The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories

by E. Nesbit

  ‘Whatever is up?’ we all asked, and Daisy and Dora petted him to get him to say, but he only went on howling, and said it was nothing, only would we go on and leave him, and call for him as we came back.

  Oswald thought very likely something had given Denny the stomach-ache, and he did not like to say so before all of us, so he sent the others away and told them to walk on a bit.

  Then he said, ‘Now, Denny, don’t be a young ass. What is it? Is it stomach-ache?’

  And Denny stopped crying to say ‘No!’ as loud as he could.

  ‘Well, then,’ Oswald said, ‘look here, you’re spoiling the whole thing. Don’t be a jackape, Denny. What is it?’

  ‘You won’t tell the others if I tell you?’

  ‘Not if you say not,’ Oswald answered in kindly tones.

  ‘Well, it’s my shoes.’

  ‘Take them off, man.’

  ‘You won’t laugh?’

  ‘No!’ cried Oswald, so impatiently that the others looked back to see why he was shouting. He waved them away, and with humble gentleness began to undo the black-tape sandals.

  Denny let him, crying hard all the time.

  When Oswald had got off the first shoe the mystery was made plain to him.

  ‘Well! Of all the—’ he said in proper indignation.

  Denny quailed—though he said he did not—but then he doesn’t know what quailing is, and if Denny did not quail then Oswald does not know what quailing is either.

  For when Oswald took the shoe off he naturally chucked it down and gave it a kick, and a lot of little pinky yellow things rolled out. And Oswald look closer at the interesting sight. And the little things were split peas.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll tell me,’ said the gentle knight, with the politeness of despair, ‘why on earth you’ve played the goat like this?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be angry,’ Denny said; and now his shoes were off, he curled and uncurled his toes and stopped crying. ‘I knew pilgrims put peas in their shoes—and—oh, I wish you wouldn’t laugh!’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Oswald, still with bitter politeness.

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you I was going to, because I wanted to be better than all of you, and I thought if you knew I was going to you’d want to too, and you wouldn’t when I said it first. So I just put some peas in my pocket and dropped one or two at a time into my shoes when you weren’t looking.’

  In his secret heart Oswald said, ‘Greedy young ass.’ For it is greedy to want to have more of anything than other people, even goodness.

  Outwardly Oswald said nothing.

  ‘You see’—Denny went on—‘I do want to be good. And if pilgriming is to do you good, you ought to do it properly. I shouldn’t mind being hurt in my feet if it would make me good for ever and ever. And besides, I wanted to play the game thoroughly. You always say I don’t.’

  The breast of the kind Oswald was touched by these last words.

  ‘I think you’re quite good enough,’ he said. ‘I’ll fetch back the others—no, they won’t laugh.’

  And we all went back to Denny, and the girls made a fuss with him. But Oswald and Dicky were grave and stood aloof. They were old enough to see that being good was all very well, but after all you had to get the boy home somehow.

  When they said this, as agreeably as they could, Denny said—

  ‘It’s all right—someone will give me a lift.’

  ‘You think everything in the world can be put right with a lift,’ Dicky said, and he did not speak lovingly.

  ‘So it can,’ said Denny, ‘when it’s your feet. I shall easily get a lift home.’

  ‘Not here you won’t,’ said Alice. ‘No one goes down this road; but the high road’s just round the corner, where you see the telegraph wires.’

  Dickie and Oswald made a sedan chair and carried Denny to the high road, and we sat down in a ditch to wait. For a long time nothing went by but a brewer’s dray. We hailed it, of course, but the man was so sound asleep that our hails were vain, and none of us thought soon enough about springing like a flash to the horses’ heads, though we all thought of it directly the dray was out of sight.

  So we had to keep on sitting there by the dusty road, and more than one pilgrim was heard to say it wished we had never come. Oswald was not one of those who uttered this useless wish.

  At last, just when despair was beginning to eat into the vital parts of even Oswald, there was a quick tap-tapping of horses’ feet on the road, and a dogcart came in sight with a lady in it all alone.

