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CHAPTER 13. THE DRAGON'S TEETH; OR, ARMY-SEED
Albert's uncle was out on his bicycle as usual. After the day when we
became Canterbury Pilgrims and were brought home in the dog-cart with
red wheels by the lady he told us was his long-lost grandmother he had
known years ago in India, he spent not nearly so much of his time
in writing, and he used to shave every morning instead of only when
requisite, as in earlier days. And he was always going out on his
bicycle in his new Norfolk suit. We are not so unobserving as grown-up
people make out. We knew well enough he was looking for the long-lost.
And we jolly well wished he might find her. Oswald, always full of
sympathy with misfortune, however undeserved, had himself tried several
times to find the lady. So had the others. But all this is what they
call a digression; it has nothing to do with the dragon's teeth I am now
narrating.
It began with the pig dying—it was the one we had for the circus, but
it having behaved so badly that day had nothing to do with its illness
and death, though the girls said they felt remorse, and perhaps if we
hadn't made it run so that day it might have been spared to us. But
Oswald cannot pretend that people were right just because they happen to
be dead, and as long as that pig was alive we all knew well enough that
it was it that made us run—and not us it.
The pig was buried in the kitchen garden. Bill, that we made the
tombstone for, dug the grave, and while he was away at his dinner we
took a turn at digging, because we like to be useful, and besides, when
you dig you never know what you may turn up. I knew a man once that
found a gold ring on the point of his fork when he was digging potatoes,
and you know how we found two half-crowns ourselves once when we were
digging for treasure.
Oswald was taking his turn with the spade, and the others were sitting
on the gravel and telling him how to do it.
'Work with a will,' Dicky said, yawning.
Alice said, 'I wish we were in a book. People in books never dig without
finding something. I think I'd rather it was a secret passage than
anything.'
Oswald stopped to wipe his honest brow ere replying.
'A secret's nothing when you've found it out. Look at the secret
staircase. It's no good, not even for hide-and-seek, because of its
squeaking. I'd rather have the pot of gold we used to dig for when we
were little.' It was really only last year, but you seem to grow old
very quickly after you have once passed the prime of your youth, which
is at ten, I believe.
'How would you like to find the mouldering bones of Royalist soldiers
foully done to death by nasty Ironsides?'Noel asked, with his mouth full
of plum.
'If they were really dead it wouldn't matter,' Dora said. 'What I'm
afraid of is a skeleton that can walk about and catch at your legs when
you're going upstairs to bed.' 'Skeletons can't walk,' Alice said in a
hurry; 'you know they can't, Dora.'
And she glared at Dora till she made her sorry she had said what she
had. The things you are frightened of, or even those you would rather
not meet in the dark, should never be mentioned before the little ones,
or else they cry when it comes to bed-time, and say it was because of
what you said.
'We shan't find anything. No jolly fear,' said Dicky.
And just then my spade I was digging with struck on something hard,
and it felt hollow. I did really think for one joyful space that we had
found that pot of gold. But the thing, whatever it was, seemed to be
longish; longer, that is, than a pot of gold would naturally be. And as
I uncovered it I saw that it was not at all pot-of-gold-colour, but like
a bone Pincher has buried. So Oswald said—
'It IS the skeleton.'
The girls all drew back, and Alice said, 'Oswald, I wish you wouldn't.'
A moment later the discovery was unearthed, and Oswald lifted it up,
with both hands.
'It's a dragon's head,' Noel said, and it certainly looked like it.
It was long and narrowish and bony, and with great yellow teeth sticking
in the jaw.
Bill came back just then and said it was a horse's head, but H. O. and
Noel would not believe it, and Oswald owns that no horse he has ever
seen had a head at all that shape.
But Oswald did not stop to argue, because he saw a keeper who showed me
how to set snares going by, and he wanted to talk to him about ferrets,
so he went off and Dicky and Denny and Alice with him. Also Daisy and
Dora went off to finish reading Ministering Children. So H. O. and Noel
were left with the bony head. They took it away.
The incident had quite faded from the mind of Oswald next day. But just
before breakfast Noel and H. O. came in, looking hot and anxious. They
had got up early and had not washed at all—not even their hands and
faces. Noel made Oswald a secret signal. All the others saw it, and with
proper delicate feeling pretended not to have.
When Oswald had gone out with Noel and H. O. in obedience to the secret
signal, Noel said—
'You know that dragon's head yesterday?'
'Well?' Oswald said quickly, but not crossly—the two things are quite
different.
'Well, you know what happened in Greek history when some chap sowed
dragon's teeth?'
'They came up armed men,' said H. O., but Noel sternly bade him shut up,
and Oswald said 'Well,' again. If he spoke impatiently it was because he
smelt the bacon being taken in to breakfast.
'Well,' Noel went on, 'what do you suppose would have come up if we'd
sowed those dragon's teeth we found yesterday?'
'Why, nothing, you young duffer,' said Oswald, who could now smell the
coffee. 'All that isn't History it's Humbug. Come on in to brekker.'
'It's NOT humbug,' H. O. cried, 'it is history. We DID sow—'
'Shut up,' said Noel again. 'Look here, Oswald. We did sow those
dragon's teeth in Randall's ten-acre meadow, and what do you think has
come up?'
'Toadstools I should think,' was Oswald's contemptible rejoinder.
'They have come up a camp of soldiers,' said Noel—ARMED MEN. So you see
it WAS history. We have sowed army-seed, just like Cadmus, and it has
come up. It was a very wet night. I daresay that helped it along.'
Oswald could not decide which to disbelieve—his brother or his ears.
So, disguising his doubtful emotions without a word, he led the way to
the bacon and the banqueting hall.
He said nothing about the army-seed then, neither did Noel and H. O. But
after the bacon we went into the garden, and then the good elder brother
said—
'Why don't you tell the others your ***-and-bull story?'
So they did, and their story was received with warm expressions of
doubt. It was Dicky who observed—
'Let's go and have a squint at Randall's ten-acre, anyhow. I saw a hare
there the other day.'
We went. It is some little way, and as we went, disbelief reigned superb
in every breast except Noel's and H. O.'s, so you will see that even the
ready pen of the present author cannot be expected to describe to you
his variable sensations when he got to the top of the hill and suddenly
saw that his little brothers had spoken the truth. I do not mean that
they generally tell lies, but people make mistakes sometimes, and the
effect is the same as lies if you believe them.
There WAS a camp there with real tents and soldiers in grey and red
tunics. I daresay the girls would have said coats. We stood in ambush,
too astonished even to think of lying in it, though of course we know
that this is customary. The ambush was the wood on top of the little
hill, between Randall's ten-acre meadow and Sugden's Waste Wake pasture.
'There would be cover here for a couple of regiments,' whispered Oswald,
who was, I think, gifted by Fate with the far-seeingness of a born
general.
Alice merely said 'Hist', and we went down to mingle with the troops as
though by accident, and seek for information.
