The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories

by E. Nesbit

  So Dicky and I were left. Dicky said:

  ‘If I could get the ladder round to the roof of the stovehouse I believe I should find my fives ball in the gutter. I know it went over the house that day.’

  So Oswald, ever ready and obliging, helped his brother to move the ladder round to the tiled roof of the stovehouse, and Dicky looked in the gutter. But even he could not pretend the ball was there, because I am certain it never went over at all.

  When he came down, Oswald said:

  ‘Sold again!’

  And Dicky said:

  ‘Sold yourself! You jolly well thought it was there, and you’d have to pay for it.’

  This unjustness was Oswald’s reward for his kind helpingness about moving the ladder. So he turned away, just saying carelessly over his retiring shoulder:

  ‘I should think you’d have the decency to put the ladder back where you found it.’ And he walked off.

  But he has a generous heart—a crossing-sweeper told him so once when he gave him a halfpenny—and when Dicky said, ‘Come on, Oswald; don’t be a sneak,’ he proved that he was not one, and went back and helped with the ladder. But he was a little distant to Dicky, till all disagreeableness was suddenly buried in a rat Pincher found in the cucumber frame.

  Then the washing-hands-and-faces-for-dinner bell rang, and, of course, we should have gone in directly, only just then the workmen came back from their dinner, and we waited, because one of them had promised Oswald some hinges for a ferrets’ hutch he thought of making, and while he was talking to this man the other one went up the ladder. And then the most exciting and awful thing I ever saw happened, all in a minute, before anyone could have said ‘Jack Robinson,’ even if they had thought of him. The bottom part of the ladder slipped out along the smooth tiles by the greenhouse, and there was a long, dream-like, dreadful time, when Oswald knew what was going to happen; but it could only have been a second really, because before anyone could do anything the top end of the ladder slid softly, like cutting butter, off the top of the greenhouse, and the man on the ladder fell too. I never saw anything that made me feel so wrong way up in my inside. He lay there all in a heap, without moving, and the men crowded round him. Dicky and I could not see properly because of the other men. But the foreman, the one who had given Oswald the hinges, said:

  ‘Better get a doctor.’

  It always takes a long time for a workman to understand what you want him to do, and long before these had, Oswald had shouted ‘I’ll go!’ and was off like an arrow from a bow, and Dicky with him.

  They found the doctor at home, and he came that minute. Oswald and Dicky were told to go away, but they could not bear to, though they knew their dinner-bell must have been already rung for them many times in vain, and it was now ringing with fury. They just lurked round the corner of the greenhouse till the doctor said it was a broken arm, and nothing else hurt; and when the poor man was sent home in a cab, Oswald and Dicky got the cabman, who is a friend of theirs, to let them come on the box with him. And thus they saw where the man lived, and saw his poor wife greet the sufferer. She only said:

  ‘Gracious, Gus, whatever have you been up to now? You always was an unlucky chap.’

  But we could see her loving heart was full to overflowing.

  When she had taken him in and shut the door we went away. The wretched sufferer, whose name transpired to be Augustus Victor Plunkett, was lucky enough to live in a mews. Noël made a poem about it afterwards:

  ‘O Muse of Poetry, do not refuse

  To tell about a man who loves the Mews.

  It is his humble home so poor,

  And the cabman who drove him home lives next door

  But two: and when his arm was broke

  His loving wife with tears spoke.’

  And so on. It went on for two hundred and twenty-four lines, and he could not print it, because it took far too much type for the printing-press. It was as we went out of the mews that we first saw the Goat. I gave him a piece of cocoanut ice, and he liked it awfully. He was tied to a ring in the wall, and he was black and white, with horns and a beard; and when the man he belonged to saw us looking at him, he said we could have that Goat a bargain. And when we asked, out of politeness and not because we had any money, except twopence halfpenny of Dicky’s, how much he wanted for the Goat, he said:

  ‘Seven and sixpence is the lowest, so I won’t deceive you, young gents. And so help me if he ain’t worth thribble the money.’

  Oswald did the sum in his head, which told him the Goat was worth one pound two shillings and sixpence, and he went away sadly, for he did want that Goat.

  We were later for dinner than I ever remember our being, and Miss Blake had not kept us any pudding; but Oswald bore up when he thought of the Goat. But Dicky seemed to have no beautiful inside thoughts to sustain him, and he was so dull Dora said she only hoped he wasn’t going to have measles.

  It was when we had gone up to bed that he fiddled about with the studs and old buttons and things in a velvety box he had till Oswald was in bed, and then he said:

  ‘Look here, Oswald, I feel as if I was a murderer, or next-door to. It was our moving that ladder: I’m certain it was. And now he’s laid up, and his wife and children.’

