot of flowers. I know the
names of some of them, but I will not tell you them because this is
not meant to be instructing. So I will only name meadow-sweet, yarrow,
loose-strife, lady's bed-straw and willow herb—both the larger and the
lesser.
Everyone now wished to go home. It was much hotter there than in natural
fields. It made you want to tear all your clothes off and play at
savages, instead of keeping respectable in your boots.
But we had to bear the boots because it was so brambly.
It was Oswald who showed the others how flat it would be to go home the
same way we came; and he pointed out the telegraph wires in the distance
and said—
'There must be a road there, let's make for it,' which was quite a
simple and ordinary thing to say, and he does not ask for any credit for
it. So we sloshed along, scratching our legs with the brambles, and the
water squelched in our boots, and Alice's blue muslin frock was torn all
over in those crisscross tears which are considered so hard to darn.
We did not follow the stream any more. It was only a trickle now, so we
knew we had tracked it to its source. And we got hotter and hotter and
hotter, and the dews of agony stood in beads on our brows and rolled
down our noses and off our chins. And the flies buzzed, and the gnats
stung, and Oswald bravely sought to keep up Dicky's courage, when he
tripped on a snag and came down on a bramble bush, by saying—
'You see it IS the source of the Nile we've discovered. What price North
Poles now?'
Alice said, 'Ah, but think of ices! I expect Oswald wishes it HAD been
the Pole, anyway.'
Oswald is naturally the leader, especially when following up what is
his own idea, but he knows that leaders have other duties besides just
leading. One is to assist weak or wounded members of the expedition,
whether Polar or Equatorish.
So the others had got a bit ahead through Oswald lending the tottering
Denny a hand over the rough places. Denny's feet hurt him, because when
he was a beaver his stockings had dropped out of his pocket, and boots
without stockings are not a bed of luxuriousness. And he is often
unlucky with his feet.
Presently we came to a pond, and Denny said—
'Let's paddle.'
Oswald likes Denny to have ideas; he knows it is healthy for the boy,
and generally he backs him up, but just now it was getting late and the
others were ahead, so he said—
'Oh, rot! come on.'
Generally the Dentist would have; but even worms will turn if they are
hot enough, and if their feet are hurting them. 'I don't care, I shall!'
he said.
Oswald overlooked the mutiny and did not say who was leader. He just
said—
'Well don't be all day about it,' for he is a kind-hearted boy and can
make allowances. So Denny took off his boots and went into the pool.
'Oh, it's ripping!' he said. 'You ought to come in.'
'It looks beastly muddy,' said his tolerating leader.
'It is a bit,' Denny said, 'but the mud's just as cool as the water, and
so soft, it squeezes between your toes quite different to boots.'
And so he splashed about, and kept asking Oswald to come along in.
But some unseen influence prevented Oswald doing this; or it may have
been because both his bootlaces were in hard knots.
Oswald had cause to bless the unseen influence, or the bootlaces, or
whatever it was.
Denny had got to the middle of the pool, and he was splashing about,
and getting his clothes very wet indeed, and altogether you would have
thought his was a most envious and happy state. But alas! the brightest
cloud had a waterproof lining. He was just saying—
'You are a silly, Oswald. You'd much better—' when he gave a
blood-piercing scream, and began to kick about.
'What's up?' cried the ready Oswald; he feared the worst from the way
Denny screamed, but he knew it could not be an old meat tin in this
quiet and jungular spot, like it was in the moat when the shark bit
Dora.
'I don't know, it's biting me. Oh, it's biting me all over my legs! Oh,
what shall I do? Oh, it does hurt! Oh! oh! oh!' remarked Denny, among
his screams, and he splashed towards the bank. Oswald went into the
water and caught hold of him and helped him out. It is true that Oswald
had his boots on, but I trust he would not have funked the unknown
terrors of the deep, even without his boots, I am almost sure he would
not have.
