by E. Nesbit
‘Oh, bother the Baby! Come along, do!’
And the others came.
We were going to the miller’s with a message about some flour that hadn’t come, and about a sack of sharps for the pigs.
After you go down the lane you come to a clover-field, and then a cornfield, and then another lane, and then it is the mill. It is a jolly fine mill: in fact it is two—water and wind ones—one of each kind—with a house and farm buildings as well. I never saw a mill like it, and I don’t believe you have either.
If we had been in a story-book the miller’s wife would have taken us into the neat sanded kitchen where the old oak settle was black with time and rubbing, and dusted chairs for us—old brown Windsor chairs—and given us each a glass of sweet-scented cowslip wine and a thick slice of rich home-made cake. And there would have been fresh roses in an old china bowl on the table. As it was, she asked us all into the parlour and gave us Eiffel Tower lemonade and Marie biscuits. The chairs in her parlour were ‘bent wood,’ and no flowers, except some wax ones under a glass shade, but she was very kind, and we were very much obliged to her. We got out to the miller, though, as soon as we could; only Dora and Daisy stayed with her, and she talked to them about her lodgers and about her relations in London.
The miller is a man. He showed us all over the mills—both kinds—and let us go right up into the very top of the wind-mill, and showed us how the top moved round so that the sails could catch the wind, and the great heaps of corn, some red and some yellow (the red is English wheat), and the heaps slice down a little bit at a time into a square hole and go down to the mill-stones. The corn makes a rustling soft noise that is very jolly—something like the noise of the sea—and you can hear it through all the other mill noises.
Then the miller let us go all over the water-mill. It is fairy palaces inside a mill. Everything is powdered over white, like sugar on pancakes when you are allowed to help yourself. And he opened a door and showed us the great water-wheel working on slow and sure, like some great, round, dripping giant, Noël said, and then he asked us if we fished.
‘Yes,’ was our immediate reply.
‘Then why not try the mill-pool?’ he said, and we replied politely; and when he was gone to tell his man something we owned to each other that he was a trump.
He did the thing thoroughly. He took us out and cut us ash saplings for rods; he found us in lines and hooks, and several different sorts of bait, including a handsome handful of meal-worms, which Oswald put loose in his pocket.
When it came to bait, Alice said she was going home with Dora and Daisy. Girls are strange, mysterious, silly things. Alice always enjoys a rat hunt until the rat is caught, but she hates fishing from beginning to end. We boys have got to like it. We don’t feel now as we did when we turned off the water and stopped the competition of the competing anglers. We had a grand day’s fishing that day. I can’t think what made the miller so kind to us. Perhaps he felt a thrill of fellow-feeling in his manly breast for his fellow-sportsmen, for he was a noble fisherman himself.
We had glorious sport—eight roach, six dace, three eels, seven perch, and a young pike, but he was so very young the miller asked us to put him back, and of course we did. ‘He’ll live to bite another day,’ said the miller.
The miller’s wife gave us bread and cheese and more Eiffel Tower lemonade, and we went home at last, a little damp, but full of successful ambition, with our fish on a string.
It had been a strikingly good time—one of those times that happen in the country quite by themselves. Country people are much more friendly than town people. I suppose they don’t have to spread their friendly feelings out over so many persons, so it’s thicker, like a pound of butter on one loaf is thicker than on a dozen. Friendliness in the country is not scrape, like it is in London. Even Dicky and H. O. forgot the affair of honour that had taken place in the morning. H. O. changed rods with Dicky because H. O.’s was the best rod, and Dicky baited H. O.’s hook for him, just like loving, unselfish brothers in Sunday School magazines.
We were talking fishlikely as we went along down the lane and through the cornfield and the cloverfield, and then we came to the other lane where we had seen the Baby. The tramps were gone, and the perambulator was gone, and, of course, the Baby was gone too.
‘I wonder if those gypsies had stolen the Baby?’ Noël said dreamily. He had not fished much, but he had made a piece of poetry. It was this:
‘How I wish
I was a fish.