The first man we came to at the edge of the camp was cleaning a sort of
cauldron thing like witches brew bats in.
We went up to him and said, 'Who are you? Are you English, or are you
the enemy?'
'We're the enemy,' he said, and he did not seem ashamed of being what he
was. And he spoke English with quite a good accent for a foreigner.
'The enemy!' Oswald echoed in shocked tones. It is a terrible thing to
a loyal and patriotic youth to see an enemy cleaning a pot in an English
field, with English sand, and looking as much at home as if he was in
his foreign fastnesses.
The enemy seemed to read Oswald's thoughts with deadly unerringness. He
said—
'The English are somewhere over on the other side of the hill. They are
trying to keep us out of Maidstone.'
After this our plan of mingling with the troops did not seem worth going
on with. This soldier, in spite of his unerringness in reading Oswald's
innermost heart, seemed not so very sharp in other things, or he would
never have given away his secret plans like this, for he must have
known from our accents that we were Britons to the backbone. Or perhaps
(Oswald thought this, and it made his blood at once boil and freeze,
which our uncle had told us was possible, but only in India), perhaps he
thought that Maidstone was already as good as taken and it didn't matter
what he said. While Oswald was debating within his intellect what to
say next, and how to say it so as to discover as many as possible of the
enemy's dark secrets, Noel said—
'How did you get here? You weren't here yesterday at tea-time.'
The soldier gave the pot another sandy rub, and said—
'I daresay it does seem quick work—the camp seems as if it had sprung
up in the night, doesn't it?—like a mushroom.'
Alice and Oswald looked at each other, and then at the rest of us. The
words 'sprung up in the night' seemed to touch a string in every heart.
'You see,' whispered Noel, 'he won't tell us how he came here. NOW, is
it humbug or history?'
Oswald, after whisperedly requesting his young brother to dry up and not
bother, remarked, 'Then you're an invading army?'
'Well,' said the soldier, 'we're a skeleton battalion, as a matter of
fact, but we're invading all right enough.'
And now indeed the blood of the stupidest of us froze, just as the
quick-witted Oswald's had done earlier in the interview. Even H. O.
opened his mouth and went the colour of mottled soap; he is so fat that
this is the nearest he can go to turning pale. Denny said, 'But you
don't look like skeletons.'
The soldier stared, then he laughed and said, 'Ah, that's the padding in
our tunics. You should see us in the grey dawn taking our morning bath
in a bucket.' It was a dreadful picture for the imagination. A skeleton,
with its bones all loose most likely, bathing anyhow in a pail. There
was a silence while we thought it over.
Now, ever since the cleaning-cauldron soldier had said that about taking
Maidstone, Alice had kept on pulling at Oswald's jacket behind, and he
had kept on not taking any notice. But now he could not stand it any
longer, so he said—
'Well, what is it?'
Alice drew him aside, or rather, she pulled at his jacket so that he
nearly fell over backwards, and then she whispered, 'Come along, don't
stay parlaying with the foe. He's only talking to you to gain time.'
'What for?' said Oswald.
'Why, so that we shouldn't warn the other army, you silly,' Alice said,
and Oswald was so upset by what she said, that he forgot to be properly
angry with her for the wrong word she used.
'But we ought to warn them at home,' she said—' suppose the Moat House
was burned down, and all the supplies commandeered for the foe?'
Alice turned boldly to the soldier. 'DO you burn down farms?' she asked.
'Well, not as a rule,' he said, and he had the cheek to wink at Oswald,
but Oswald would not look at him. 'We've not burned a farm since—oh,
not for years.'
'A farm in Greek history it was, I expect,' Denny murmured. 'Civilized
warriors do not burn farms nowadays,' Alice said sternly, 'whatever they
did in Greek times. You ought to know that.'
The soldier said things had changed a good deal since Greek times.
So we said good morning as quickly as we could: it is proper to be
polite even to your enemy, except just at the moments when it has really
come to rifles and bayonets or other weapons.
The soldier said 'So long!' in quite a modern voice, and we retraced our
footsteps in silence to the ambush—I mean the wood. Oswald did think of
lying in the ambush then, but it was rather wet, because of the rain the
night before, that H. O. said had brought the army-seed up. And Alice
walked very fast, saying nothing but 'Hurry up, can't you!' and dragging
H. O. by one hand and Noel by the other. So we got into the road.
Then Alice faced round and said, 'This is all our fault. If we hadn't
sowed those dragon's teeth there wouldn't have been any invading army.'
I am sorry to say Daisy said, 'Never mind, Alice, dear. WE didn't sow
the nasty things, did we, Dora?'
But Denny told her it was just the same. It was WE had done it, so long
as it was any of us, especially if it got any of us into trouble. Oswald
was very pleased to see that the Dentist was beginning to understand
the meaning of true manliness, and about the honour of the house of
Bastable, though of course he is only a Foulkes. Yet it is something to
know he does his best to learn.
If you are very grown-up, or very clever, I daresay you will now have
thought of a great many things. If you have you need not say anything,
especially if you're reading this aloud to anybody. It's no good putting
in what you think in this part, because none of us thought anything of
the kind at the time.
We simply stood in the road without any of your clever thoughts, filled
with shame and distress to think of what might happen owing to the
dragon's teeth being sown. It was a lesson to us never to sow seed
without being quite sure what sort it is. This is particularly true of
the penny packets, which sometimes do not come up at all, quite unlike
dragon's teeth.
Of course H. O. and Noel were more unhappy than the rest of us. This was
only fair.
'How can we possibly prevent their getting to Maidstone?' Dickie said.
'Did you notice the red cuffs on their uniforms? Taken from the bodies
of dead English soldiers, I shouldn't wonder.'
'If they're the old Greek kind of dragon's-teeth soldiers, they ought to
fight each other to death,' Noel said; 'at least, if we had a helmet to
throw among them.'
But none of us had, and it was decided that it would be of no use for
H. O. to go back and throw his straw hat at them, though he wanted to.
Denny said suddenly—
'Couldn't we alter the sign-posts, so that they wouldn't know the way to
Maidstone?'
Oswald saw that this was the time for true generalship to be shown.
He said—
'Fetch all the tools out of your chest—Dicky go too, there's a good
chap, and don't let him cut his legs with the saw.' He did once,
tumbling over it. 'Meet us at the cross-roads, you know, where we had
the Benevolent Bar. Courage and dispatch, and look sharp about it.'
When they had gone we hastened to the crossroads, and there a great idea
occurred to Oswald. He used the forces at his command so ably that in
a very short time the board in the field which says 'No thoroughfare.
Trespassers will be prosecuted' was set up in the middle of the road to
Maidstone. We put stones, from a heap by the road, behind it to make it
stand up.
Then Dicky and Denny came back, and Dicky shinned up the sign-post and
sawed off the two arms, and we nailed them up wrong, so that it said 'To
Maidstone' on the Dover Road, and 'To Dover' on the road to Maidstone.
