ON THE SIDEBOARD WAS A BLUEY-WHITE CROCKERY IMAGE.ON THE SIDEBOARD WAS A BLUEY-WHITE CROCKERY IMAGE.
The room was small, and very, very odd. It was very dirty too, but perhaps it is not polite to say that. There was a sort of sideboard at one end of the room, with an embroidered dirty cloth on it, and on the cloth a bluey-white crockery image over a foot high. It was very fat and army and leggy, and I think it was an idol. The minute we got inside the young man lighted little brown sticks, and set them to burn in front of it. I suppose it was incense. There was a sort of long, wide, low sofa, without any arms or legs, and a table that was like a box, with another box in front of it for you to sit down on when you worked, and on the table were all sorts of tiny little tools—awls and brads they looked like—and pipe-stems and broken bowls of pipes and mouthpieces, for our rescued Chinaman was a pipe-mender by trade. There wasn't much else in the room except the smell, and that seemed to fill it choke-full. The smell seemed to have all sorts of things in it—glue and gunpowder,and white garden lilies and burnt fat, and it was not so easy to breathe as plain air.
Then a Chinese lady came in. She had green-grey trousers, shiny like varnish, and a blue gown, and her hair was pulled back very tight, and twisted into a little knob at the back.
She wanted to go down on the floor before Alice, but we wouldn't let her. Then she said a great many things that we feel sure were very nice, only they were in Chinese, so we could not tell what they were.
And the Chinaman said that his mother also wanted Alice to walk on her head—not Alice's own, of course, but the mother's.
I wished we had stayed longer, and tried harder to understand what they said, because it was an adventure, take it how you like, that we're not likely to look upon the like of again. Only we were too flustered to see this.
We said, "Don't mention it," and things like that; and when Dicky said, "I think we ought to be going," Oswald said so too.
Then they all began talking Chinese like mad, and the Chinese lady came back and suddenly gave Alice a parrot.
It was red and green, with a very long tail, and as tame as any pet fawn I ever read about. It walked up her arm and round her neck, and stroked her face with its beak. And it did not bite Oswald or Alice, or even Dicky, though they could not be sure at first that it was not going to.
We said all the polite things we could, and the old lady made thousands of hurried Chinese replies, and repeated many times, "All litey, John," which seemed to be all the English she knew.
We never had so much fuss made over us in all our lives. I think it was that that upset our calmness, and seemed to put us into a sort of silly dream that made us not see what idiots we were to hurry off from scenes we should never again behold. So we went. And the youthful Celestial saw us safely to the top of Bullamy's Stairs, and left us there with the parrot and floods of words that seemed all to end in double "e."
We wanted to show him to the others, but he would not come, so we rejoined our anxious relations without him.
The scene of rejoinder was painful, at first because they were most frightfully sick at us having been such an age away; but when we let them look at the parrot, and told them about the fight, they agreed that it was not our fault, and we really had been unavoidably detained.
But Dora said, "Well, you may say I'm always preaching, but Idon'tthink Father would like Alice to be fighting street boys in Millwall."
"I supposeyou'dhave run away and let the old man be killed," said Dicky, and peace was not restored till we were nearly at Greenwich again.
We took the tram to Greenwich Station, and then we took a cab home (and well worth the money, which was all we now had got, except fourpence-halfpenny), for we were all dog-tired.
And dog-tired reminds me that we hadn't found Pincher, in spite of all our trouble.
Miss Blake, who is our housekeeper, was angrier than I have ever seen her. She had been so anxious that she had sent the police to look for us. But, of course, they had not found us. You ought to make allowances for what people do when they are anxious, so I forgive her everything, even what she said about Oswald being a disgrace to a respectable house. He owns we were rather muddy, owing to the fight.
And when the jaw was over and we were having tea—and there was meat to it, because we were as near starving as I ever wish to be—we all ate lots. Even the thought of Pincher could not thwart our bold appetites, though we kept saying, "Poor old Pincher!" "I do wish we'd found him," and things like that. The parrot walked about among the tea-things as tame as tame. And just as Alice was saying how we'd go out again to-morrow and have another try for our faithful hound there was a scratching at the door, and we rushed—and there was Pincher, perfectly well and mad with joy to see us.
H.O. turned an abrupt beetroot colour.
"Oh!" he said.
We said, "What? Out with it."