When Denny had scrambled and been hauled ashore, we saw with horror and
amaze that his legs were stuck all over with large black, slug-looking
things. Denny turned green in the face—and even Oswald felt a bit
***, for he knew in a moment what the black dreadfulnesses were. He
had read about them in a book called Magnet Stories, where there was a
girl called Theodosia, and she could play brilliant trebles on the piano
in duets, but the other girl knew all about leeches which is much more
useful and golden deedy. Oswald tried to pull the leeches off, but they
wouldn't, and Denny howled so he had to stop trying. He remembered from
the Magnet Stories how to make the leeches begin biting—the girl did it
with cream—but he could not remember how to stop them, and they had not
wanted any showing how to begin.
'Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do? Oh, it does hurt! Oh, oh!' Denny
observed, and Oswald said—
'Be a man! Buck up! If you won't let me take them off you'll just have
to walk home in them.'
At this thought the unfortunate youth's tears fell fast. But Oswald gave
him an arm, and carried his boots for him, and he consented to buck
up, and the two struggled on towards the others, who were coming back,
attracted by Denny's yells. He did not stop howling for a moment, except
to breathe. No one ought to blame him till they have had eleven leeches
on their right leg and six on their left, making seventeen in all, as
Dicky said, at once.
It was lucky he did yell, as it turned out, because a man on the
road—where the telegraph wires were—was interested by his howls, and
came across the marsh to us as hard as he could. When he saw Denny's
legs he said—
'Blest if I didn't think so,' and he picked Denny up and carried him
under one arm, where Denny went on saying 'Oh!' and 'It does hurt' as
hard as ever.
Our rescuer, who proved to be a fine big young man in the bloom of
youth, and a farm-labourer by trade, in corduroys, carried the wretched
sufferer to the cottage where he lived with his aged mother; and then
Oswald found that what he had forgotten about the leeches was SALT. The
young man in the bloom of youth's mother put salt on the leeches, and
they squirmed off, and fell with sickening, slug-like flops on the brick
floor.
Then the young man in corduroys and the bloom, etc., carried Denny home
on his back, after his legs had been bandaged up, so that he looked like
'wounded warriors returning'.
It was not far by the road, though such a long distance by the way the
young explorers had come.
He was a good young man, and though, of course, acts of goodness are
their own reward, still I was glad he had the two half-crowns Albert's
uncle gave him, as well as his own good act. But I am not sure Alice
ought to have put him in the Golden Deed book which was supposed to be
reserved for Us.
Perhaps you will think this was the end of the source of the Nile (or
North Pole). If you do, it only shows how mistaken the gentlest reader
may be.
The wounded explorer was lying with his wounds and bandages on the sofa,
and we were all having our tea, with raspberries and white currants,
which we richly needed after our torrid adventures, when Mrs Pettigrew,
the housekeeper, put her head in at the door and said—
'Please could I speak to you half a moment, sir?' to Albert's uncle.
And her voice was the kind that makes you look at each other when the
grown-up has gone out, and you are silent, with your bread-and-butter
halfway to the next bite, or your teacup in mid flight to your lips.
It was as we suppose. Albert's uncle did not come back for a long while.
We did not keep the bread-and-butter on the wing all that time, of
course, and we thought we might as well finish the raspberries and white
currants. We kept some for Albert's uncle, of course, and they were the
best ones too but when he came back he did not notice our thoughtful
unselfishness.
He came in, and his face wore the look that means bed, and very likely
no supper.
He spoke, and it was the calmness of white-hot iron, which is something
like the calmness of despair. He said—
'You have done it again. What on earth possessed you to make a dam?'
'We were being beavers,' said H. O., in proud tones. He did not see as
we did where Albert's uncle's tone pointed to.
'No doubt,' said Albert's uncle, rubbing his hands through his hair. 'No
doubt! no doubt! Well, my beavers, you may go and build dams with your
bolsters. Your dam stopped the stream; the clay you took for it left
a channel through which it has run down and ruined about seven pounds'
worth of freshly-reaped barley. Luckily the farmer found it out in time
or you might have spoiled seventy pounds' worth. And you burned a bridge
yesterday.'