We decided to leave the Trespassers board on the real Maidstone road, as
an extra guard.
Then we settled to start at once to warn Maidstone.
Some of us did not want the girls to go, but it would have been unkind
to say so. However, there was at least one breast that felt a pang of
joy when Dora and Daisy gave out that they would rather stay where they
were and tell anybody who came by which was the real road.
'Because it would be so dreadful if someone was going to buy pigs or
fetch a doctor or anything in a hurry and then found they had got to
Dover instead of where they wanted to go to,' Dora said. But when it
came to dinner-time they went home, so that they were entirely out of
it. This often happens to them by some strange fatalism.
We left Martha to take care of the two girls, and Lady and Pincher went
with us. It was getting late in the day, but I am bound to remember no
one said anything about their dinners, whatever they may have thought.
We cannot always help our thoughts. We happened to know it was roast
rabbits and currant jelly that day.
We walked two and two, and sang the 'British Grenadiers' and 'Soldiers
of the queen' so as to be as much part of the British Army as possible.
The Cauldron-Man had said the English were the other side of the hill.
But we could not see any scarlet anywhere, though we looked for it as
carefully as if we had been fierce bulls.
But suddenly we went round a turn in the road and came plump into a lot
of soldiers. Only they were not red-coats. They were dressed in grey
and silver. And it was a sort of furzy-common place, and three roads
branching out. The men were lying about, with some of their belts
undone, smoking pipes and cigarettes.
'It's not British soldiers,' Alice said. 'Oh dear, oh dear, I'm afraid
it's more enemy. You didn't sow the army-seed anywhere else, did you, H.
O. dear?'
H. O. was positive he hadn't. 'But perhaps lots more came up where we
did sow them,' he said; 'they're all over England by now very likely.
_I_ don't know how many men can grow out of one dragon's tooth.'
Then Noel said, 'It was my doing anyhow, and I'm not afraid,' and he
walked straight up to the nearest soldier, who was cleaning his pipe
with a piece of grass, and said—
'Please, are you the enemy?' The man said—
'No, young Commander-in-Chief, we're the English.'
Then Oswald took command. 'Where is the General?' he said.
'We're out of generals just now, Field-Marshal,' the man said, and his
voice was a gentleman's voice. 'Not a single one in stock. We might suit
you in majors now—and captains are quite cheap. Competent corporals
going for a song. And we have a very nice colonel, too quiet to ride or
drive.'
Oswald does not mind chaff at proper times. But this was not one.
'You seem to be taking it very easy,' he said with disdainful
expression.
'This IS an easy,' said the grey soldier, sucking at his pipe to see if
it would draw.
'I suppose YOU don't care if the enemy gets into Maidstone or not!'
exclaimed Oswald bitterly. 'If I were a soldier I'd rather die than be
beaten.'
The soldier saluted. 'Good old patriotic sentiment' he said, smiling at
the heart-felt boy.
But Oswald could bear no more. 'Which is the Colonel?' he asked.
'Over there—near the grey horse.'
'The one lighting a cigarette?' H. O. asked.
'Yes—but I say, kiddie, he won't stand any jaw. There's not an ounce of
vice about him, but he's peppery. He might kick out. You'd better bunk.'
'Better what?' asked H. O.
'Bunk, bottle, scoot, skip, vanish, exit,' said the soldier.
'That's what you'd do when the fighting begins,' said H. O. He is often
rude like that—but it was what we all thought, all the same.
The soldier only laughed.
A spirited but hasty altercation among ourselves in whispers ended in
our allowing Alice to be the one to speak to the Colonel. It was she who
wanted to. 'However peppery he is he won't kick a girl,' she said, and
perhaps this was true.
But of course we all went with her. So there were six of us to stand
in front of the Colonel. And as we went along we agreed that we would
salute him on the word three. So when we got near, *** said, 'One,
two, three', and we all saluted very well—except H. O., who chose that
minute to trip over a rifle a soldier had left lying about, and was only
saved from falling by a man in a cocked hat who caught him deftly by the
back of his jacket and stood him on his legs.
'Let go, can't you,' said H. O. 'Are you the General?'
Before the Cocked Hat had time to frame a reply, Alice spoke to the
Colonel. I knew what she meant to say, because she had told me as we
threaded our way among the resting soldiery. What she really said was—
'Oh, how CAN you!'
'How can I WHAT?' said the Colonel, rather crossly.
'Why, SMOKE?' said Alice.
'My good children, if you're an infant Band of Hope, let me recommend
you to play in some other backyard,' said the ***-Hatted Man.
H. O. said, 'Band of Hope yourself'—but no one noticed it.
'We're NOT a Band of Hope,' said Noel. 'We're British, and the man over
there told us you are. And Maidstone's in danger, and the enemy not a
mile off, and you stand SMOKING.' Noel was standing crying, himself, or
something very like it.
'It's quite true,' Alice said.
The Colonel said, 'Fiddle-de-dee.'
But the Cocked-Hatted Man said, 'What was the enemy like?' We told him
exactly. And even the Colonel then owned there might be something in it.
'Can you show me the place where they are on the map?' he asked.
'Not on the map, we can't,' said Dicky—'at least, I don't think so,
but on the ground we could. We could take you there in a quarter of an
hour.'
The Cocked-Hatted One looked at the Colonel, who returned his scrutiny,
then he shrugged his shoulders.
'Well, we've got to do something,' he said, as if to himself. 'Lead on,
Macduff.'
The Colonel roused his soldiery from their stupor of pipes by words of
command which the present author is sorry he can't remember.
Then he bade us boys lead the way. I tell you it felt fine, marching
at the head of a regiment. Alice got a lift on the Cocked-Hatted One's
horse. It was a red-roan steed of might, exactly as if it had been in
a ballad. They call a grey-roan a 'blue' in South Africa, the
Cocked-Hatted One said.
We led the British Army by unfrequented lanes till we got to the gate of
Sugden's Waste Wake pasture. Then the Colonel called a whispered halt,
and choosing two of us to guide him, the dauntless and discerning
commander went on, on foot, with an orderly. He chose Dicky and Oswald
as guides. So we led him to the ambush, and we went through it as
quietly as we could. But twigs do crackle and snap so when you are
reconnoitring, or anxious to escape detection for whatever reason.
Our Colonel's orderly crackled most. If you're not near enough to tell
a colonel by the crown and stars on his shoulder-strap, you can tell him
by the orderly behind him, like 'follow my leader'.
'Look out!' said Oswald in a low but commanding whisper, 'the camp's
down in that field. You can see if you take a squint through this gap.'
The speaker took a squint himself as he spoke, and drew back, baffled
beyond the power of speech. While he was struggling with his baffledness
the British Colonel had his squint. He also drew back, and said a word
that he must have known was not right—at least when he was a boy.
