The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories

by E. Nesbit

  I think they might have given you some tea after all the trouble you’ve had.’ We took the cake with correct thanks.

  ‘I wish I could play at circuses,’ she said. ‘Tell me about it.’

  We told her while we ate the cake; and when we had done she said perhaps it was better to hear about than do, especially the goat’s part and Dicky’s.

  ‘But I do wish auntie had given you tea,’ she said.

  We told her not to be too hard on her aunt, because you have to make allowances for grown-up people. When we parted she said she would never forget us, and Oswald gave her his pocket button-hook and corkscrew combined for a keepsake.

  Dicky’s act with the goat (which is true, and no kid) was the only thing out of that day that was put in the Golden Deed book, and he put that in himself while we were hunting the pig.

  Alice and me capturing the pig was never put in. We would scorn to write our own good actions, but I suppose Dicky was dull with us all away; and you must pity the dull, and not blame them.

  I will not seek to unfold to you how we got the pig home, or how the donkey was caught (that was poor sport compared to the pig). Nor will I tell you a word of all that was said and done to the intrepid hunters of the Black and Learned. I have told you all the interesting part. Seek not to know the rest. It is better buried in obliquity.

  CHAPTER 7

  BEING BEAVERS; OR, THE YOUNG EXPLORERS (ARCTIC OR OTHERWISE)

  You read in books about the pleasures of London, and about how people who live in the country long for the gay whirl of fashion in town because the country is so dull. I do not agree with this at all. In London, or at any rate Lewisham, nothing happens unless you make it happen; or if it happens it doesn’t happen to you, and you don’t know the people it does happen to. But in the country the most interesting events occur quite freely, and they seem to happen to you as much as to anyone else. Very often quite without your doing anything to help.

  The natural and right ways of earning your living in the country are much jollier than town ones, too; sowing and reaping, and doing things with animals, are much better sport than fishmongering or bakering or oil-shopping, and those sort of things, except, of course, a plumber’s and gasfitter’s, and he is the same in town or country—most interesting and like an engineer.

  I remember what a nice man it was that came to cut the gas off once at our old house in Lewisham, when my father’s business was feeling so poorly. He was a true gentleman, and gave Oswald and Dicky over two yards and a quarter of good lead piping, and a brass tap that only wanted a washer, and a whole handful of screws to do what we liked with. We screwed the back door up with the screws, I remember, one night when Eliza was out without leave. There was an awful row. We did not mean to get her into trouble. We only thought it would be amusing for her to find the door screwed up when she came down to take in the milk in the morning. But I must not say any more about the Lewisham house. It is only the pleasures of memory, and nothing to do with being beavers, or any sort of exploring.

  I think Dora and Daisy are the kind of girls who will grow up very good, and perhaps marry missionaries. I am glad Oswald’s destiny looks at present as if it might be different.

  We made two expeditions to discover the source of the Nile (or the North Pole), and owing to their habit of sticking together and doing dull and praiseable things, like sewing, and helping with the cooking, and taking invalid delicacies to the poor and indignant, Daisy and Dora were wholly out of it both times, though Dora’s foot was now quite well enough to have gone to the North Pole or the Equator either. They said they did not mind the first time, because they like to keep themselves clean; it is another of their queer ways. And they said they had had a better time than us. (It was only a clergyman and his wife who called, and hot cakes for tea.) The second time they said they were lucky not to have been in it. And perhaps they were right. But let me to my narrating. I hope you will like it. I am going to try to write it a different way, like the books they give you for a prize at a girls’ school—I mean a ‘young ladies’ school,’ of course—not a high school. High schools are not nearly so silly as some other kinds. Here goes:

  ‘“Ah, me!” sighed a slender maiden of twelve summers, removing her elegant hat and passing her tapery fingers lightly through her fair tresses, “how sad it is—is it not?—to see able-bodied youths and young ladies wasting the precious summer hours in idleness and luxury.”

