E. Nesbit

“ 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. ”

“ Alice and Dora screamed hideously. So did Daisy, but her screams were thinner.
The snake swam round and round all the time our boat was in the lock. It swam with four inches of itself—the head end—reared up out of the water, exactly like Kaa in the Jungle Book—so we know Kipling is a true author and no rotter. We were careful to keep our hands well inside the boat. A snake’s eyes strike terror into the boldest breast. ”

“ She is the bull-dog, and very stout and heavy. She had just been let loose and she came bounding along in her clumsy way, and jumped up on Oswald, who is beloved by all dumb animals. (You know how sagacious they are.) Well, Martha knocked the ball out of Oswald’s hands, and it fell on the grass, and Noel pounced on it like a hooded falcon on its prey. Oswald would scorn to deny that he was not going to stand this, and the next moment the two were rolling over on the grass, and very soon Noel was made to bite the dust. And serve him right. He is old enough to know his own mind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Alice got all right there; because you cannot think much about ghosts and nonsense when the sun is shining bang down on you at four o’clock in the afternoon, and you can see red farm-roofs between the trees, and the safe white roads, with people in carts like black ants crawling. ”

“ Then Oswald said, ‘We WERE playing at fox-hunting, but we couldn’t find anything but a rabbit that hid, so my brother was being the fox; and then we found the fox shot dead, and I don’t know who did it; and we were sorry for it and we buried it—and that’s all.’
‘Not quite,’ said the riding-breeches gentleman, with what I think you call a bitter smile, ‘not quite. This is my land and I’ll have you up for trespass and damage. Come along now, no nonsense! I’m a magistrate and I’m Master of the Hounds. A vixen, too! What did you shoot her with? You’re too young to have a gun. ”

“ It was Dora who said it all came from my quarrelling with Noel about that rotten cricket ball; but Alice, gently yet firmly, made her shut up.
I let Noel have the ball. It had been thoroughly soaked, but it dried all right. But it could never be the same to me after what it had done and what I had done.
I hope you will try to agree with Albert’s uncle and not think foul scorn of Oswald because of this story. Perhaps you have done things nearly as bad yourself sometimes. If you have, you will know how ‘owning up’ soothes the savage breast and alleviates the gnawings of remorse. ”

“ If that doesn’t make us good it won’t be my fault.
‘The aim of the society is nobleness and goodness, and great and unselfish deeds. We wish not to be such a nuisance to grown-up people and to perform prodigies of real goodness. We wish to spread our wings’—here Alice read very fast. She told me afterwards Daisy had helped her with that part, and she thought when she came to the wings they sounded rather silly—‘to spread our wings and rise above the kind of interesting things that you ought not to do, but to do kindnesses to all, however low and mean.’
Denny was listening carefully. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE JUNGLE
Children are like jam: all very well in the proper place, but you can’t stand them all over the shop—eh, what?’
These were the dreadful words of our Indian uncle. They made us feel very young and angry; and yet we could not be comforted by calling him names to ourselves, as you do when nasty grown-ups say nasty things, because he is not nasty, but quite the exact opposite when not irritated. And we could not think it ungentlemanly of him to say we were like jam, because, as Alice says, jam is very nice indeed—only not on furniture and improper places like that. ”

“ We looked at each other and turned pale, and Noel said—
‘Hadn’t we better call Mrs Pettigrew?’
But Oswald simply couldn’t consent to this. He could not get rid of the feeling that this was our fault somehow for meddling with the river, though of course the clear star of reason told him it could not possibly be the case.
We all devoted ourselves, heart and soul, to the work before us. We put the bath under the worst and wettest place, and the jugs and basins under lesser streams, and we moved the beds away to the dry end of the room. Ours is a long attic that runs right across the house. ”

“ Daisy giggled. Our own girls never giggle—they laugh right out or hold their tongues. Their kind brothers have taught them this. Then Daisy said—
‘If we could have a sort of play to keep us out of the way. I once read a story about an animal race. Everybody had an animal, and they had to go how they liked, and the one that got in first got the prize. There was a tortoise in it, and a rabbit, and a peacock, and sheep, and dogs, and a kitten.’
This proposal left us cold, as Albert’s uncle says, because we knew there could not be any prize worth bothering about. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You remember Alice was still dressed up as the gay equestrienne in the dressing-table pink and white, with rosy garlands, now very droopy, and she had no stockings on, only white sand-shoes, because she thought they would be easier than boots for balancing on the pig in the graceful bare-backed act.
Oswald was attired in red paint and flour and pyjamas, for a clown. It is really IMPOSSIBLE to run speedfully in another man’s pyjamas, so Oswald had taken them off, and wore his own brown knickerbockers belonging to his Norfolks. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The lawn under the cedar was transformed into a dream of beauty, what with the stuffed creatures and the paper-tailed things and the waterfall. And Alice said—
‘I wish the tigers did not look so flat.’ For of course with pillows you can only pretend it is a sleeping tiger getting ready to make a spring out at you. It is difficult to prop up tiger-skins in a life-like manner when there are no bones inside them, only pillows and sofa cushions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And the girls said, ‘Oh, do let them come!’ It was Alice who said—
‘Why not ask them to tea? They’ll be very tired coming all the way from Maidstone.’
‘Would you really like it?’ Albert’s uncle asked. ‘I’m afraid they’ll be but dull dogs, the Antiquities, stuffy old gentlemen with amphorae in their buttonholes instead of orchids, and pedigrees poking out of all their pockets.’
We laughed—because we knew what an amphorae is. If you don’t you might look it up in the dicker. It’s not a flower, though it sounds like one out of the gardening book, the kind you never hear of anyone growing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I cannot help telling you that locks are opened with crowbars. You push and push till a thing goes up and the water runs through. It is rather like the little sliding door in the big door of a hen-house.
‘I know where the crowbar is,’ Alice said. ‘Dicky and I were down here yesterday when you were su—’ She was going to say sulking, I know, but she remembered manners ere too late so Oswald bears her no malice. She went on: ‘Yesterday, when you were upstairs. And we saw the water-tender open the lock and the weir sluices. ”

“ Oswald never hesitated. He crammed the cricket ball into his pocket and climbed up the shelves and unbolted the trap-door, and shoved it up, and pulled himself up through it. Though above all was dark and smelt of spiders, Oswald fearlessly shut the trap-door down again before he struck a match. He always carries matches. He is a boy fertile in every subtle expedient. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But when everything was quite ready, and our blue rosettes fastened on our breasts over our benevolent hearts, we stuck up the great placard we had made with ‘Benevolent Bar. Free Drinks to all Weary Travellers’, in white wadding on red calico, like Christmas decorations in church. We had meant to fasten this to the edge of the awning, but we had to pin it to the front of the tablecloth, because I am sorry to say the awning went wrong from the first. We could not drive the willow poles into the road; it was much too hard. ”