  We hailed her like the desperate shipwrecked mariners in the long-boat hail the passing sail.

  She pulled up. She was not a very old lady—twenty-five we found out afterwards her age was—and she looked jolly.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘what’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s this poor little boy,’ Dora said, pointing to the Dentist, who had gone to sleep in the dry ditch, with his mouth open as usual. ‘His feet hurt him so, and will you give him a lift?’

  ‘But why are you all rigged out like this?’ asked the lady, looking at our cockle-shells and sandals and things. We told her.

  ‘And how has he hurt his feet?’ she asked. And we told her that.

  She looked very kind. ‘Poor little chap,’ she said. ‘Where do you want to go?’

  We told her that too. We had no concealments from this lady.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I have to go on to—what is its name?’

  ‘Canterbury,’ said H. O.

  ‘Well, yes, Canterbury,’ she said; ‘it’s only about half a mile. I’ll take the poor little pilgrim—and, yes, the three girls. You boys must walk. Then we’ll have tea and see the sights, and I’ll drive you home—at least some of you. How will that do?’

  We thanked her very much indeed, and said it would do very nicely.

  Then we helped Denny into the cart, and the girls got up, and the red wheels of the cart spun away through the dust.

  ‘I wish it had been an omnibus the lady was driving,’ said H. O., ‘then we could all have had a ride.’

  ‘Don’t you be so discontented,’ Dicky said. And Noël said—

  ‘You ought to be jolly thankful you haven’t got to carry Denny all the way home on your back. You’d have had to if you’d been out alone with him.’

  When we got to Canterbury it was much smaller than we expected, and the cathedral not much bigger than the Church that is next to the Moat House. There seemed to be only one big street, but we supposed the rest of the city was hidden away somewhere. There was a large inn, with a green before it, and the red-wheeled dogcart was standing in the stable-yard and the lady, with Denny and the others, sitting on the benches in the porch, looking out for us. The inn was called the ‘George and Dragon,’ and it made me think of the days when there were coaches and highwaymen and foot-pads and jolly landlords, and adventures at country inns, like you read about.

  ‘We’ve ordered tea,’ said the lady. ‘Would you like to wash your hands?’

  We saw that she wished us to, so we said yes, we would. The girls and Denny were already much cleaner than when we parted from them.

  There was a courtyard to the inn and a wooden staircase outside the house. We were taken up this, and washed our hands in a big room with a four-post wooden bed and dark red hangings—just the sort of hangings that would not show the stains of gore in the dear old adventurous times.

  Then we had tea in a great big room with wooden chairs and tables, very polished and old.

  It was a very nice tea, with lettuces, and cold meat, and three kinds of jam, as well as cake, and new bread, which we are not allowed at home.

  While tea was being had, the lady talked to us. She was very kind.

  There are two sorts of people in the world, besi
des others; one sort understand what you’re driving at, and the other don’t. This lady was the one sort.

  After everyone had had as much to eat as they could possibly want, the lady said, ‘What was it you particularly wanted to see at Canterbury?’

  ‘The cathedral,’ Alice said, ‘and the place where Thomas A Becket was murdered.’

  ‘And the Danejohn,’ said Dicky.

  Oswald wanted to see the walls, because he likes the Story of St Alphege and the Danes.

  ‘Well, well,’ said the lady, and she put on her hat; it was a really sensible one—not a blob of fluffy stuff and feathers put on sideways and stuck on with long pins, and no shade to your face, but almost as big as ours, with a big brim and red flowers, and black strings to tie under your chin to keep it from blowing off.

  Then we went out all together to see Canterbury. Dicky and Oswald took it in turns to carry Denny on their backs. The lady called him ‘The Wounded Comrade.’

  We went first to the church. Oswald, whose quick brain was easily aroused to suspicions, was afraid the lady might begin talking in the church, but she did not. The church door was open. I remember mother telling us once it was right and good for churches to be left open all day, so that tired people could go in and be quiet, and say their prayers, if they wanted to. But it does not seem respectful to talk out loud in church. (See Note A.)