'I don't care,' said Oswald, 'they were there this morning. White tents
like mushrooms, and an enemy cleaning a cauldron.'
'With sand,' said Dicky.
'That's most convincing,' said the Colonel, and I did not like the way
he said it.
'I say,' Oswald said, 'let's get to the top corner of the ambush—the
wood, I mean. You can see the crossroads from there.'
We did, and quickly, for the crackling of branches no longer dismayed
our almost despairing spirits.
We came to the edge of the wood, and Oswald's patriotic heart really did
give a jump, and he cried, 'There they are, on the Dover Road.'
Our miscellaneous signboard had done its work.
'By Jove, young un, you're right! And in quarter column, too! We've got
em on toast—on toast—egad!' I never heard anyone not in a book say
'egad' before, so I saw something really out of the way was indeed up.
The Colonel was a man of prompt and decisive action. He sent the orderly
to tell the Major to advance two companies on the left flank and take
cover. Then we led him back through the wood the nearest way, because he
said he must rejoin the main body at once. We found the main body very
friendly with Noel and H. O. and the others, and Alice was talking to
the Cocked-Hatted One as if she had known him all her life.
'I think he's a general in disguise,' Noel said. 'He's been giving us
chocolate out of a pocket in his saddle.'
Oswald thought about the roast rabbit then—and he is not ashamed to own
it—yet he did not say a word. But Alice is really not a bad sort. She
had saved two bars of chocolate for him and Dicky. Even in war girls can
sometimes be useful in their humble way.
The Colonel fussed about and said, 'Take cover there!' and everybody hid
in the ditch, and the horses and the Cocked Hat, with Alice, retreated
down the road out of sight. We were in the ditch too. It was muddy—but
nobody thought of their boots in that perilous moment. It seemed a long
time we were crouching there. Oswald began to feel the water squelching
in his boots, so we held our breath and listened. Oswald laid his ear to
the road like a Red Indian. You would not do this in time of peace, but
when your country is in danger you care but little about keeping your
ears clean. His backwoods' strategy was successful. He rose and dusted
himself and said—'They're coming!'
It was true. The footsteps of the approaching foe were now to be heard
quite audibly, even by ears in their natural position. The wicked enemy
approached. They were marching with a careless swaggeringness that
showed how little they suspected the horrible doom which was about to
teach them England's might and supremeness.
Just as the enemy turned the corner so that we could see them, the
Colonel shouted—'Right section, fire!' and there was a deafening
banging.
The enemy's officer said something, and then the enemy got confused and
tried to get into the fields through the hedges. But all was vain. There
was firing now from our men, on the left as well as the right. And
then our Colonel strode nobly up to the enemy's Colonel and demanded
surrender. He told me so afterwards. His exact words are only known to
himself and the other Colonel. But the enemy's Colonel said, 'I would
rather die than surrender,' or words to that effect.
Our Colonel returned to his men and gave the order to fix bayonets, and
even Oswald felt his manly cheek turn pale at the thought of the amount
of blood to be shed. What would have happened can never now be revealed.
For at this moment a man on a piebald horse came clattering over a
hedge—as carelessly as if the air was not full of lead and steel at
all. Another man rode behind him with a lance and a red pennon on it. I
think he must have been the enemy's General coming to tell his men not
to throw away their lives on a forlorn hope, for directly he said they
were captured the enemy gave in and owned that they were. The enemy's
Colonel saluted and ordered his men to form quarter column again. I
should have thought he would have had about enough of that myself.
He had now given up all thought of sullen resistance to the bitter end.
He rolled a cigarette for himself, and had the foreign cheek to say to
our Colonel—
'By Jove, old man, you got me clean that time! Your scouts seem to have
marked us down uncommonly neatly.'
It was a proud moment when our Colonel laid his military hand on
Oswald's shoulder and said—
'This is my chief scout' which were high words, but not undeserved, and
Oswald owns he felt red with gratifying pride when he heard them.
'So you are the traitor, young man,' said the wicked Colonel, going on
with his cheek.
Oswald bore it because our Colonel had, and you should be generous to a
fallen foe, but it is hard to be called a traitor when you haven't.
He did not treat the wicked Colonel with silent scorn as he might have
done, but he said—
'We aren't traitors. We are the Bastables and one of us is a Foulkes.
We only mingled unsuspected with the enemy's soldiery and learned the
secrets of their acts, which is what Baden-Powell always does when the
natives rebel in South Africa; and Denis Foulkes thought of altering
the sign-posts to lead the foe astray. And if we did cause all this
fighting, and get Maidstone threatened with capture and all that, it
was only because we didn't believe Greek things could happen in Great
Britain and Ireland, even if you sow dragon's teeth, and besides, some
of us were not asked about sowing them.'
Then the Cocked-Hatted One led his horse and walked with us and made
us tell him all about it, and so did the Colonel. The wicked Colonel
listened too, which was only another proof of his cheek.
And Oswald told the tale in the modest yet manly way that some people
think he has, and gave the others all the credit they deserved. His
narration was interrupted no less than four times by shouts of 'Bravo!'
in which the enemy's Colonel once more showed his cheek by joining. By
the time the story was told we were in sight of another camp. It was the
British one this time. The Colonel asked us to have tea in his tent,
and it only shows the magnanimosity of English chivalry in the field of
battle that he asked the enemy's Colonel too. With his usual cheek he
accepted. We were jolly hungry.
When everyone had had as much tea as they possibly could, the Colonel
shook hands with us all, and to Oswald he said—
'Well, good-bye, my brave scout. I must mention your name in my
dispatches to the War Office.'
H. O. interrupted him to say, 'His name's Oswald Cecil Bastable, and
mine is Horace Octavius.' I wish H. O. would learn to hold his tongue.
No one ever knows Oswald was christened Cecil as well, if he can
possibly help it. YOU didn't know it till now.
'Mr Oswald Bastable,' the Colonel went on—he had the decency not to
take any notice of the 'Cecil'—'you would be a credit to any regiment.
No doubt the War Office will reward you properly for what you have done
for your country. But meantime, perhaps, you'll accept five shillings
from a grateful comrade-in-arms.' Oswald felt heart-felt sorry to wound
the good Colonel's feelings, but he had to remark that he had only done
his duty, and he was sure no British scout would take five bob for doing
that. 'And besides,' he said, with that feeling of justice which is part
of his young character, 'it was the others just as much as me.'
'Your sentiments, Sir,' said the Colonel who was one of the politest
and most discerning colonels I ever saw, 'your sentiments do you honour.
But, Bastables all, and—and non-Bastables' (he couldn't remember
Foulkes; it's not such an interesting name as Bastable, of course)—'at
least you'll accept a soldier's pay?'
'Lucky to touch it, a shilling a day!' Alice and Denny said together.
And the Cocked-Hatted Man said something about knowing your own mind and
knowing your own Kipling.
'A soldier,' said the Colonel, 'would certainly be lucky to touch it.