We said we were sorry. There was nothing else to say, only Alice added,
'We didn't MEAN to be naughty.'
'Of course not,' said Albert's uncle, 'you never do. Oh, yes, I'll kiss
you—but it's bed and it's two hundred lines to-morrow, and the line
is—"Beware of Being Beavers and Burning Bridges. Dread Dams." It will
be a capital exercise in capital B's and D's.'
We knew by that that, though annoyed, he was not furious; we went to
bed.
I got jolly sick of capital B's and D's before sunset on the morrow.
That night, just as the others were falling asleep, Oswald said—
'I say.'
'Well,' retorted his brother.
'There is one thing about it,' Oswald went on, 'it does show it was a
rattling good dam anyhow.'
And filled with this agreeable thought, the weary beavers (or explorers,
Polar or otherwise) fell asleep.
End of Chapter 7 CHAPTER 8. THE HIGH-BORN BABE
It really was not such a bad baby—for a baby. Its face was round and
quite clean, which babies' faces are not always, as I daresay you know
by your own youthful relatives; and Dora said its cape was trimmed with
real lace, whatever that may be—I don't see myself how one kind of
lace can be realler than another. It was in a very swagger sort of
perambulator when we saw it; and the perambulator was standing quite by
itself in the lane that leads to the mill.
'I wonder whose baby it is,' Dora said. 'Isn't it a darling, Alice?'
Alice agreed to its being one, and said she thought it was most likely
the child of noble parents stolen by gipsies.
'These two, as likely as not,' Noel said. 'Can't you see something
crime-like in the very way they're lying?'
They were two tramps, and they were lying on the grass at the edge of
the lane on the shady side fast asleep, only a very little further on
than where the Baby was. They were very ragged, and their snores did
have a sinister sound.
'I expect they stole the titled heir at dead of night, and they've been
travelling hot-foot ever since, so now they're sleeping the sleep
of exhaustedness,' Alice said. 'What a heart-rending scene when the
patrician mother wakes in the morning and finds the infant aristocrat
isn't in bed with his mamma.'
The Baby was fast asleep or else the girls would have kissed it. They
are strangely fond of kissing. The author never could see anything in it
himself.
'If the gipsies DID steal it,' Dora said 'perhaps they'd sell it to us.
I wonder what they'd take for it.'
'What could you do with it if you'd got it?' H. O. asked.
'Why, adopt it, of course,' Dora said. 'I've often thought I should
enjoy adopting a baby. It would be a golden deed, too. We've hardly got
any in the book yet.'
'I should have thought there were enough of us,' Dicky said.
'Ah, but you're none of you babies,' said Dora.
'Unless you count H. O. as a baby: he behaves jolly like one sometimes.'
This was because of what had happened that morning when Dicky found
H. O. going fishing with a box of worms, and the box was the one Dicky
keeps his silver studs in, and the medal he got at school, and what is
left of his watch and chain. The box is lined with red velvet and it was
not nice afterwards. And then H. O. said Dicky had hurt him, and he was
a beastly bully, and he cried. We thought all this had been made up, and
were sorry to see it threaten to break out again. So Oswald said—
'Oh, bother the Baby! Come along, do!'
And the others came.
We were going to the miller's with a message about some flour that
hadn't come, and about a sack of sharps for the pigs.
After you go down the lane you come to a clover-field, and then a
cornfield, and then another lane, and then it is the mill. It is a
jolly fine mill: in fact it is two—water and wind ones—one of each
kind—with a house and farm buildings as well. I never saw a mill like
it, and I don't believe you have either.