  ‘The maiden frowned reproachingly, but yet with earnest gentleness, at the group of youths and maidens who sat beneath an umbragipeaous beech tree and ate black currants.

  ‘“Dear brothers and sisters,” the blushing girl went on, “could we not, even now, at the eleventh hour, turn to account these wasted lives of ours, and seek some occupation at once improving and agreeable?”

  ‘“I do not quite follow your meaning, dear sister,” replied the cleverest of her brothers, on whose brow—’

  It’s no use. I can’t write like these books. I wonder how the books’ authors can keep it up.

  What really happened was that we were all eating black currants in the orchard, out of a cabbage leaf, and Alice said—

  ‘I say, look here, let’s do something. It’s simply silly to waste a day like this. It’s just on eleven. Come on!’

  And Oswald said, ‘Where to?’

  This was the beginning of it.

  The moat that is all round our house is fed by streams. One of them is a sort of open overflow pipe from a good-sized stream that flows at the other side of the orchard.

  It was this stream that Alice meant when she said—

  ‘Why not go and discover the source of the Nile?’

  Of course Oswald knows quite well that the source of the real live Egyptian Nile is no longer buried in that mysteriousness where it lurked undisturbed for such a long time. But he was not going to say so. It is a great thing to know when not to say things.

  ‘Why not have it an Arctic expedition?’ said Dicky; ‘then we could take an ice-axe, and live on blubber and things. Besides, it sounds cooler.’

  ‘Vote! vote!’ cried Oswald. So we did. Oswald, Alice, Noël, and Denny voted for the river of the ibis and the crocodile. Dicky, H. O., and the other girls for the region of perennial winter and rich blubber.

  So Alice said, ‘We can decide as we go. Let’s start anyway.’

  The question of supplies had now to be gone into. Everybody wanted to take something different, and nobody thought the other people’s things would be the slightest use. It is sometimes thus even with grown-up expeditions. So then Oswald, who is equal to the hardest emergency that ever emerged yet, said—

  ‘Let’s each get what we like. The secret storehouse can be the shed in the corner of the stable-yard where we got the door for the raft. Then the captain can decide who’s to take what.’

  This was done. You may think it but the work of a moment to fit out an expedition, but this is not so, especially when you know not whether your exploring party is speeding to Central Africa or merely to the world of icebergs and the Polar bear.

  Dicky wished to take the wood-axe, the coal hammer, a blanket, and a mackintosh.

  H. O. brought a large faggot in case we had to light fires, and a pair of old skates he had happened to notice in the box-room, in case the expedition turned out icy.

  Noël had nicked a dozen boxes of matches, a spade, and a trowel, and had also obtained—I know not by what means—a jar of pickled onions.

  Denny had a walking-stick—we can’t break him of walking with it—a book to read in case he got tired of being a discoverer, a butterfly net and a box with a cork in it, a tennis ball, if we happened to want to play rounders in the pauses of exploring, two towels and an umbrella in the event of camping or if the river got big enough to bathe in or to be fallen into.

  Alice had a
comforter for Noël in case we got late, a pair of scissors and needle and cotton, two whole candles in case of caves.

  And she had thoughtfully brought the tablecloth off the small table in the dining-room, so that we could make all the things up into one bundle and take it in turns to carry it.

  Oswald had fastened his master mind entirely on grub. Nor had the others neglected this.

  All the stores for the expedition were put down on the tablecloth and the corners tied up. Then it was more than even Oswald’s muscley arms could raise from the ground, so we decided not to take it, but only the best-selected grub. The rest we hid in the straw loft, for there are many ups and downs in life, and grub is grub at any time, and so are stores of all kinds. The pickled onions we had to leave, but not for ever.

  Then Dora and Daisy came along with their arms round each other’s necks as usual, like a picture on a grocer’s almanac, and said they weren’t coming.