You see there are deductions for rations. Five shillings is exactly
right, deducting twopence each for six teas.'
This seemed cheap for the three cups of tea and the three eggs and all
the strawberry jam and bread-and-butter Oswald had had, as well as what
the others ate, and Lady's and Pincher's teas, but I suppose soldiers
get things cheaper than civilians, which is only right.
Oswald took the five shillings then, there being no longer any scruples
why he should not.
Just as we had parted from the brave Colonel and the rest we saw a
bicycle coming. It was Albert's uncle. He got off and said—
'What on earth have you been up to? What were you doing with those
volunteers?'
We told him the wild adventures of the day, and he listened, and then he
said he would withdraw the word volunteers if we liked.
But the seeds of doubt were sown in the breast of Oswald. He was now
almost sure that we had made jolly fools of ourselves without a moment's
pause throughout the whole of this eventful day. He said nothing at the
time, but after supper he had it out with Albert's uncle about the word
which had been withdrawn.
Albert's uncle said, of course, no one could be sure that the dragon's
teeth hadn't come up in the good old-fashioned way, but that, on the
other hand, it was barely possible that both the British and the enemy
were only volunteers having a field-day or sham fight, and he rather
thought the Cocked-Hatted Man was not a general, but a doctor. And the
man with a red pennon carried behind him MIGHT have been the umpire.
Oswald never told the others a word of this. Their young *** were
all panting with joy because they had saved their country; and it would
have been but heartless unkindness to show them how silly they had been.
Besides, Oswald felt he was much too old to have been so taken in—if
he HAD been. Besides, Albert's uncle did say that no one could be sure
about the dragon's teeth.
The thing that makes Oswald feel most that, perhaps, the whole thing was
a beastly sell, was that we didn't see any wounded. But he tries not to
think of this. And if he goes into the army when he grows up, he will
not go quite green. He has had experience of the arts of war and the
tented field. And a real colonel has called him 'Comrade-in-Arms', which
is exactly what Lord Roberts called his own soldiers when he wrote home
about them.
End of Chapter 13
CHAPTER 14. ALBERT'S UNCLE's GRANDMOTHER; OR, THE LONG-LOST
The shadow of the termination now descended in sable thunder-clouds upon
our devoted nobs. As Albert's uncle said, 'School now gaped for its
prey'. In a very short space of time we should be wending our way back
to Blackheath, and all the variegated delightfulness of the country
would soon be only preserved in memory's faded flowers. (I don't care
for that way of writing very much. It would be an awful swot to keep it
up—looking out the words and all that.)
To speak in the language of everyday life, our holiday was jolly nearly
up. We had had a ripping time, but it was all but over. We really did
feel sorry—though, of course, it was rather decent to think of getting
back to Father and being able to tell the other chaps about our raft,
and the dam, and the Tower of Mystery, and things like that.
When but a brief time was left to us, Oswald and Dicky met by chance
in an apple-tree. (That sounds like 'consequences', but it is mere
truthfulness.) Dicky said—
'Only four more days.'
Oswald said, 'Yes.'
'There's one thing,' Dickie said, 'that beastly society. We don't want
that swarming all over everything when we get home. We ought to dissolve
it before we leave here.'
The following dialogue now took place:
Oswald—'Right you are. I always said it was piffling rot.'
Dicky—'So did I.'
Oswald—'Let's call a council. But don't forget we've jolly well got to
put our foot down.'
Dicky assented, and the dialogue concluded with apples.
The council, when called, was in but low spirits. This made Oswald's and
Dicky's task easier. When people are sunk in gloomy despair about one
thing, they will agree to almost anything about something else. (Remarks
like this are called philosophic generalizations, Albert's uncle says.)
Oswald began by saying—
'We've tried the society for being good in, and perhaps it's done us
good. But now the time has come for each of us to be good or bad on his
own, without hanging on to the others.'
'The race is run by one and one, But never by two and two,'
the Dentist said.
The others said nothing.
Oswald went on: 'I move that we chuck—I mean dissolve—the Wouldbegoods
Society; its appointed task is done. If it's not well done, that's ITS
fault and not ours.'
Dicky said, 'Hear! hear! I second this prop.'
The unexpected Dentist said, 'I third it. At first I thought it would
help, but afterwards I saw it only made you want to be naughty, just
because you were a Wouldbegood.'
Oswald owns he was surprised. We put it to the vote at once, so as not
to let Denny cool. H. O. and Noel and Alice voted with us, so Daisy and
Dora were what is called a hopeless minority. We tried to cheer their
hopelessness by letting them read the things out of the Golden Deed
book aloud. Noel hid his face in the straw so that we should not see the
faces he made while he made poetry instead of listening, and when the
Wouldbegoods was by vote dissolved for ever he sat up, straws in his
hair, and said— End of Chapter 13
THE EPITAPH
'The Wouldbegoods are dead and gone But not the golden deeds they have done
These will remain upon Glory's page To be an example to every age,
And by this we have got to know How to be good upon our ow—N.
N is for Noel, that makes the rhyme and the sense both right. O, W, N,
own; do you see?'
We saw it, and said so, and the gentle poet was satisfied. And the
council broke up. Oswald felt that a weight had been lifted from his
expanding chest, and it is curious that he never felt so inclined to be
good and a model youth as he did then. As he went down the ladder out of
the loft he said—
'There's one thing we ought to do, though, before we go home. We ought
to find Albert's uncle's long-lost grandmother for him.'
Alice's heart beat true and steadfast. She said, 'That's just exactly
what Noel and I were saying this morning. Look out, Oswald, you wretch,
you're kicking chaff into my eyes.' She was going down the ladder just
under me.
Oswald's younger sister's thoughtful remark ended in another council.
But not in the straw loft. We decided to have a quite new place, and
disregarded H. O.'s idea of the dairy and Noel's of the cellars. We had
the new council on the secret staircase, and there we settled exactly
what we ought to do. This is the same thing, if you really wish to be
good, as what you are going to do. It was a very interesting
council, and when it was over Oswald was so pleased to think that the
Wouldbegoods was unrecoverishly dead that he gave Denny and Noel, who
were sitting on the step below him, a good-humoured, playful, gentle,
loving, brotherly shove, and said, 'Get along down, it's tea-time!'
No reader who understands justice and the real rightness of things, and
who is to blame for what, will ever think it could have been Oswald's
fault that the two other boys got along down by rolling over and over
each other, and bursting the door at the bottom of the stairs open by
their revolving bodies. And I should like to know whose fault it was
that Mrs Pettigrew was just on the other side of that door at that very
minute? The door burst open, and the Impetuous bodies of Noel and Denny
rolled out of it into Mrs Pettigrew, and upset her and the tea-tray.