I would not look
At your hook,
But lie still and be cool
At the bottom of the pool
And when you went to look
At your cruel hook,
You would not find me there,
So there!’
‘If they did steal the Baby,’ Noël went on, ‘they will be tracked by the lordly perambulator. You can disguise a baby in rags and walnut juice, but there isn’t any disguise dark enough to conceal a perambulator’s person.’
‘You might disguise it as a wheel-barrow,’ said Dicky.
‘Or cover it with leaves,’ said H. O., ‘like the robins.’
We told him to shut up and not gibber, but afterwards we had to own that even a young brother may sometimes talk sense by accident.
For we took the short cut home from the lane—it begins with a large gap in the hedge and the grass and weeds trodden down by the hasty feet of persons who were late for church and in too great a hurry to go round by the road. Our house is next to the church, as I think I have said before, some time.
The short cut leads to a stile at the edge of a bit of wood (the Parson’s Shave, they call it, because it belongs to him). The wood has not been shaved for some time, and it has grown out beyond the stile and here, among the hazels and chestnuts and young dogwood bushes, we saw something white. We felt it was our duty to investigate, even if the white was only the under side of the tail of a dead rabbit caught in a trap.
It was not—it was part of the perambulator. I forget whether I said that the perambulator was enamelled white—not the kind of enamelling you do at home with Aspinall’s and the hairs of the brush come out and it is gritty-looking, but smooth, like the handles of ladies very best lace parasols. And whoever had abandoned the helpless perambulator in that lonely spot had done exactly as H. O. said, and covered it with leaves, only they were green and some of them had dropped off.
The others were wild with excitement. Now or never, they thought, was a chance to be real detectives. Oswald alone retained a calm exterior. It was he who would not go straight to the police station.
He said: ‘Let’s try and ferret out something for ourselves before we tell the police. They always have a clue directly they hear about the finding of the body. And besides, we might as well let Alice be in anything there is going. And besides, we haven’t had our dinners yet.’
This argument of Oswald’s was so strong and powerful—his arguments are often that, as I daresay you have noticed—that the others agreed. It was Oswald, too, who showed his artless brothers why they had much better not take the deserted perambulator home with them.
‘The dead body, or whatever the clue is, is always left exactly as it is found,’ he said, ‘till the police have seen it, and the coroner, and the inquest, and the doctor, and the sorrowing relations. Besides, suppose someone saw us with the beastly thing, and thought we had stolen it; then they would say, “What have you done with the Baby?” and then where should we be?’ Oswald’s brothers could not answer this question, but once more Oswald’s native eloquence and far-seeing discerningness conquered.
‘Anyway,’ Dicky said, ‘let’s shove the derelict a little further under cover.’
So we did.
Then we went on home. Dinner was ready and so were Alice and Daisy, but Dora was not th
ere.
‘She’s got a—well, she’s not coming to dinner anyway,’ Alice said when we asked. ‘She can tell you herself afterwards what it is she’s got.’
Oswald thought it was headache, or pain in the temper, or in the pinafore, so he said no more, but as soon as Mrs Pettigrew had helped us and left the room he began the thrilling tale of the forsaken perambulator. He told it with the greatest thrillingness anyone could have, but Daisy and Alice seemed almost unmoved. Alice said—
‘Yes, very strange,’ and things like that, but both the girls seemed to be thinking of something else. They kept looking at each other and trying not to laugh, so Oswald saw they had got some silly secret and he said—
‘Oh, all right! I don’t care about telling you. I only thought you’d like to be in it. It’s going to be a really big thing, with policemen in it, and perhaps a judge.’
‘In what?’ H. O. said; ‘the perambulator?’
Daisy choked and then tried to drink, and spluttered and got purple, and had to be thumped on the back. But Oswald was not appeased. When Alice said, ‘Do go on, Oswald. I’m sure we all like it very much,’ he said—
‘Oh, no, thank you,’ very politely. ‘As it happens,’ he went on, ‘I’d just as soon go through with this thing without having any girls in it.’