And though he would much rather have kept it a secret buried in his breast, we made him own that he had shut Pincher up yesterday in the empty rabbit-hutch when he was playing Zoological Gardens and forgotten all about it in the pleasures of our cousin having left us.
So we need not have gone over the water at all. But though Oswald pities all dumb animals, especially those helplessly shut in rabbit-hutches at the bottoms of gardens, he cannot be sorry that we had such a Celestial adventure and got hold of such a parrot. For Alice says that Oswald and Dicky and she shall have the parrot between them.
She is tremendously straight. I often wonder why she was made a girl. She's a jolly sight more of a gentleman than half the boys at our school.
Thisreally happened before Christmas, but many authors go back to bygone years for whole chapters, and I don't see why I shouldn't.
It was one Sunday—the Somethingth Sunday in Advent, I think—and Denny and Daisy and their father and Albert's uncle came to dinner, which is in the middle of the day on that day of rest and the same things to eat for grown-ups and us. It is nearly always roast beef and Yorkshire, but the puddings and vegetables are brightly variegated and never the same two Sundays running.
At dinner some one said something about the coat-of-arms that is on the silver tankards which once, when we were poor and honest, used to stay at the shop having the dents slowly taken out of them for months and months. But now they are always at home and are put at the four corners of the table every day, and any grown-up who likes can drink beer out of them.
After some talk of the sort you don't listento, in which bends and lioncels and gules and things played a promising part, Albert's uncle said that Mr. Turnbull had told him something about that coat-of-arms being carved on a bridge somewhere in Cambridgeshire, and again the conversation wandered into things like Albert's uncle had talked about to the Maidstone Antiquarian Society the day they came over to see his old house in the country and we arranged the time-honoured Roman remains for them to dig up. So, hearing the words king-post and mullion and moulding and underpin, Oswald said might we go; and we went, and took our dessert with us and had it in our own common-room, where you can roast chestnuts with a free heart and never mind what your fingers get like.
When first we knew Daisy we used to call her the White Mouse, and her brother had all the appearance of being one too, but you know how untruthful appearances are, or else it was that we taught him happier things, for he certainly turned out quite different in the end; and she was not a bad sort of kid, though we never could quite cure her of wanting to be "ladylike"—that is the beastliest word there is, I think, and Albert's uncle says so, too. He says if a girl can't be a lady it's not worth while to be only like one—she'd better let it alone and be a free and happy bounder.
But all this is not what I was going to say,only the author does think of so many things besides the story, and sometimes he puts them in. This is the case with Thackeray and the Religious Tract Society and other authors, as well as Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Only I don't suppose you have ever heard of her, though she writes books that some people like very much. But perhaps they are her friends. I did not like the one I read about the Baronet. It was on a wet Sunday at the seaside, and nothing else in the house but Bradshaw and "Elsie; or like a——" or I shouldn't have. But what really happened to us before Christmas is strictly the following narrative.
"I say," remarked Denny, when he had burned his fingers with a chestnut that turned out a bad one after all—and such is life—and he had finished sucking his fingers and getting rid of the chestnut, "about these antiquaries?"
"Well, what about them?" said Oswald. He always tries to be gentle and kind to Denny, because he knows he helped to make a man of the young Mouse.
"I shouldn't think," said Denny, "that it was so very difficult to be one."
"I don't know," said Dicky. "You have to read very dull books and an awful lot of them, and remember what you read, what's more."
"I don't think so," said Alice. "That girl who came with the antiquities—the one Albert's uncle said was upholstered in redplush like furniture—shehadn't read anything, you bet."
Dora said, "You ought not to bet, especially on Sunday," and Alice altered it to "You may be sure."
"Well, but what then?" Oswald asked Denny. "Out with it," for he saw that his youthful friend had got an idea and couldn't get it out. You should always listen patiently to the ideas of others, no matter how silly you expect them to be.
"I do wish you wouldn't hurry me so," said Denny, snapping his fingers anxiously. And we tried to be patient.
"Why shouldn't webethem?" Denny said at last.
"He means antiquaries," said Oswald to the bewildered others. "But there's nowhere to go and nothing to do when we get there."
The Dentist (so-called for short, his real name being Denis) got red and white, and drew Oswald aside to the window for a secret discussion. Oswald listened as carefully as he could, but Denny always buzzes so when he whispers.