Both revolving boys were soaked with tea and milk, and there were one or
two cups and things smashed. Mrs Pettigrew was knocked over, but none of
her bones were broken. Noel and Denny were going to be sent to bed, but
Oswald said it was all his fault. He really did this to give the others
a chance of doing a refined golden deed by speaking the truth and saying
it was not his fault. But you cannot really count on anyone. They did
not say anything, but only rubbed the lumps on their late-revolving
heads. So it was bed for Oswald, and he felt the injustice hard.
But he sat up in bed and read The Last of the Mohicans, and then he
began to think. When Oswald really thinks he almost always thinks of
something. He thought of something now, and it was miles better than the
idea we had decided on in the secret staircase, of advertising in the
Kentish Mercury and saying if Albert's uncle's long-lost grandmother
would call at the Moat House she might hear of something much to her
advantage.
What Oswald thought of was that if we went to Hazelbridge and asked
Mr B. Munn, Grocer, that drove us home in the cart with the horse that
liked the wrong end of the whip best, he would know who the lady was
in the red hat and red wheels that paid him to drive us home that
Canterbury night. He must have been paid, of course, for even grocers
are not generous enough to drive perfect strangers, and five of
them too, about the country for nothing. Thus we may learn that even
unjustness and sending the wrong people to bed may bear useful fruit,
which ought to be a great comfort to everyone when they are unfairly
treated. Only it most likely won't be. For if Oswald's brothers and
sisters had nobly stood by him as he expected, he would not have had
the solitary reflections that led to the great scheme for finding the
grandmother.
Of course when the others came up to roost they all came and squatted
on Oswald's bed and said how sorry they were. He waived their apologies
with noble dignity, because there wasn't much time, and said he had an
idea that would knock the council's plan into a cocked hat. But he would
not tell them what it was. He made them wait till next morning. This was
not sulks, but kind feeling. He wanted them to have something else to
think of besides the way they hadn't stood by him in the bursting of the
secret staircase door and the tea-tray and the milk.
Next morning Oswald kindly explained, and asked who would volunteer for
a forced march to Hazelbridge. The word volunteer cost the young Oswald
a pang as soon as he had said it, but I hope he can bear pangs with any
man living. 'And mind,' he added, hiding the pang under a general-like
severeness, 'I won't have anyone in the expedition who has anything in
his shoes except his feet.'
This could not have been put more delicately and decently. But Oswald is
often misunderstood. Even Alice said it was unkind to throw the peas up
at Denny. When this little unpleasantness had passed away (it took some
time because Daisy cried, and Dora said, 'There now, Oswald!') there
were seven volunteers, which, with Oswald, made eight, and was, indeed,
all of us. There were no cockle-shells, or tape-sandals, or staves, or
scrips, or anything romantic and pious about the eight persons who set
out for Hazelbridge that morning, more earnestly wishful to be good and
deedful—at least Oswald, I know, was—than ever they had been in the
days of the beastly Wouldbegood Society. It was a fine day. Either it
was fine nearly all last summer, which is how Oswald remembers it, or
else nearly all the interesting things we did came on fine days.
With hearts light and gay, and no peas in anyone's shoes, the walk to
Hazelbridge was perseveringly conducted. We took our lunch with us, and
the dear dogs. Afterwards we wished for a time that we had left one of
them at home. But they did so want to come, all of them, and Hazelbridge
is not nearly as far as Canterbury, really, so even Martha was allowed
to put on her things—I mean her collar—and come with us. She walks
slowly, but we had the day before us so there was no extra hurry.
At Hazelbridge we went into B. Munn's grocer's shop and asked for
ginger-beer to drink. They gave it us, but they seemed surprised at
us wanting to drink it there, and the glass was warm—it had just been
washed. We only did it, really, so as to get into conversation with B.
Munn, grocer, and extract information without rousing suspicion. You
cannot be too careful. However, when we had said it was first-class
ginger-beer, and paid for it, we found it not so easy to extract
anything more from B. Munn, grocer; and there was an anxious silence
while he fiddled about behind the counter among the tinned meats and
sauce bottles, with a fringe of hobnailed boots hanging over his head.
H. O. spoke suddenly. He is like the sort of person who rushes in where
angels fear to tread, as Denny says (say what sort of person that is).
He said—
'I say, you remember driving us home that day. Who paid for the cart?'
Of course B. Munn, grocer, was not such a nincompoop (I like that word,
it means so many people I know) as to say right off. He said—
'I was paid all right, young gentleman. Don't you terrify yourself.'
People in Kent say terrify when they mean worry. So Dora shoved in a
gentle oar. She said—
'We want to know the kind lady's name and address, so that we can write
and thank her for being so jolly that day.'
B. Munn, grocer, muttered something about the lady's address being goods
he was often asked for. Alice said, 'But do tell us. We forgot to ask
her. She's a relation of a second-hand uncle of ours, and I do so want
to thank her properly. And if you've got any extra-strong peppermints at
a penny an ounce, we should like a quarter of a pound.'
This was a master-stroke. While he was weighing out the peppermints his
heart got soft, and just as he was twisting up the corner of the paper
bag, Dora said, 'What lovely fat peppermints! Do tell us.'
And B. Munn's heart was now quite melted, he said—
'It's Miss Ashleigh, and she lives at The Cedars—about a mile down the
Maidstone Road.'
We thanked him, and Alice paid for the peppermints. Oswald was a little
anxious when she ordered such a lot, but she and Noel had got the money
all right, and when we were outside on Hazelbridge Green (a good deal
of it is gravel, really), we stood and looked at each other. Then Dora
said—
'Let's go home and write a beautiful letter and all sign it.'
Oswald looked at the others. Writing is all very well, but it's such a
beastly long time to wait for anything to happen afterwards.
The intelligent Alice divined his thoughts, and the Dentist divined
hers—he is not clever enough yet to divine Oswald's—and the two said
together—
'Why not go and see her?'
'She did say she would like to see us again some day,' Dora replied. So
after we had argued a little about it we went.
And before we had gone a hundred yards down the dusty road Martha began
to make us wish with all our hearts we had not let her come. She began
to limp, just as a pilgrim, who I will not name, did when he had the
split peas in his silly palmering shoes.
So we called a halt and looked at her feet. One of them was quite
swollen and red. Bulldogs almost always have something the matter with
their feet, and it always comes on when least required. They are not the
right breed for emergencies.
There was nothing for it but to take it in turns to carry her. She
is very stout, and you have no idea how heavy she is. A half-hearted
unadventurous person name no names, but Oswald, Alice, Noel, H. O.,
(Dicky, Daisy, and Denny will understand me) said, why not go straight
home and come another day without Martha? But the rest agreed with
Oswald when he said it was only a mile, and perhaps we might get a
lift home with the poor invalid. Martha was very grateful to us for
our kindness. She put her fat white arms round the person's neck who
happened to be carrying her. She is very affectionate, but by holding
her very close to you you can keep her from kissing your face all
the time. As Alice said, 'Bulldogs do give you such large, wet, pink
kisses.'