‘In the perambulator?’ said H. O. again.
‘It’s a man’s job,’ Oswald went on, without taking any notice of H. O.
‘Do you really think so,’ said Alice, ‘when there’s a baby in it?’
‘But there isn’t,’ said H. O., ‘if you mean in the perambulator.’
‘Blow you and your perambulator,’ said Oswald, with gloomy forbearance.
Alice kicked Oswald under the table and said—
‘Don’t be waxy, Oswald. Really and truly Daisy and I have got a secret, only it’s Dora’s secret, and she wants to tell you herself. If it was mine or Daisy’s we’d tell you this minute, wouldn’t we, Mouse?’
‘This very second,’ said the White Mouse.
And Oswald consented to take their apologies.
Then the pudding came in, and no more was said except asking for things to be passed—sugar and water, and bread and things.
Then when the pudding was all gone, Alice said—
‘Come on.’
And we came on. We did not want to be disagreeable, though really we were keen on being detectives and sifting that perambulator to the very dregs. But boys have to try to take an interest in their sisters’ secrets, however silly. This is part of being a good brother.
Alice led us across the field where the sheep once fell into the brook, and across the brook by the plank. At the other end of the next field there was a sort of wooden house on wheels, that the shepherd sleeps in at the time of year when lambs are being born, so that he can see that they are not stolen by gypsies before the owners have counted them.
To this hut Alice now led her kind brothers and Daisy’s kind brother. ‘Dora is inside,’ she said, ‘with the Secret. We were afraid to have it in the house in case it made a noise.’
The next moment the Secret was a secret no longer, for we all beheld Dora, sitting on a sack on the floor of the hut, with the Secret in her lap.
It was the High-born Babe!
Oswald was so overcome that he sat down suddenly, just like Betsy Trotwood did in David Copperfield, which just shows what a true author Dickens is.
‘You’ve done it this time,’ he said. ‘I suppose you know you’re a baby-stealer?’
‘I’m not,’ Dora said. ‘I’ve adopted him.’
‘Then it was you,’ Dicky said, ‘who scuttled the perambulator in the wood?’
‘Yes,’ Alice said; ‘we couldn’t get it over the stile unless Dora put down the Baby, and we were afraid of the nettles for his legs. His name is to be Lord Edward.’
‘But, Dora—really, don’t you think—’
‘If you’d been there you’d have done the same,’ said Dora firmly. ‘The gypsies had gone. Of course something had frightened them and they fled from justice. And the little darling was awake and held out his arms to me. No, he hasn’t cried a bit, and I know all about babies; I’ve often nursed Mrs Simpkins’s daughter’s baby when she brings it up on Sundays. They have bread and milk to eat. You take him, Alice, and I’ll go and get some bread and milk for him.’
Alice took the noble brat. It was horribly lively, and squirmed about in her arms, and wanted to crawl on the floor. She could only keep it quiet by saying things to it a boy would be ashamed even to think of saying, such as ‘Goo goo,’ and ‘Did ums was,’ and ‘Ickle ducksums, then.’
When Alice used these expressions the Baby laughed and chuckled and replied—
‘Daddadda,’ ‘Bababa,’ or ‘Glueglue.’
But if Alice stopped her remarks for an instant the thing screwed its face up as if it was going to cry, but she never gave it time to begin.
It was a rummy little animal.
Then Dora came back with the bread and milk, and they fed the noble infant. It was greedy and slobbery, but all three girls seemed unable to keep their eyes and hands off it. They looked at it exactly as if it was pretty.
We boys stayed watching them. There was no amusement left for us now, for Oswald saw that Dora’s Secret knocked the bottom out of the perambulator.
When the infant aristocrat had eaten a hearty meal it sat on Alice’s lap and played with the amber heart she wears that Albert’s uncle brought her from Hastings after the business of the bad sixpence and the nobleness of Oswald.