"Right oh," he remarked, when the confidings of the Dentist had got so that you could understand what he was driving at. "Though you're being shy with us now, after all we went through together in the summer, is simply skittles."
Then he turned to the polite and attentive others and said—
OSWALD LISTENED AS CAREFULLY AS HE COULD, BUT DENNY ALWAYS BUZZES SO WHEN HE WHISPERS.OSWALD LISTENED AS CAREFULLY AS HE COULD, BUT DENNY ALWAYS BUZZES SO WHEN HE WHISPERS.
"You remember that day we went to Bexley Heath with Albert's uncle? Well, there was a house, and Albert's uncle said a clever writer lived there, and in more ancient years that chap in history—Sir Thomas What's his name; and Denny thinks he might let us be antiquaries there. It looks a ripping place from the railway."
It really does. It's a fine big house, and splendid gardens, and a lawn with a sundial, and the tallest trees anywhere about here.
"But what could wedo?" said Dicky. "I don't supposehe'dgiveustea," though such, indeed, had been our hospitable conduct to the antiquaries who came to see Albert's uncle.
"Oh, I don't know," said Alice. "We might dress up for it, and wear spectacles, and we could all read papers. It would be lovely—something to fill up the Christmas holidays—the part before the wedding, I mean. Do let's."
"All right, I don't mind. I suppose it would be improving," said Dora. "We should have to read a lot of history. You can settle it. I'm going to show Daisy our bridesmaids' dresses."
It was, alas! too true. Albert's uncle was to be married but shortly after, and it was partly our faults, though that does not come into this story.
So the two D.'s went to look at the clothes—girls like this—but Alice, who wishes shehad never consented to be born a girl, stayed with us, and we had a long and earnest council about it.
"One thing," said Oswald, "it can't possibly be wrong—so perhaps it won't be amusing."
"Oh, Oswald!" said Alice, and she spoke rather like Dora.
"I don't mean what you mean," said Oswald in lofty scorn. "What I mean to say is that when a thing is quite sure to be right, it's not so—well—I mean to say there it is, don't you know; and if it might be wrong, and isn't, it's a score to you; and if it might be wrong, and is—as so often happens—well, you know yourself, adventures sometimes turn out wrong that you didn't think were going to, but seldom, or never, the uninteresting kind, and——"
Dicky told Oswald to dry up—which, of course, no one stands from a younger brother, but though Oswald explained this at the time, he felt in his heart that he has sometimes said what he meant with more clearness. When Oswald and Dicky had finished, we went on and arranged everything.
Every one was to write a paper—and read it.
"If the papers are too long to read while we're there," said Noël, "we can read them in the long winter evenings when we are grouped along the household hearthrug. I shall do my paper in poetry—about Agincourt."
Some of us thought Agincourt wasn't fair, because no one could be sure about any knight who took part in that well-known conflict having lived in the Red House; but Alice got us to agree, because she said it would be precious dull if we all wrote about nothing but Sir Thomas Whatdoyoucallhim—whose real name in history Oswald said he would find out, and then write his paper on that world-renowned person, who is a household word in all families. Denny said he would write about Charles the First, because they were just doing that part at his school.
"I shall write about what happened in 1066," said H.O. "I know that."
Alice said, "If I write a paper it will be about Mary Queen of Scots."
Dora and Daisy came in just as she said this, and it transpired that this ill-fated but good-looking lady was the only one they either of them wanted to write about. So Alice gave it up to them and settled to do Magna Charta, and they could settle something between themselves for the one who would have to give up Mary Queen of Scots in the end. We all agreed that the story of that lamented wearer of pearls and black velvet would not make enough for two papers.
Everything was beautifully arranged, when suddenly H.O. said—
"Supposing he doesn't let us?"
"Who doesn't let us what?"
"The Red House man—read papers at his Red House."
This was, indeed, what nobody had thought of—and even now we did not think any one could be so lost to proper hospitableness as to say no. Yet none of us liked to write and ask. So we tossed up for it, only Dora had feelings about tossing up on Sunday, so we did it with a hymn-book instead of a penny.
We all won except Noël, who lost, so he said he would do it on Albert's uncle's typewriter, which was on a visit to us at the time, waiting for Mr. Remington to fetch it away to mend the "M." We think it was broken through Albert's uncle writing "Margaret" so often, because it is the name of the lady he was doomed to be married by.