  It was, as I have said, a blazing hot day, and there were differences of opinion among the explorers about what eatables we ought to have taken, and H. O. had lost one of his garters and wouldn’t let Alice tie it up with her handkerchief, which the gentle sister was quite willing to do. So it was a rather gloomy expedition that set off that bright sunny day to seek the source of the river where Cleopatra sailed in Shakespeare (or the frozen plains Mr Nansen wrote that big book about).

  But the balmy calm of peaceful Nature soon made the others less cross—Oswald had not been cross exactly but only disinclined to do anything the others wanted—and by the time we had followed the stream a little way, and had seen a water-rat and shied a stone or two at him, harmony was restored. We did not hit the rat.

  You will understand that we were not the sort of people to have lived so long near a stream without plumbing its depths. Indeed it was the same stream the sheep took its daring jump into the day we had the circus. And of course we had often paddled in it—in the shallower parts. But now our hearts were set on exploring. At least they ought to have been, but when we got to the place where the stream goes under a wooden sheep-bridge, Dicky cried, ‘A camp! a camp!’ and we were all glad to sit down at once. Not at all like real explorers, who know no rest, day or night, till they have got there (whether it’s the North Pole, or the central point of the part marked ‘Desert of Sahara’ on old-fashioned maps).

  The food supplies obtained by various members were good and plenty of it. Cake, hard eggs, sausage-rolls, currants, lemon cheese-cakes, raisins, and cold apple dumplings. It was all very decent, but Oswald could not help feeling that the source of the Nile (or North Pole) was a long way off, and perhaps nothing much when you got there.

  So he was not wholly displeased when Denny said, as he lay kicking into the bank when the things to eat were all gone—

  ‘I believe this is clay: did you ever make huge platters and bowls out of clay and dry them in the sun? Some people did in a book called Foul Play, and I believe they baked turtles, or oysters, or something, at the same time.’

  He took up a bit of clay and began to mess it about, like you do putty when you get hold of a bit. And at once the heavy gloom that had hung over the explorers became expelled, and we all got under the shadow of the bridge and messed about with clay.

  ‘It will be jolly!’ Alice said, ‘and we can give the huge platters to poor cottagers who are short of the usual sorts of crockery. That would really be a very golden deed.’

  It is harder than you would think when you read about it, to make huge platters with clay. It flops about as soon as you get it any size, unless you keep it much too thick, and then when you turn up the edges they crack. Yet we did not mind the trouble. And we had all got our shoes and stockings off. It is impossible to go on being cross when your feet are in cold water; and there is something in the smooth messiness of clay, and not minding how dirty you get, that would soothe the savagest breast that ever beat.

  After a bit, though, we gave up the idea of the huge platter and tried little things. We made some platters—they were like flower-pot saucers; and Alice made a bowl by doubling up her fists and getting Noël to slab the clay on outside. Then they smoothed the thing inside and out with wet fingers, and it was a bowl—at least they said it was. When we’d made a lot of things we set them in the sun to dry, and then it seemed a pity not to do the thing thoroughly. So we made a bonfire, and when it had burnt down we put our pots on the soft, white, hot ashes among the little red sparks, and kicked the ashes over them and heaped more fuel over the top. It was a fine fire.

  Then tea-time seemed as if it ought to be near, and we decided to come back next day and get our pots.

  As we went home across the fields Dicky looked back and said—

  ‘The bonfire’s going pretty strong.’

  We looked. It was. Great flames were rising to heaven against the evening sky. And we had left it a smouldering flat heap.

  ‘The clay must have caught alight,’ H. O. said. ‘Perhaps it’s the kind that burns. I know I’ve heard of fireclay. And there’s another sort you can eat.’

  ‘Oh, shut up!’ Dicky said with anxious scorn.

  With one accord we turned back. We all felt the feeling—the one that means something fatal being up and it being your fault.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Alice said, ‘a beautiful young lady in a muslin dress was passing by, and a spark flew on to her, and now she is rolling in agony enveloped in flames.’

  We could not see the fire now, because of the corner of the wood, but we hoped Alice was mistaken.