If we had been in a story-book the miller's wife would have taken us
into the neat sanded kitchen where the old oak settle was black
with time and rubbing, and dusted chairs for us—old brown Windsor
chairs—and given us each a glass of sweet-scented cowslip wine and
a thick slice of rich home-made cake. And there would have been fresh
roses in an old china bowl on the table. As it was, she asked us all
into the parlour and gave us Eiffel Tower lemonade and Marie biscuits.
The chairs in her parlour were 'bent wood', and no flowers, except some
wax ones under a glass shade, but she was very kind, and we were very
much obliged to her. We got out to the miller, though, as soon as we
could; only Dora and Daisy stayed with her, and she talked to them about
her lodgers and about her relations in London.
The miller is a MAN. He showed us all over the mills—both kinds—and
let us go right up into the very top of the wind-mill, and showed us
how the top moved round so that the sails could catch the wind, and
the great heaps of corn, some red and some yellow (the red is English
wheat), and the heaps slice down a little bit at a time into a square
hole and go down to the mill-stones. The corn makes a rustling soft
noise that is very jolly—something like the noise of the sea—and you
can hear it through all the other mill noises.
Then the miller let us go all over the water-mill. It is fairy palaces
inside a mill. Everything is powdered over white, like sugar on pancakes
when you are allowed to help yourself. And he opened a door and showed
us the great water-wheel working on slow and sure, like some great,
round, dripping giant, Noel said, and then he asked us if we fished.
'Yes,' was our immediate reply.
'Then why not try the mill-pool?' he said, and we replied politely; and
when he was gone to tell his man something we owned to each other that
he was a trump.
He did the thing thoroughly. He took us out and cut us ash saplings for
rods; he found us in lines and hooks, and several different sorts of
bait, including a handsome handful of meal-worms, which Oswald put loose
in his pocket.
When it came to bait, Alice said she was going home with Dora and Daisy.
Girls are strange, mysterious, silly things. Alice always enjoys a rat
hunt until the rat is caught, but she hates fishing from beginning to
end. We boys have got to like it. We don't feel now as we did when
we turned off the water and stopped the competition of the competing
anglers. We had a grand day's fishing that day. I can't think what made
the miller so kind to us. Perhaps he felt a thrill of fellow-feeling in
his manly breast for his fellow-sportsmen, for he was a noble fisherman
himself.
We had glorious sport—eight roach, six dace, three eels, seven perch,
and a young pike, but he was so very young the miller asked us to put
him back, and of course we did. 'He'll live to bite another day,' said
the miller.
The miller's wife gave us bread and cheese and more Eiffel Tower
lemonade, and we went home at last, a little damp, but full of
successful ambition, with our fish on a string.
It had been a strikingly good time—one of those times that happen in
the country quite by themselves. Country people are much more friendly
than town people. I suppose they don't have to spread their friendly
feelings out over so many persons, so it's thicker, like a pound of
butter on one loaf is thicker than on a dozen. Friendliness in the
country is not scrape, like it is in London. Even Dicky and H. O. forgot
the affair of honour that had taken place in the morning. H. O. changed
rods with Dicky because H. O.'s was the best rod, and Dicky baited H.
O.'s hook for him, just like loving, unselfish brothers in Sunday School
magazines.
We were talking fishlikely as we went along down the lane and through
the cornfield and the cloverfield, and then we came to the other lane
where we had seen the Baby. The tramps were gone, and the perambulator
was gone, and, of course, the Baby was gone too.
'I wonder if those gipsies HAD stolen the Baby?' Noel said dreamily. He
had not fished much, but he had made a piece of poetry. It was this:
'How I wish I was a fish.
I would not look At your hook,
But lie still and be cool At the bottom of the pool
And when you went to look At your cruel hook,
You would not find me there, So there!'
'If they did steal the Baby,' Noel went on, 'they will be tracked by the
lordly perambulator. You can disguise a baby in rags and walnut juice,
but there isn't any disguise dark enough to conceal a perambulator's
person.'
'You might disguise it as a wheel-barrow,' said Dicky.