The girls had got the letter the Maidstone Antiquarian Society and Field Clubs Secretary had sent to Albert's uncle—H.O. said they kept it for a momentum of the day—and we altered the dates and names in blue chalk and put in a piece about might we skate on the moat, and gave it to Noël, who had already begun to make up his poetry about Agincourt, and so had to be shaken before he would attend. And that evening, when Father and our Indian uncle and Albert's uncle were seeing the others on the way to Forest Hill, Noël's poetry and pencil were taken away from him and he was shut up in Father's room with the Remington typewriter, which we had never been forbidden to touch. And Idon't think he hurt it much, except quite at the beginning, when he jammed the "S" and the "J" and the thing that means per cent. so that they stuck—and Dicky soon put that right with a screwdriver.
He did not get on very well, but kept on writing MOR7E HOAS5 or MORD6M HOVCE on new pieces of paper and then beginning again, till the floor was strewn with his remains; so we left him at it, and went and played Celebrated Painters—a game even Dora cannot say anything about on Sunday, considering the Bible kind of pictures most of them painted. And much later, the library door having banged once and the front door twice, Noël came in and said he had posted it, and already he was deep in poetry again, and had to be roused when requisite for bed.
It was not till next day that he owned that the typewriter had been a fiend in disguise, and that the letter had come out so odd that he could hardly read it himself.
"The hateful engine of destruction wouldn't answer to the bit in the least," he said, "and I'd used nearly a wastepaper basket of Father's best paper, and I thought he might come in and say something, so I just finished it as well as I could, and I corrected it with the blue chalk—because you'd bagged that B.B. of mine—and I didn't notice what name I'd signed till after I'd licked the stamp."
The hearts of his kind brothers and sisterssank low. But they kept them up as well as they could, and said—
IT WAS NOT TILL NEXT DAY THAT HE OWNED THAT THE TYPEWRITER HAD BEEN A FIEND IN DISGUISE.IT WAS NOT TILL NEXT DAY THAT HE OWNED THAT THE TYPEWRITER HAD BEEN A FIEND IN DISGUISE.
"What namedidyou sign?"
And Noël said, "Why, Edward Turnbull, of course—like at the end of the real letter. You never crossed it out like you did his address."
"No," said Oswald witheringly. "You see, I did think, whatever else you didn't know, I did think you knew your own silly name."
Then Alice said Oswald was unkind, though you see he was not, and she kissed Noël and said she and he would take turns to watch for the postman, so as to get the answer (which of course would be subscribed on the envelope with the name of Turnbull instead of Bastable) before the servant could tell the postman that the name was a stranger to her.
And next evening it came, and it was very polite and grown-up—and said we should be welcome, and that we might read our papers and skate on the moat. The Red House has a moat, like the Moat House in the country, but not so wild and dangerous. Only we never skated on it because the frost gave out the minute we had got leave to. Such is life, as the sparks fly upwards. (The last above is called a moral reflection.)
So now, having got leave from Mr. Red House (I won't give his name because he is a writer of worldly fame and he might not like it), we set about writing our papers. It was not badfun, only rather difficult because Dora said she never knew which Encyclo. volume she might be wanting, as she was using Edinburgh, Mary, Scotland, Bothwell, Holywell, and France, and many others, and Oswald never knew which he might want, owing to his not being able exactly to remember the distinguished and deathless other appellation of Sir Thomas Thingummy, who had lived in the Red House.
Noël was up to the ears in Agincourt, yet that made but little difference to our destiny. He is always plunged in poetry of one sort or another, and if it hadn't been that, it would have been something else. This, at least, we insisted on having kept a secret, so he could not read it to us.
H.O. got very inky the first half-holiday, and then he got some sealing-wax and a big envelope from Father, and put something in and fastened it up, and said he had done his.
Dicky would not tell us what his paper was going to be about, but he said it would not be like ours, and he let H.O. help him by looking on while he invented more patent screws for ships.
The spectacles were difficult. We got three pairs of the uncle's, and one that had belonged to the housekeeper's grandfather, but nine pairs were needed, because Albert-next-door mouched in one half-holiday and wanted to join, and said if we'd let him he'd write a paper on the Constitutions of Clarendon, andwe thought he couldn't do it, so we let him. And then, after all, he did.
So at last Alice went down to Bennett's in the village, that we are such good customers of, because when our watches stop we take them there, and he lent us a lot of empty frames on the instinctive understanding that we would pay for them if we broke them or let them get rusty.