A mile is a good way when you have to take your turn at carrying Martha.
At last we came to a hedge with a ditch in front of it, and chains
swinging from posts to keep people off the grass and out of the ditch,
and a gate with 'The Cedars' on it in gold letters. All very neat and
tidy, and showing plainly that more than one gardener was kept. There we
stopped. Alice put Martha down, grunting with exhaustedness, and said—
'Look here, Dora and Daisy, I don't believe a bit that it's his
grandmother. I'm sure Dora was right, and it's only his horrid
sweetheart. I feel it in my bones. Now, don't you really think we'd
better chuck it; we're sure to catch it for interfering. We always do.'
'The cross of true love never did come smooth,' said the Dentist. 'We
ought to help him to bear his cross.'
'But if we find her for him, and she's not his grandmother, he'll MARRY
her,' Dicky said in tones of gloominess and despair.
Oswald felt the same, but he said, 'Never mind. We should all hate it,
but perhaps Albert's uncle MIGHT like it. You can never tell. If you
want to do a really unselfish action and no kid, now's your time, my
late Wouldbegoods.'
No one had the face to say right out that they didn't want to be
unselfish.
But it was with sad hearts that the unselfish seekers opened the long
gate and went up the gravel drive between the rhododendrons and other
shrubberies towards the house.
I think I have explained to you before that the eldest son of anybody is
called the representative of the family if his father isn't there. This
was why Oswald now took the lead. When we got to the last turn of the
drive it was settled that the others were to noiselessly ambush in the
rhododendrons, and Oswald was to go on alone and ask at the house for
the grandmother from India—I mean Miss Ashleigh.
So he did, but when he got to the front of the house and saw how neat
the flower-beds were with red geraniums, and the windows all bright and
speckless with muslin blinds and brass rods, and a green parrot in
a cage in the porch, and the doorstep newly whited, lying clean and
untrodden in the sunshine, he stood still and thought of his boots and
how dusty the roads were, and wished he had not gone into the farmyard
after eggs before starting that morning. As he stood there in anxious
uncertainness he heard a low voice among the bushes. It said, 'Hist!
Oswald here!' and it was the voice of Alice.
So he went back to the others among the shrubs and they all crowded
round their leader full of importable news.
'She's not in the house; she's HERE,' Alice said in a low whisper that
seemed nearly all S's. 'Close by—she went by just this minute with a
gentleman.'
'And they're sitting on a seat under a tree on a little lawn, and she's
got her head on his shoulder, and he's holding her hand. I never saw
anyone look so silly in all my born,' Dicky said.
'It's sickening,' Denny said, trying to look very manly with his legs
wide apart.
'I don't know,' Oswald whispered. 'I suppose it wasn't Albert's uncle?'
'Not much,' Dicky briefly replied.
'Then don't you see it's all right. If she's going on like that with
this fellow she'll want to marry him, and Albert's uncle is safe. And
we've really done an unselfish action without having to suffer for it
afterwards.'
With a stealthy movement Oswald rubbed his hands as he spoke in real
joyfulness. We decided that we had better bunk unnoticed. But we had
reckoned without Martha. She had strolled off limping to look about her
a bit in the shrubbery. 'Where's Martha?' Dora suddenly said.
'She went that way,' pointingly remarked H. O.
'Then fetch her back, you young duffer! What did you let her go for?'
Oswald said. 'And look sharp. Don't make a row.'
He went. A minute later we heard a hoarse squeak from Martha—the one
she always gives when suddenly collared from behind—and a little squeal
in a lady-like voice, and a man say 'Hallo!' and then we knew that H. O.
had once more rushed in where angels might have thought twice about it.
We hurried to the fatal spot, but it was too late. We were just in time
to hear H. O. say—
'I'm sorry if she frightened you. But we've been looking for you. Are
you Albert's uncle's long-lost grandmother?'
'NO,' said our lady unhesitatingly.
It seemed vain to add seven more agitated actors to the scene now going
on. We stood still. The man was standing up. He was a clergyman, and I
found out afterwards he was the nicest we ever knew except our own Mr
Briston at Lewisham, who is now a canon or a dean, or something grand
that no one ever sees. At present I did not like him. He said, 'No, this
lady is nobody's grandmother. May I ask in return how long it is since
you escaped from the lunatic asylum, my poor child, and whence your
keeper is?'
H. O. took no notice of this at all, except to say, 'I think you are
very rude, and not at all funny, if you think you are.'
The lady said, 'My dear, I remember you now perfectly. How are all the
others, and are you pilgrims again to-day?'
H. O. does not always answer questions. He turned to the man and said—
'Are you going to marry the lady?'
'Margaret,' said the clergyman, 'I never thought it would come to this:
he asks me my intentions.'
'If you ARE,' said H. O., 'it's all right, because if you do Albert's
uncle can't—at least, not till you're dead. And we don't want him to.'
'Flattering, upon my word,' said the clergyman, putting on a deep frown.
'Shall I call him out, Margaret, for his poor opinion of you, or shall I
send for the police?'
Alice now saw that H. O., though firm, was getting muddled and rather
scared. She broke cover and sprang into the middle of the scene.
'Don't let him rag H. O. any more,' she said, 'it's all our faults. You
see, Albert's uncle was so anxious to find you, we thought perhaps you
were his long-lost heiress sister or his old nurse who alone knew the
secret of his birth, or something, and we asked him, and he said you
were his long-lost grandmother he had known in India. And we thought
that must be a mistake and that really you were his long-lost
sweetheart. And we tried to do a really unselfish act and find you for
him. Because we don't want him to be married at all.'
'It isn't because we don't like YOU,' Oswald cut in, now emerging from
the bushes, 'and if he must marry, we'd sooner it was you than anyone.
Really we would.'
'A generous concession, Margaret,' the strange clergyman uttered, 'most
generous, but the plot thickens. It's almost pea-soup-like now. One or
two points clamour for explanation. Who are these visitors of yours? Why
this Red Indian method of paying morning calls? Why the lurking attitude
of the rest of the tribe which I now discern among the undergrowth?
Won't you ask the rest of the tribe to come out and join the glad
throng?'
Then I liked him better. I always like people who know the same songs we
do, and books and tunes and things.
The others came out. The lady looked very uncomfy, and partly as if she
was going to cry. But she couldn't help laughing too, as more and more
of us came out.
'And who,' the clergyman went on, 'who in fortune's name is Albert? And
who is his uncle? And what have they or you to do in this galere—I mean
garden?'
We all felt rather silly, and I don't think I ever felt more than then
what an awful lot there were of us.
'Three years' absence in Calcutta or elsewhere may explain my ignorance
of these details, but still—'
'I think we'd better go,' said Dora. 'I'm sorry if we've done anything
rude or wrong. We didn't mean to. Good-bye. I hope you'll be happy with
the gentleman, I'm sure.'