'Or cover it with leaves,' said H. O., 'like the robins.'
We told him to shut up and not gibber, but afterwards we had to own that
even a young brother may sometimes talk sense by accident.
For we took the short cut home from the lane—it begins with a large gap
in the hedge and the grass and weeds trodden down by the hasty feet of
persons who were late for church and in too great a hurry to go round
by the road. Our house is next to the church, as I think I have said
before, some time.
The short cut leads to a stile at the edge of a bit of wood (the
Parson's Shave, they call it, because it belongs to him). The wood has
not been shaved for some time, and it has grown out beyond the stile and
here, among the hazels and chestnuts and young dogwood bushes, we saw
something white. We felt it was our duty to investigate, even if the
white was only the under side of the tail of a dead rabbit caught in a
trap.
It was not—it was part of the perambulator. I forget whether I said
that the perambulator was enamelled white—not the kind of enamelling
you do at home with Aspinall's and the hairs of the brush come out and
it is gritty-looking, but smooth, like the handles of ladies very best
lace parasols. And whoever had abandoned the helpless perambulator in
that lonely spot had done exactly as H. O. said, and covered it with
leaves, only they were green and some of them had dropped off.
The others were wild with excitement. Now or never, they thought, was a
chance to be real detectives. Oswald alone retained a calm exterior. It
was he who would not go straight to the police station.
He said: 'Let's try and ferret out something for ourselves before we
tell the police. They always have a clue directly they hear about the
finding of the body. And besides, we might as well let Alice be in
anything there is going. And besides, we haven't had our dinners yet.'
This argument of Oswald's was so strong and powerful—his arguments are
often that, as I daresay you have noticed—that the others agreed.
It was Oswald, too, who showed his artless brothers why they had much
better not take the deserted perambulator home with them.
'The dead body, or whatever the clue is, is always left exactly as it is
found,' he said, 'till the police have seen it, and the coroner, and the
inquest, and the doctor, and the sorrowing relations. Besides, suppose
someone saw us with the beastly thing, and thought we had stolen it;
then they would say, "What have you done with the Baby?" and then where
should we be?' Oswald's brothers could not answer this question, but
once more Oswald's native eloquence and far-seeing discerningness
conquered.
'Anyway,' Dicky said, 'let's shove the derelict a little further under
cover.'
So we did.
Then we went on home. Dinner was ready and so were Alice and Daisy, but
Dora was not there.
'She's got a—well, she's not coming to dinner anyway,' Alice said when
we asked. 'She can tell you herself afterwards what it is she's got.'
Oswald thought it was headache, or pain in the temper, or in the
pinafore, so he said no more, but as soon as Mrs Pettigrew had helped
us and left the room he began the thrilling tale of the forsaken
perambulator. He told it with the greatest thrillingness anyone could
have, but Daisy and Alice seemed almost unmoved. Alice said—
'Yes, very strange,' and things like that, but both the girls seemed
to be thinking of something else. They kept looking at each other and
trying not to laugh, so Oswald saw they had got some silly secret and he
said—
'Oh, all right! I don't care about telling you. I only thought you'd
like to be in it. It's going to be a really big thing, with policemen in
it, and perhaps a judge.'
'In what?' H. O. said; 'the perambulator?'
Daisy choked and then tried to drink, and spluttered and got purple, and
had to be thumped on the back. But Oswald was not appeased. When Alice
said, 'Do go on, Oswald. I'm sure we all like it very much,' he said—
'Oh, no, thank you,' very politely. 'As it happens,' he went on, 'I'd
just as soon go through with this thing without having any girls in it.'
'In the perambulator?' said H. O. again.
'It's a man's job,' Oswald went on, without taking any notice of H. O.
'Do you really think so,' said Alice, 'when there's a baby in it?'
'But there isn't,' said H. O., 'if you mean in the perambulator.'
'Blow you and your perambulator,' said Oswald, with gloomy forbearance.