And so all was ready. And the fatal day approached; and it was the holidays. For us, that is, but not for Father, for his business never seems to rest by day and night, except at Christmas and times like that. So we did not need to ask him if we might go. Oswald thought it would be more amusing for Father if we told it all to him in the form of an entertaining anecdote, afterwards.
Denny and Daisy and Albert came to spend the day.
We told Mrs. Blake Mr. Red House had asked us, and she let the girls put on their second-best things, which are coats with capes and red Tam-o'shanters. These capacious coats are very good for playing highwaymen in.
We made ourselves quite clean and tidy. At the very last we found that H.O. had been making marks on his face with burnt matches, to imitate wrinkles, but really it only imitated dirt, so we made him wash it off. Then he wanted to paint himself red like a clown, but we had decided that thespectacles were to be our only disguise, and even those were not to be assumed till Oswald gave the word.
THE STATIONMASTER AND PORTER LOOKED RESPECTFULLY AT US.THE STATIONMASTER AND PORTER LOOKED RESPECTFULLY AT US.
No casuist observer could have thought that the nine apparently light-headed and careless party who now wended their way to Blackheath Station, looking as if they were not up to anything in particular, were really an Antiquarian Society of the deepest dye. We got an empty carriage to ourselves, and halfway between Blackheath and the other station Oswald gave the word, and we all put on the spectacles. We had our antiquarian papers of lore and researched history in exercise-books, rolled up and tied with string.
The stationmaster and porter, of each of which the station boasted but one specimen, looked respectfully at us as we got out of the train, and we went straight out of the station, under the railway arch, and down to the green gate of the Red House. It has a lodge, but there is no one in it. We peeped in at the window, and there was nothing in the room but an old beehive and a broken leather strap.
We waited in the front for a bit, so that Mr. Red House could come out and welcome us like Albert's uncle did the other antiquaries, but no one came, so we went round the garden. It was very brown and wet, but full of things you didn't see every day. Furze summer-houses, for instance, and a red wallall round it, with holes in it that you might have walled heretics up in in the olden times. Some of the holes were quite big enough to have taken a very small heretic. There was a broken swing, and a fish-pond—but we were on business, and Oswald insisted on reading the papers.
He said, "Let's go to the sundial. It looks dryer there, my feet are like ice-houses."
It was dryer because there was a soaking wet green lawn round it, and round that a sloping path made of little squares of red and white marble. This was quite waterless, and the sun shone on it, so that it was warm to the hands, though not to the feet, because of boots. Oswald called on Albert to read first. Albert is not a clever boy. He is not one of us, and Oswald wanted to get over the Constitutions. For Albert is hardly ever amusing, even in fun, and when he tries to show off it is sometimes hard to bear. He read—
"The Constitutions of Clarendon.
"Clarendon (sometimes called Clarence) had only one constitution. It must have been a very bad one, because he was killed by a butt of Malmsey. If he had had more constitutions or better ones he would have lived to be very old. This is a warning to everybody."
"Clarendon (sometimes called Clarence) had only one constitution. It must have been a very bad one, because he was killed by a butt of Malmsey. If he had had more constitutions or better ones he would have lived to be very old. This is a warning to everybody."
To this day none of us know how he could, and whether his uncle helped him.
We clapped, of course, but not with ourhearts, which were hissing inside us, and then Oswald began to read his paper. He had not had a chance to ask Albert's uncle what the other name of the world-famous Sir Thomas was, so he had to put him in as Sir Thomas Blank, and make it up by being very strong on scenes that could be better imagined than described, and, as we knew that the garden was five hundred years old, of course he could bring in any eventful things since the year 1400.
He was just reading the part about the sundial, which he had noticed from the train when we went to Bexley Heath. It was rather a nice piece, I think.
"Most likely this sundial told the time when Charles the First was beheaded, and recorded the death-devouring progress of the Great Plague and the Fire of London. There is no doubt that the sun often shone even in these devastating occasions, so that we may picture Sir Thomas Blank telling the time here and remarking—O crikey!"
These last words are what Oswald himself remarked. Of course a person in history would never have said them.