  But when we got in sight of the scene of our pottering industry we saw it was as bad nearly as Alice’s wild dream. For the wooden fence leading up to the bridge had caught fire, and it was burning like billy oh.

  Oswald started to run; so did the others. As he ran he said to himself, ‘This is no time to think about your clothes. Oswald, be bold!’

  And he was.

  Arrived at the site of the conflagration, he saw that caps or straw hats full of water, however quickly and perseveringly given, would never put the bridge out, and his eventful past life made him know exactly the sort of wigging you get for an accident like this.

  So he said, ‘Dicky, soak your jacket and mine in the stream and chuck them along. Alice, stand clear, or your silly girl’s clothes’ll catch as sure as fate.’

  Dicky and Oswald tore off their jackets, so did Denny, but we would not let him and H. O. wet theirs. Then the brave Oswald advanced warily to the end of the burning rails and put his wet jacket over the end bit, like a linseed poultice on the throat of a suffering invalid who has got bronchitis. The burning wood hissed and smouldered, and Oswald fell back, almost choked with the smoke. But at once he caught up the other wet jacket and put it on another place, and of course it did the trick as he had known it would do. But it was a long job, and the smoke in his eyes made the young hero obliged to let Dicky and Denny take a turn as they had bothered to do from the first. At last all was safe; the devouring element was conquered. We covered up the beastly bonfire with clay to keep it from getting into mischief again, and then Alice said—

  ‘Now we must go and tell.’

  ‘Of course,’ Oswald said shortly. He had meant to tell all the time.

  So we went to the farmer who has the Moat House Farm, and we went at once, because if you have any news like that to tell it only makes it worse if you wait about. When we had told him he said—

  ‘You little ——.’ I shall not say what he said besides that, because I am sure he must have been sorry for it next Sunday when he went to church, if not before.

  We did not take any notice of what he said, but just kept on saying how sorry we were; and he did not take our apology like a man, but only said he daresayed, just like a woman does. Then he went to look at his bridge, and we went in to our tea. The jackets were never quite the same again.

 
Really great explorers would never be discouraged by the daresaying of a farmer, still less by his calling them names he ought not to. Albert’s uncle was away so we got no double slating; and next day we started again to discover the source of the river of cataracts (or the region of mountain-like icebergs).

  We set out, heavily provisioned with a large cake Daisy and Dora had made themselves, and six bottles of ginger-beer. I think real explorers most likely have their ginger-beer in something lighter to carry than stone bottles. Perhaps they have it by the cask, which would come cheaper; and you could make the girls carry it on their back, like in pictures of the daughters of regiments.

  We passed the scene of the devouring conflagration, and the thought of the fire made us so thirsty we decided to drink the ginger-beer and leave the bottles in a place of concealment. Then we went on, determined to reach our destination, Tropic or Polar, that day.

  Denny and H. O. wanted to stop and try to make a fashionable watering-place at that part where the stream spreads out like a small-sized sea, but Noël said, ‘No.’ We did not like fashionableness.

  ‘You ought to, at any rate,’ Denny said. ‘A Mr Collins wrote an Ode to the Fashions, and he was a great poet.’

  ‘The poet Milton wrote a long book about Satan,’ Noël said, ‘but I’m not bound to like him.’ I think it was smart of Noël.

  ‘People aren’t obliged to like everything they write about even, let alone read,’ Alice said. ‘Look at “Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!” and all the pieces of poetry about war, and tyrants, and slaughtered saints—and the one you made yourself about the black beetle, Noël.’

  By this time we had got by the pondy place and the danger of delay was past; but the others went on talking about poetry for quite a field and a half, as we walked along by the banks of the stream. The stream was broad and shallow at this part, and you could see the stones and gravel at the bottom, and millions of baby fishes, and a sort of skating-spiders walking about on the top of the water. Denny said the water must be ice for them to be able to walk on it, and this showed we were getting near the North Pole. But Oswald had seen a kingfisher by the wood, and he said it was an ibis, so this was even.