Alice kicked Oswald under the table and said—
'Don't be waxy, Oswald. Really and truly Daisy and I HAVE got a secret,
only it's Dora's secret, and she wants to tell you herself. If it was
mine or Daisy's we'd tell you this minute, wouldn't we, Mouse?'
'This very second,' said the White Mouse.
And Oswald consented to take their apologies.
Then the pudding came in, and no more was said except asking for things
to be passed—sugar and water, and bread and things.
Then when the pudding was all gone, Alice said—
'Come on.'
And we came on. We did not want to be disagreeable, though really we
were keen on being detectives and sifting that perambulator to the
very dregs. But boys have to try to take an interest in their sisters'
secrets, however silly. This is part of being a good brother.
Alice led us across the field where the sheep once fell into the brook,
and across the brook by the plank. At the other end of the next field
there was a sort of wooden house on wheels, that the shepherd sleeps in
at the time of year when lambs are being born, so that he can see that
they are not stolen by gipsies before the owners have counted them.
To this hut Alice now led her kind brothers and Daisy's kind brother.
'Dora is inside,' she said, 'with the Secret. We were afraid to have it
in the house in case it made a noise.'
The next moment the Secret was a secret no longer, for we all beheld
Dora, sitting on a sack on the floor of the hut, with the Secret in her
lap.
It was the High-born Babe!
Oswald was so overcome that he sat down suddenly, just like Betsy
Trotwood did in David Copperfield, which just shows what a true author
Dickens is.
'You've done it this time,' he said. 'I suppose you know you're a
baby-stealer?'
'I'm not,' Dora said. 'I've adopted him.'
'Then it was you,' Dicky said, 'who scuttled the perambulator in the
wood?'
'Yes,' Alice said; 'we couldn't get it over the stile unless Dora put
down the Baby, and we were afraid of the nettles for his legs. His name
is to be Lord Edward.'
'But, Dora—really, don't you think—'
'If you'd been there you'd have done the same,' said Dora firmly. 'The
gipsies had gone. Of course something had frightened them and they fled
from justice. And the little darling was awake and held out his arms to
me. No, he hasn't cried a bit, and I know all about babies; I've often
nursed Mrs Simpkins's daughter's baby when she brings it up on Sundays.
They have bread and milk to eat. You take him, Alice, and I'll go and
get some bread and milk for him.'
Alice took the noble brat. It was horribly lively, and squirmed about in
her arms, and wanted to crawl on the floor. She could only keep it quiet
by saying things to it a boy would be ashamed even to think of saying,
such as 'Goo goo', and 'Did ums was', and 'Ickle ducksums, then'.
When Alice used these expressions the Baby laughed and chuckled and
replied—
'Daddadda', 'Bababa', or 'Glueglue'.
But if Alice stopped her remarks for an instant the thing screwed its
face up as if it was going to cry, but she never gave it time to begin.
It was a rummy little animal.
Then Dora came back with the bread and milk, and they fed the noble
infant. It was greedy and slobbery, but all three girls seemed unable to
keep their eyes and hands off it. They looked at it exactly as if it was
pretty.
We boys stayed watching them. There was no amusement left for us
now, for Oswald saw that Dora's Secret knocked the bottom out of the
perambulator.
When the infant aristocrat had eaten a hearty meal it sat on Alice's lap
and played with the amber heart she wears that Albert's uncle brought
her from Hastings after the business of the bad sixpence and the
nobleness of Oswald.
'Now,' said Dora, 'this is a council, so I want to be business-like. The
Duckums Darling has been stolen away; its wicked stealers have deserted
the Precious. We've got it. Perhaps its ancestral halls are miles and
miles away. I vote we keep the little Lovey Duck till it's advertised
for.'
'If Albert's uncle lets you,' said Dicky darkly.
'Oh, don't say "you" like that,' Dora said; 'I want it to be all of our
baby. It will have five fathers and three mothers, and a grandfather and
a great Albert's uncle, and a great grand-uncle. I'm sure Albert's uncle
will let us keep it—at any rate till it's advertised for.'