The reader of the paper had suddenly heard a fierce, woodeny sound, like giant singlesticks, terrifyingly close behind him, and looking hastily round, he saw a most angry lady, in a bright blue dress with fur on it, like a picture, and very large wooden shoes, which had made the singlestick noise. Her eyeswere very fierce, and her mouth tight shut. She did not look hideous, but more like an avenging sprite or angel, though of course we knew she was only mortal, so we took off our caps. A gentleman also bounded towards us over some vegetables, and acted as reserve support to the lady.
HER VOICE WHEN SHE TOLD US WE WERE TRESPASSING WAS NOT SO FURIOUS.HER VOICE WHEN SHE TOLD US WE WERE TRESPASSING WAS NOT SO FURIOUS.
Her voice when she told us we were trespassing and it was a private garden was not so furious as Oswald had expected from her face, but itwasangry. H.O. at once said it wasn't her garden, was it? But, of course, we could see itwas, because of her not having any hat or jacket or gloves, and wearing those wooden shoes to keep her feet dry, which no one would do in the street.
So then Oswald said we had leave, and showed her Mr. Red House's letter.
"But that was written to Mr. Turnbull," said she, "and how didyouget it?"
Then Mr. Red House wearily begged us to explain, so Oswald did, in that clear, straightforward way some people think he has, and that no one can suspect for an instant. And he ended by saying how far from comfortable it would be to have Mr. Turnbull coming with his thin mouth and his tight legs, and that we were Bastables, and much nicer than the tight-legged one, whatever she might think.
And she listened, and then she quite suddenly gave a most jolly grin and asked us to go on reading our papers.
It was plain that all disagreeableness wasat an end, and, to show this even to the stupidest, she instantly asked us to lunch. Before we could politely accept H.O. shoved his oar in as usual and saidhewould stop no matter how little there was for lunch because he liked her very much.
So she laughed, and Mr. Red House laughed, and she said they wouldn't interfere with the papers, and they went away and left us.
Of course Oswald and Dicky insisted on going on with the papers; though the girls wanted to talk about Mrs. Red House, and how nice she was, and the way her dress was made. Oswald finished his paper, but later he was sorry he had been in such a hurry, because after a bit Mrs. Red House came out, and said she wanted to play too. She pretended to be a very ancient antiquary, and was most jolly, so that the others read their papers to her, and Oswald knows she would have liked his paper best, because itwasthe best, though I say it.
Dicky's turned out to be all about that patent screw, and how Nelson would not have been killed if his ship had been built with one.
Daisy's paper was about Lady Jane Grey, and hers and Dora's were exactly alike, the dullest by far, because they had got theirs out of books.
Alice had not written hers because she had been helping Noël to copy his.
Denny's was about King Charles, and hewas very grown-up and fervent about this ill-fated monarch and white roses.
Mrs. Red House took us into the summer-houses, where it was warmer, and such is the wonderful architecture of the Red House gardens that there was a fresh summer-house for each paper, except Noël's and H.O.'s, which were read in the stable. There were no horses there.
Noël's was very long, and it began—
"This is the story of Agincourt.If you don't know it you jolly well ought.It was a famous battle fair,And all your ancestors fought thereThat is if you come of a family old.The Bastables do; they were always very bold.And at AgincourtThey foughtAs they ought;So we have been taught."
And so on and so on, till some of us wondered why poetry was ever invented. But Mrs. Red House said she liked it awfully, so Noël said—
"You may have it to keep. I've got another one of it at home."
"I'll put it next my heart, Noël," she said. And she did, under the blue stuff and fur.
H.O.'s was last, but when we let him read it he wouldn't, so Dora opened his envelope and it was thick inside with blotting-paper, and in the middle there was a page with
"1066 William the Conqueror,"
and nothing else.
"Well," he said, "I said I'd write all I knew about 1066, and that's it. I can't write more than I know, can I?" The girls said he couldn't, but Oswald thought he might have tried.
"It wasn't worth blacking your face all over just for that," he said. But Mrs. Red House laughed very much and said it was a lovely paper, and toldherall she wanted to know about 1066.
Then we went into the garden again and ran races, and Mrs. Red House held all our spectacles for us and cheered us on. She said she was the Patent Automatic Cheering Winning-post. We do like her.
Lunch was the glorious end of the Morden House Antiquarian Society and Field Club's Field Day. But after lunch was the beginning of a real adventure such as real antiquarians hardly ever get. This will be unrolled later. I will finish with some French out of a newspaper. Albert's uncle told it me, so I know it is right. Any of your own grown-ups will tell you what it means.