  When we got outside the lady said, ‘You can imagine how on the chancel steps began the mad struggle in which Becket, after hurling one of his assailants, armour and all, to the ground—’

  ‘It would have been much cleverer,’ H. O. interrupted, ‘to hurl him without his armour, and leave that standing up.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Alice and Oswald, when they had given H. O. a withering glance. And the lady did go on. She told us all about Becket, and then about St Alphege, who had bones thrown at him till he died, because he wouldn’t tax his poor people to please the beastly rotten Danes.

  And Denny recited a piece of poetry he knows called ‘The Ballad of Canterbury.’

  It begins about Danish warships snake-shaped, and ends about doing as you’d be done by. It is long, but it has all the beef-bones in it, and all about St Alphege.

  Then the lady showed us the Danejohn, and it was like an oast-house. And Canterbury walls that Alphege defied the Danes from looked down on a quite common farmyard. The hospital was like a barn, and other things were like other things, but we went all about and enjoyed it very much. The lady was quite amusing, besides sometimes talking like a real cathedral guide I met afterwards. (See Note B.) When at last we said we thought Canterbury was very small considering, the lady said—

  ‘Well, it seemed a pity to come so far and not at least hear something about Canterbury.’

  And then at once we knew the worst, and Alice said—

  ‘What a horrid sell!’ But Oswald, with immediate courteousness, said—

  ‘I don’t care. You did it awfully well.’ And he did not say, though he owns he thought of it—

  ‘I knew it all the time,’ though it was a great temptation. Because really it was more than half true. He had felt from the first that this was too small for Canterbury. (See Note C.)

  The real name of the place was Hazelbridge, and not Canterbury at all. We went to Canterbury another time. (See Note D.) We were not angry with the lady for selling us about it being Canterbury, because she had really kept it up first-rate. And she asked us if we minded, very handsomely, and we said we liked it. But now we did not care how soon we got home. The lady saw this, and said—

  ‘Come, our chariots are ready, and our horses caparisoned.’

  That is a first-rate word out of a book. It cheered Oswald up, and he liked her for using it, though he wondered why she said chariots. When we got back to the inn I saw her dogcart was there, and a grocer’s cart too, with B. Munn, grocer, Hazelbridge, on it. She took the girls in her cart, and the boys went with the grocer. His horse was a very good one to go, only you had to hit it with the wrong end of the whip. But the cart was very bumpety.

  The evening dews were falling—at least, I suppose so, but you do not feel dew in a grocer’s cart—when we reached home. We all thanked the lady very much, and said we hoped we should see her again some day. She said she hoped so.

  The grocer drove off, and when we had all shaken hands with the lady and kissed her, according as we were boys or girls, or little boys, she touched up her horse and drove away.

  She turned at the corner to wave to us, and just as we had done waving, and were turning into the house, Albert’s uncle came into our midst like a whirling wind. He was in flannels, and his shirt had no stud in at the neck, and his hair was all rumpled up and his hands were inky, and we knew he had left off in the middle of a chapter by the wildness of his eye.

  ‘Who was that lady?’ he said. ‘Where did you meet her?’

  Mindful, as ever, of what he was told, Oswald began to tell the story from the beginning.

  ‘The other day, protector of the poor,’ he began; ‘Dora and I were reading about the Canterbury pilgrims…’

  Oswald thought Albert’s uncle would be pleased to find his instructions about beginning at the beginning had borne fruit, but instead he interrupted.

  ‘Stow it, you young duffer! Where did you meet her?’

  Oswald answered briefly, in wounded accents, ‘Hazelbridge.’

  Then Albert’s uncle rushed upstairs three at a time, and as he went he called out to Oswald—

  ‘Get out my bike, old man, and blow up the back tyre.’