'And suppose it never is,' Noel said.
'Then so much the better,' said Dora, 'the little Duckyux.'
She began kissing the baby again. Oswald, ever thoughtful, said—'Well,
what about your dinner?'
'Bother dinner!' Dora said—so like a girl. 'Will you all agree to be
his fathers and mothers?'
'Anything for a quiet life,' said Dicky, and Oswald said—
'Oh, yes, if you like. But you'll see we shan't be allowed to keep it.'
'You talk as if he was rabbits or white rats,' said Dora, 'and he's
not—he's a little man, he is.'
'All right, he's no rabbit, but a man. Come on and get some grub, Dora,'
rejoined the kind-hearted Oswald, and Dora did, with Oswald and the
other boys. Only Noel stayed with Alice. He really seemed to like the
baby. When I looked back he was standing on his head to amuse it, but
the baby did not seem to like him any better whichever end of him was
up.
Dora went back to the shepherd's house on wheels directly she had had
her dinner. Mrs Pettigrew was very cross about her not being in to it,
but she had kept her some mutton hot all the same. She is a decent sort.
And there were stewed prunes. We had some to keep Dora company. Then we
boys went fishing again in the moat, but we caught nothing.
Just before tea-time we all went back to the hut, and before we got half
across the last field we could hear the howling of the Secret.
'Poor little beggar,' said Oswald, with manly tenderness. 'They must be
sticking pins in it.'
We found the girls and Noel looking quite pale and breathless. Daisy was
walking up and down with the Secret in her arms. It looked like Alice in
Wonderland nursing the baby that turned into a pig. Oswald said so, and
added that its screams were like it too.
'What on earth is the matter with it?' he said.
'_I_ don't know,' said Alice. 'Daisy's tired, and Dora and I are quite
worn out. He's been crying for hours and hours. YOU take him a bit.'
'Not me,' replied Oswald, firmly, withdrawing a pace from the Secret.
Dora was fumbling with her waistband in the furthest corner of the hut.
'I think he's cold,' she said. 'I thought I'd take off my flannelette
petticoat, only the horrid strings got into a hard knot. Here, Oswald,
let's have your knife.'
With the word she plunged her hand into Oswald's jacket pocket, and next
moment she was rubbing her hand like mad on her dress, and screaming
almost as loud as the Baby. Then she began to laugh and to cry at the
same time. This is called hysterics.
Oswald was sorry, but he was annoyed too. He had forgotten that his
pocket was half full of the meal-worms the miller had kindly given him.
And, anyway, Dora ought to have known that a man always carries his
knife in his trousers pocket and not in his jacket one.
Alice and Daisy rushed to Dora. She had thrown herself down on the pile
of sacks in the corner. The titled infant delayed its screams for a
moment to listen to Dora's, but almost at once it went on again.
'Oh, get some water!' said Alice. 'Daisy, run!'
The White Mouse, ever docile and obedient, shoved the baby into the
arms of the nearest person, who had to take it or it would have fallen a
wreck to the ground. This nearest person was Oswald. He tried to pass
it on to the others, but they wouldn't. Noel would have, but he was busy
kissing Dora and begging her not to. So our hero, for such I may perhaps
term him, found himself the degraded nursemaid of a small but furious
kid.
He was afraid to lay it down, for fear in its rage it should beat
its brains out against the hard earth, and he did not wish, however
innocently, to be the cause of its hurting itself at all. So he walked
earnestly up and down with it, thumping it unceasingly on the back,
while the others attended to Dora, who presently ceased to yell.
Suddenly it struck Oswald that the High-born also had ceased to yell. He
looked at it, and could hardly believe the glad tidings of his faithful
eyes. With bated breath he hastened back to the sheep-house.
The others turned on him, full of reproaches about the meal-worms and
Dora, but he answered without anger.