Au prochain numéro je vous promets des émotions.
PS.—In case your grown-ups can't be bothered, "émotions" mean sensation, I believe.
Wehad spectacles to play antiquaries in, and the rims were vaselined to prevent rust, and it came off on our faces with other kinds of dirt, and when the antiquary game was over, Mrs. Red House helped us to wash it off with all the thoroughness of aunts, and far more gentleness.
Then, clean and with our hairs brushed, we were led from the bath-room to the banqueting hall or dining-room.
It is a very beautiful house. The girls thought it was bare, but Oswald likes bareness because it leaves more room for games. All the furniture was of agreeable shapes and colours, and so were all the things on the table—glasses and dishes and everything. Oswald politely said how nice everything was.
The lunch was a blissful dream of perfect A.1.-ness. Tongue, and nuts, and apples, and oranges, and candied fruits, and ginger-wine in tiny glasses that Noël said were fairy goblets. Everybody drank everybody else'shealth—and Noël told Mrs. Red House just how lovely she was, and he would have paper and pencil and write her a poem for her very own. I will not put it in here, because Mr. Red House is an author himself, and he might want to use it in some of his books. And the writer of these pages has been taught to think of others, and besides I expect you are jolly well sick of Noël's poetry.
THE LUNCH WAS A BLISSFUL DREAM OF A.1.-NESS.THE LUNCH WAS A BLISSFUL DREAM OF A.1.-NESS.
There was no restrainingness about that lunch. As far as a married lady can possibly be a regular brick, Mrs. Red House is one. And Mr. Red House is not half bad, and knows how to talk about interesting things like sieges, and cricket, and foreign postage stamps.
Even poets think of things sometimes, and it was Noël who said directly he had finished his poetry,
"Have you got a secret staircase? And have you explored your house properly?"
"Yes—we have," said that well-behaved and unusual lady—Mrs. Red House, "butyouhaven't. You may if you like. Go anywhere," she added with the unexpected magnificence of a really noble heart. "Look at everything—only don't make hay. Off with you!" or words to that effect.
And the whole of us, with proper thanks, offed with us instantly, in case she should change her mind.
I will not describe the Red House to you—because perhaps you do not care about ahouse having three staircases and more cupboards and odd corners than we'd ever seen before, and great attics with beams, and enormous drawers on rollers, let into the wall—and half the rooms not furnished, and those that were all with old-looking, interesting furniture. There was something about that furniture that even the present author can't describe—as though any of it might have secret drawers or panels—even the chairs. It was all beautiful, and mysterious in the deepest degree.
When we had been all over the house several times, we thought about the cellars. There was only one servant in the kitchen (so we saw Mr. and Mrs. Red House must be poor but honest, like we used to be), and we said to her—
"How do you do? We've got leave to go wherever we like, and please where are the cellars, and may we go in?"
She was quite nice, though she seemed to think there was an awful lot of us. People often think this. She said:
"Lor, love a duck—yes, I suppose so," in not ungentle tones, and showed us.
I don't think we should ever have found the way from the house into the cellar by ourselves. There was a wide shelf in the scullery with a row of gentlemanly boots on it that had been cleaned, and on the floor in front a piece of wood. The general servant—for such indeed she proved to be—lifted upthe wood and opened a little door under the shelf. And there was the beginning of steps, and the entrance to them was half trap-door, and half the upright kind—a thing none of us had seen before.
She gave us a candle-end, and we pressed forward to the dark unknown. The stair was of stone, arched overhead like churches—and it twisted most unlike other cellar stairs. And when we got down it was all arched like vaults, very cobwebby.
"Just the place for crimes," said Dicky. There was a beer cellar, and a wine cellar with bins, and a keeping cellar with hooks in the ceiling and stone shelves—just right for venison pasties and haunches of the same swift animal.
Then we opened a door and there was a cellar with a well in it.
"To throw bodies down, no doubt," Oswald explained.
They were cellars full of glory, and passages leading from one to the other like the Inquisition, and I wish ours at home were like them.
There was a pile of beer barrels in the largest cellar, and it was H.O. who said, "Why not play 'King of the Castle?'"
So we did. We had a most refreshing game. It was exactly like Denny to be the one who slipped down behind the barrels, and did not break a single one of all his legs or arms.