‘Now,’ said Dora, ‘this is a council, so I want to be business-like. The Duckums Darling has been stolen away; its wicked stealers have deserted the Precious. We’ve got it. Perhaps its ancestral halls are miles and miles away. I vote we keep the little Lovey Duck till it’s advertised for.’
‘If Albert’s uncle lets you,’ said Dicky darkly.
‘Oh, don’t say “you” like that,’ Dora said; ‘I want it to be all of our baby. It will have five fathers and three mothers, and a grandfather and a great Albert’s uncle, and a great grand-uncle. I’m sure Albert’s uncle will let us keep it—at any rate till it’s advertised for.’
‘And suppose it never is,’ Noël said.
‘Then so much the better,’ said Dora, ‘the little Duckyux.’
She began kissing the baby again. Oswald, ever thoughtful, said—‘Well, what about your dinner?’
‘Bother dinner!’ Dora said—so like a girl. ‘Will you all agree to be his fathers and mothers?’
‘Anything for a quiet life,’ said Dicky, and Oswald said—
‘Oh, yes, if you like. But you’ll see we shan’t be allowed to keep it.’
‘You talk as if he was rabbits or white rats,’ said Dora, ‘and he’s not—he’s a little man, he is.’
‘All right, he’s no rabbit, but a man. Come on and get some grub, Dora,’ rejoined the kind-hearted Oswald, and Dora did, with Oswald and the other boys. Only Noël stayed with Alice. He really seemed to like the baby. When I looked back he was standing on his head to amuse it, but the baby did not seem to like him any better whichever end of him was up.
Dora went back to the shepherd’s house on wheels directly she had had her dinner. Mrs Pettigrew was very cross about her not being in to it, but she had kept her some mutton hot all the same. She is a decent sort. And there were stewed prunes. We had some to keep Dora company. Then we boys went fishing again in the moat, but we caught nothing.
Just before tea-time we all went back to the hut, and before we got half across the last field we could hear the howling of the Secret.
‘Poor little beggar,’ said Oswald, with manly tenderness. ‘They must be sticking pins in it.’
We found the girls and Noël looking quite pale and b
reathless. Daisy was walking up and down with the Secret in her arms. It looked like Alice in Wonderland nursing the baby that turned into a pig. Oswald said so, and added that its screams were like it too.
‘What on earth is the matter with it?’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ said Alice. ‘Daisy’s tired, and Dora and I are quite worn out. He’s been crying for hours and hours. You take him a bit.’
‘Not me,’ replied Oswald, firmly, withdrawing a pace from the Secret.
Dora was fumbling with her waistband in the furthest corner of the hut.
‘I think he’s cold,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d take off my flannelette petticoat, only the horrid strings got into a hard knot. Here, Oswald, let’s have your knife.’
With the word she plunged her hand into Oswald’s jacket pocket, and next moment she was rubbing her hand like mad on her dress, and screaming almost as loud as the Baby. Then she began to laugh and to cry at the same time. This is called hysterics.
Oswald was sorry, but he was annoyed too. He had forgotten that his pocket was half full of the meal-worms the miller had kindly given him. And, anyway, Dora ought to have known that a man always carries his knife in his trousers pocket and not in his jacket one.
Alice and Daisy rushed to Dora. She had thrown herself down on the pile of sacks in the corner. The titled infant delayed its screams for a moment to listen to Dora’s, but almost at once it went on again.
‘Oh, get some water!’ said Alice. ‘Daisy, run!’
The White Mouse, ever docile and obedient, shoved the baby into the arms of the nearest person, who had to take it or it would have fallen a wreck to the ground. This nearest person was Oswald. He tried to pass it on to the others, but they wouldn’t. Noël would have, but he was busy kissing Dora and begging her not to. So our hero, for such I may perhaps term him, found himself the degraded nursemaid of a small but furious kid.