'Shut up,' he said in a whisper of imperial command. 'Can't you see it's
GONE TO SLEEP?'
As exhausted as if they had all taken part in all the events of a very
long Athletic Sports, the youthful Bastables and their friends dragged
their weary limbs back across the fields. Oswald was compelled to go
on holding the titled infant, for fear it should wake up if it changed
hands, and begin to yell again. Dora's flannelette petticoat had been
got off somehow—how I do not seek to inquire—and the Secret was
covered with it. The others surrounded Oswald as much as possible, with
a view to concealment if we met Mrs Pettigrew. But the coast was clear.
Oswald took the Secret up into his bedroom. Mrs Pettigrew doesn't come
there much, it's too many stairs.
With breathless precaution Oswald laid it down on his bed. It sighed,
but did not wake. Then we took it in turns to sit by it and see that it
did not get up and fling itself out of bed, which, in one of its furious
fits, it would just as soon have done as not.
We expected Albert's uncle every minute.
At last we heard the gate, but he did not come in, so we looked out and
saw that there he was talking to a distracted-looking man on a piebald
horse—one of the miller's horses.
A shiver of doubt coursed through our veins. We could not remember
having done anything wrong at the miller's. But you never know. And it
seemed strange his sending a man up on his own horse. But when we had
looked a bit longer our fears went down and our curiosity got up. For we
saw that the distracted one was a gentleman.
Presently he rode off, and Albert's uncle came in. A deputation met him
at the door—all the boys and Dora, because the baby was her idea.
'We've found something,' Dora said, 'and we want to know whether we may
keep it.'
The rest of us said nothing. We were not so very extra anxious to keep
it after we had heard how much and how long it could howl. Even Noel had
said he had no idea a baby could yell like it. Dora said it only cried
because it was sleepy, but we reflected that it would certainly be
sleepy once a day, if not oftener.
'What is it?' said Albert's uncle. 'Let's see this treasure-trove. Is it
a wild beast?'
'Come and see,' said Dora, and we led him to our room.
Alice turned down the pink flannelette petticoat with silly pride, and
showed the youthful heir fatly and pinkly sleeping.
'A baby!' said Albert's uncle. 'THE Baby! Oh, my cat's alive!'
That is an expression which he uses to express despair unmixed with
anger.
'Where did you?—but that doesn't matter. We'll talk of this later.'
He rushed from the room, and in a moment or two we saw him mount his
bicycle and ride off.
Quite shortly he returned with the distracted horse-man.
It was HIS baby, and not titled at all. The horseman and his wife were
the lodgers at the mill. The nursemaid was a girl from the village.
She SAID she only left the Baby five minutes while she went to speak to
her sweetheart who was gardener at the Red House. But we knew she left
it over an hour, and nearly two.
I never saw anyone so pleased as the distracted horseman.
When we were asked we explained about having thought the Baby was the
prey of gipsies, and the distracted horseman stood hugging the Baby, and
actually thanked us.
But when he had gone we had a brief lecture on minding our own business.
But Dora still thinks she was right. As for Oswald and most of the
others, they agreed that they would rather mind their own business all
their lives than mind a baby for a single hour.
If you have never had to do with a baby in the frenzied throes of
sleepiness you can have no idea what its screams are like.
If you have been through such a scene you will understand how we managed
to bear up under having no baby to adopt. Oswald insisted on having the
whole thing written in the Golden Deed book. Of course his share could
not be put in without telling about Dora's generous adopting of the
forlorn infant outcast, and Oswald could not and cannot forget that he
was the one who did get that baby to sleep.
What a time Mr and Mrs Distracted Horseman must have of it,
though—especially now they've sacked the nursemaid.
If Oswald is ever married—I suppose he must be some day—he will have
ten nurses to each baby. Eight is not enough. We know that because we
tried, and the whole eight of us were not enough for the needs of that
deserted infant who was not so extra high-born after all.
End of Chapter 8 