"No," he cried, in answer to our anxiousinquiries. "I'm not hurt a bit, but the wall here feels soft—at least not soft—but it doesn't scratch your nails like stone does, so perhaps it's the door of a secret dungeon or something like that."
"Good old Dentist!" replied Oswald, who always likes Denny to have ideas of his own, because it was us who taught him the folly of white-mousishness.
"It might be," he went on, "but these barrels are as heavy as lead, and much more awkward to collar hold of."
"Couldn't we get in some other way?" Alice said. "There ought to be a subterranean passage. I expect there is if we only knew."
Oswald has an enormous geographical bump in his head. He said—
"Look here! That far cellar, where the wall doesn't go quite up to the roof—that space we made out was under the dining-room—I could creep under there. I believe it leads into behind this door."
"Get me out! Oh do, do get me out, and let me come!" shouted the barrel-imprisoned Dentist from the unseen regions near the door.
So we got him out by Oswald lying flat on his front on the top barrel, and the Dentist clawed himself up by Oswald's hands while the others kept hold of the boots of the representative of the house of Bastable, which, of course, Oswald is, whenever Father is not there.
"Come on," cried Oswald, when Denny was at last able to appear, very cobwebby and black. "Give us what's left of the matches!"
The others agreed to stand by the barrels and answer our knocking on the door if we ever got there.
"But I daresay we shall perish on the way," said Oswald hopefully.
So we started. The other cellar was easily found by the ingenious and geography-bump-headed Oswald. It opened straight on to the moat, and we think it was a boathouse in middle-aged times.
Denny made a back for Oswald, who led the way, and then he turned round and hauled up his inexperienced, but rapidly improving, follower on to the top of the wall that did not go quite up to the roof.
"It is like coal mines," he said, beginning to crawl on hands and knees over what felt like very prickly beach, "only we've no picks or shovels."
"And no Sir Humphry Davy safety lamps," said Denny in sadness.
"They wouldn't be any good," said Oswald; "they're only to protect the hard-working mining men against fire-damp and choke-damp. And there's none of those kinds here."
"No," said Denny, "the damp here is only just the common kind."
"Well, then," said Oswald, and they crawleda bit further still on their furtive and unassuming stomachs.
"This is a very glorious adventure. It is, isn't it?" inquired the Dentist in breathlessness, when the young stomachs of the young explorers had bitten the dust for some yards further.
"Yes," said Oswald, encouraging the boy, "and it'syourfind, too," he added, with admirable fairness and justice, unusual in one so young. "I only hope we shan't find a mouldering skeleton buried alive behind that door when we get to it. Come on. What are you stopping for now?" he added kindly.
"It's—it's only cobwebs in my throat," Denny remarked, and he came on, though slower than before.
Oswald, with his customary intrepid caution, was leading the way, and he paused every now and then to strike a match because it was pitch dark, and at any moment the courageous leader might have tumbled into a well or a dungeon, or knocked his dauntless nose against something in the dark.
"It's all right for you," he said to Denny, when he had happened to kick his follower in the eye. "You've nothing to fear except my boots, and whatever they do is accidental, and so it doesn't count, butImay be going straight into some trap that has been yawning for me for countless ages."
"I won't come on so fast, thank you," saidthe Dentist. "I don't think you've kicked my eye out yet."
So they went on and on, crampedly crawling on what I have mentioned before, and at last Oswald did not strike the next match carefully enough, and with the suddenness of a falling star his hands, which, with his knees, he was crawling on, went over the edge into infinite space, and his chest alone, catching sharply on the edge of the precipice, saved him from being hurled to the bottom of it.
"Halt!" he cried, as soon as he had any breath again. But, alas! it was too late! The Dentist's nose had been too rapid, and had caught up the boot-heel of the daring leader. This was very annoying to Oswald, and was not in the least his fault.
"Do keep your nose off my boots half a sec.," he remarked, but not crossly. "I'll strike a match."
And he did, and by its weird and unscrutatious light looked down into the precipice.
Its bottom transpired to be not much more than six feet below, so Oswald turned the other end of himself first, hung by his hands, and dropped with fearless promptness, uninjured, in another cellar. He then helped Denny down. The cornery thing Denny happened to fall on could not have hurt him so much as he said.
The light of the torch, I mean match, now revealed to the two bold and youthful youths another cellar, withthingsin it—very dirtyindeed, but of thrilling interest and unusual shapes, but the match went out before we could see exactly what the things were.