  I am sure Oswald was as quick as anyone could have been, but long ere the tyre was thoroughly blowed Albert’s uncle appeared, with a collar-stud and tie and blazer, and his hair tidy, and wrenching the unoffending machine from Oswald’s surprised fingers.

  Albert’s uncle finished pumping up the tyre, and then flinging himself into the saddle he set off, scorching down the road at a pace not surpassed by any highwayman, however black and high-mettled his steed. We were left looking at each other. ‘He must have recognized her,’ Dicky said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Noël said, ‘she is the old nurse who alone knows the dark secret of his highborn birth.’

  ‘Not old enough, by chalks,’ Oswald said.

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Alice, ‘if she holds the secret of the will that will make him rolling in long-lost wealth.’

  ‘I wonder if he’ll catch her,’ Noël said. ‘I’m quite certain all his future depends on it. Perhaps she’s his long-lost sister, and the estate was left to them equally, only she couldn’t be found, so it couldn’t be shared up.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s only in love with her,’ Dora said, ‘parted by cruel Fate at an early age, he has ranged the wide world ever since trying to find her.’

  ‘I hope to goodness he hasn’t—anyway, he’s not ranged since we knew him—never further than Hastings,’ Oswald said. ‘We don’t want any of that rot.’

  ‘What rot?’ Daisy asked. And Oswald said—

  ‘Getting married, and all that sort of rubbish.’

  And Daisy and Dora were the only ones that didn’t agree with him. Even Alice owned that being bridesmaids must be fairly good fun. It’s no good. You may treat girls as well as you like, and give them every comfort and luxury, and play fair just as if they were boys, but there is something unmanly about the best of girls. They go silly, like milk goes sour, without any warning.

  When Albert’s uncle returned he was very hot, with a beaded brow, but pale as the Dentist when the peas were at their worst.

  ‘Did you catch her?’ H. O. asked.

  Albert’s uncle’s brow looked black as the cloud that thunder will presently break from.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Is she your long-lost nurse?’ H. O. went on, before we could stop him
.

  ‘Long-lost grandmother! I knew the lady long ago in India,’ said Albert’s uncle, as he left the room, slamming the door in a way we should be forbidden to.

  And that was the end of the Canterbury Pilgrimage.

  As for the lady, we did not then know whether she was his long-lost grandmother that he had known in India or not, though we thought she seemed youngish for the part. We found out afterwards whether she was or not, but that comes in another part. His manner was not the one that makes you go on asking questions. The Canterbury Pilgriming did not exactly make us good, but then, as Dora said, we had not done anything wrong that day. So we were twenty-four hours to the good.

  Note A.—Afterwards we went and saw real Canterbury. It is very large. A disagreeable man showed us round the cathedral, and jawed all the time quite loud as if it wasn’t a church. I remember one thing he said. It was this:

  ‘This is the Dean’s Chapel; it was the Lady Chapel in the wicked days when people used to worship the Virgin Mary.’

  And H. O. said, ‘I suppose they worship the Dean now?’

  Some strange people who were there laughed out loud. I think this is worse in church than not taking your cap off when you come in, as H. O. forgot to do, because the cathedral was so big he didn’t think it was a church.

  Note B. (See Note C.)

  Note C. (See Note D.)

  Note D. (See Note E.)

  Note E. (See Note A.)

  This ends the Canterbury Pilgrims.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE DRAGON’S TEETH; OR, ARMY-SEED

  Albert’s uncle was out on his bicycle as usual. After the day when we became Canterbury Pilgrims and were brought home in the dog-cart with red wheels by the lady he told us was his long-lost grandmother he had known years ago in India, he spent not nearly so much of his time in writing, and he used to shave every morning instead of only when requisite, as in earlier days. And he was always going out on his bicycle in his new Norfolk suit. We are not so unobserving as grown-up people make out. We knew well enough he was looking for the long-lost. And we jolly well wished he might find her. Oswald, always full of sympathy with misfortune, however undeserved, had himself tried several times to find the lady. So had the others. But all this is what they call a digression; it has nothing to do with the dragon’s teeth I am now narrating.