'I HOPE so too,' said Noel, and I know he was thinking how much nicer
Albert's uncle was. We turned to go. The lady had been very silent
compared with what she was when she pretended to show us Canterbury. But
now she seemed to shake off some dreamy silliness, and caught hold of
Dora by the shoulder.
'No, dear, no,' she said, 'it's all right, and you must have some
tea—we'll have it on the lawn. John, don't tease them any more.
Albert's uncle is the gentleman I told you about. And, my dear children,
this is my brother that I haven't seen for three years.'
'Then he's a long-lost too,' said H. O.
The lady said 'Not now' and smiled at him.
And the rest of us were dumb with confounding emotions. Oswald was
particularly dumb. He might have known it was her brother, because in
rotten grown-up books if a girl kisses a man in a shrubbery that is
not the man you think she's in love with; it always turns out to be
a brother, though generally the disgrace of the family and not a
respectable chaplain from Calcutta.
The lady now turned to her reverend and surprising brother and said,
'John, go and tell them we'll have tea on the lawn.'
When he was gone she stood quite still a minute. Then she said, 'I'm
going to tell you something, but I want to put you on your honour not
to talk about it to other people. You see it isn't everyone I would tell
about it. He, Albert's uncle, I mean, has told me a lot about you, and I
know I can trust you.'
We said 'Yes', Oswald with a brooding sentiment of knowing all too well
what was coming next.
The lady then said, 'Though I am not Albert's uncle's grandmother I
did know him in India once, and we were going to be married, but we had
a—a—misunderstanding.'
'Quarrel?' Row?' said Noel and H. O. at once.
'Well, yes, a quarrel, and he went away. He was in the Navy then. And
then... well, we were both sorry, but well, anyway, when his ship came
back we'd gone to Constantinople, then to England, and he couldn't find
us. And he says he's been looking for me ever since.'
'Not you for him?' said Noel.
'Well, perhaps,' said the lady.
And the girls said 'Ah!' with deep interest. The lady went on more
quickly, 'And then I found you, and then he found me, and now I must
break it to you. Try to bear up.'
She stopped. The branches cracked, and Albert's uncle was in our midst.
He took off his hat. 'Excuse my tearing my hair,' he said to the lady,
'but has the pack really hunted you down?'
'It's all right,' she said, and when she looked at him she got miles
prettier quite suddenly. 'I was just breaking to them...'
'Don't take that proud privilege from me,' he said. 'Kiddies, allow
me to present you to the future Mrs Albert's uncle, or shall we say
Albert's new aunt?'
There was a good deal of explaining done before tea—about how we got
there, I mean, and why. But after the first bitterness of disappointment
we felt not nearly so sorry as we had expected to. For Albert's uncle's
lady was very jolly to us, and her brother was awfully decent, and
showed us a lot of first-class native curiosities and things, unpacking
them on purpose; skins of beasts, and beads, and brass things, and
shells from different savage lands besides India. And the lady told the
girls that she hoped they would like her as much as she liked them, and
if they wanted a new aunt she would do her best to give satisfaction in
the new situation. And Alice thought of the Murdstone aunt belonging to
Daisy and Denny, and how awful it would have been if Albert's uncle
had married HER. And she decided, she told me afterwards, that we might
think ourselves jolly lucky it was no worse.
Then the lady led Oswald aside, pretending to show him the parrot which
he had explored thoroughly before, and told him she was not like some
people in books. When she was married she would never try to separate
her husband from his bachelor friends, she only wanted them to be her
friends as well.
Then there was tea, and thus all ended in amicableness, and the reverend
and friendly drove us home in a wagonette. But for Martha we shouldn't
have had tea, or explanations, or lift or anything. So we honoured her,
and did not mind her being so heavy and walking up and down constantly
on our laps as we drove home.
And that is all the story of the long-lost grandmother and Albert's
uncle. I am afraid it is rather dull, but it was very important (to
him), so I felt it ought to be narrated. Stories about lovers and
getting married are generally slow. I like a love-story where the hero
parts with the girl at the garden-gate in the gloaming and goes off and
has adventures, and you don't see her any more till he comes home to
marry her at the end of the book. And I suppose people have to marry.
Albert's uncle is awfully old—more than thirty, and the lady is
advanced in years—twenty-six next Christmas. They are to be married
then. The girls are to be bridesmaids in white frocks with fur. This
quite consoles them. If Oswald repines sometimes, he hides it. What's
the use? We all have to meet our fell destiny, and Albert's uncle is not
extirpated from this awful law.
Now the finding of the long-lost was the very last thing we did for the
sake of its being a noble act, so that is the end of the Wouldbegoods,
and there are no more chapters after this. But Oswald hates books that
finish up without telling you the things you might want to know about
the people in the book. So here goes.
We went home to the beautiful Blackheath house. It seemed very stately
and mansion-like after the Moat House, and everyone was most frightfully
pleased to see us.
Mrs Pettigrew CRIED when we went away. I never was so astonished in my
life. She made each of the girls a fat red pincushion like a heart,
and each of us boys had a knife bought out of the housekeeping (I mean
housekeeper's own) money.
Bill Simpkins is happy as sub-under-gardener to Albert's uncle's lady's
mother. They do keep three gardeners—I knew they did. And our ***
still earns enough to sleep well on from our dear old Pig-man.
Our last three days were entirely filled up with visits of farewell
sympathy to all our many friends who were so sorry to lose us. We
promised to come and see them next year. I hope we shall.
Denny and Daisy went back to live with their father at Forest Hill. I
don't think they'll ever be again the victims of the Murdstone aunt—who
is really a great-aunt and about twice as much in the autumn of her days
as our new Albert's-uncle aunt. I think they plucked up spirit enough
to tell their father they didn't like her—which they'd never thought of
doing before. Our own robber says their holidays in the country did
them both a great deal of good. And he says us Bastables have certainly
taught Daisy and Denny the rudiments of the art of making home happy. I
believe they have thought of several quite new naughty things entirely
on their own—and done them too—since they came back from the Moat
House.
I wish you didn't grow up so quickly. Oswald can see that ere long he
will be too old for the kind of games we can all play, and he feels
grown-upness creeping inordiously upon him. But enough of this.
And now, gentle reader, farewell. If anything in these chronicles of the
Wouldbegoods should make you try to be good yourself, the author will
be very glad, of course. But take my advice and don't make a society for
trying in. It is much easier without.
And do try to forget that Oswald has another name besides Bastable. The
one beginning with C., I mean. Perhaps you have not noticed what it was.
If so, don't look back for it. It is a name no manly boy would like to
be called by—if he spoke the truth. Oswald is said to be a very manly
boy, and he despises that name, and will never give it to his own son
when he has one. Not if a rich relative offered to leave him an immense
fortune if he did. Oswald would still be firm. He would, on the honour
of the House of Bastable.
End of Epitaph And end of The Wouldbegoods
by E. Nesbit Being the Further Adventures of the Treasure
Seekers
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