  Oswald sat up in bed, and said kindly:

  ‘You’re right, old chap. It was your moving that ladder. Of course, you didn’t put it back firm. But the man’s not killed.’

  ‘We oughtn’t to have touched it,’ he said. ‘Or we ought to have told them we had, or something. Suppose his arm gets blood-poisoning, or inflammation, or something awful? I couldn’t go on living if I was a doer of a deed like that.’

  Oswald had never seen Dicky so upset. He takes things jolly easy as a rule. Oswald said:

  ‘Well, it is no use fuming over it. You’d better get out of your clothes and go to bed. We’ll cut down in the morning and leave our cards and kind inquiries.’

  Oswald only meant to be kind, and by making this amusing remark he wished to draw his erring brother’s thoughts from the remorse that was poisoning his young life, and would very likely keep him awake for an hour or more thinking of it, and fidgetting about so that Oswald couldn’t sleep.

  But Dicky did not take it at all the way Oswald meant. He said:

  ‘Shut up, Oswald, you beast!’ and lay down on his bed and began to blub.

  Oswald said, ‘Beast yourself!’ because it is the proper thing to say; but he was not angry, only sorry that Dicky was so duffing as not to see what he meant. And he got out of bed and went softly to the girls’ room, which is next ours, and said:

  ‘I say, come in to our room a sec., will you? Dicky is howling fit to bring the house down. I think a council of us elder ones would do him more good than anything.’

  ‘Whatever is up?’ Dora asked, getting into her dressing-gown.

  ‘Oh, nothing, except that he’s a murderer! Come on, and don’t make a row. Mind the mats and our boots by the door.’

  They came in, and Oswald said:

  ‘Look here, Dicky, old boy, here are the girls, and we’re going to have a council about it.’

  They wanted to kiss him, but he wouldn’t, and shrugged his shoulders about, and wouldn’t speak; but when Alice had got hold of his hand he said in a muffled voice:

  ‘You tell them, Oswald.’

  When Oswald and Dicky were alone, you will have noticed the just elder brother blamed the proper person, which was Dicky, because he would go up on the stovehouse roof after his beastly ball, which Oswald did not care a rap about. And, besides, he knew it wasn’t there. But now that other people were there Oswald, of course, said:

  ‘You see, we moved the men’s ladder when they were at their dinner. And you know the man that fell off the ladder, and we went with him in the cab to the place where
that Goat was? Well, Dicky has only just thought of it; but, of course, it was really our fault his tumbling, because we couldn’t have put the ladder back safely. And Dicky thinks if his arm blood-poisoned itself we should be as good as murderers.’

  Dicky is perfectly straight; he sat up and sniffed, and blew his nose, and said:

  ‘It was my idea moving the ladder: Oswald only helped.’

  ‘Can’t we ask uncle to see that the dear sufferer wants for nothing while he’s ill, and all that?’ said Dora.

  ‘Well,’ said Oswald, ‘we could, of course. But, then, it would all come out. And about the fives ball too. And we can’t be at all sure it was the ball made the greenhouse leak, because I know it never went over the house.’

  ‘Yes, it did,’ said Dicky, giving his nose a last stern blow.

  Oswald was generous to a sorrowing foe, and took no notice, only went on:

  ‘And about the ladder: we can’t be quite sure it wouldn’t have slipped on those tiles, even if we’d never moved it. But I think Dicky would feel jollier if we could do something for the man, and I know it would me.’

  That looks mixed, but Oswald was rather agitated himself, and that was what he said.

  ‘We must think of something to do to get money,’ Alice said, ‘like we used to do when we were treasure-seekers.’

  Presently the girls went away, and we heard them jawing in their room. Just as Oswald was falling asleep the door opened, and a figure in white came in and bent above his almost sleeping form. It said:

  ‘We’ve thought of something! We’ll have a bazaar, like the people Miss Blake’s elder sister lives with did for the poor iron church.’

  The form glided away. Miss Blake is our housekeeper. Oswald could hear that Dicky was already sleeping, so he turned over and went to sleep himself. He dreamed of Goats, only they were as big as railway engines, and would keep ringing the church bells, till Oswald awoke, and it was the getting-up bell, and not a great Goat ringing it, but only Sarah as usual.

  The idea of the bazaar seemed to please all of us.

  ‘We can ask all the people we know to it,’ said Alice.

  ‘And wear our best frocks, and sell the things at the stalls,’ said Dora.

  Dicky said we could have it in the big greenhouse now the plants were out of it.

  ‘I will write a poem for the man, and say it at the bazaar,’ Noël said. ‘I know people say poetry at bazaars. The one Aunt Carrie took me to a man said a piece about a cowboy.’

  H. O. said there ought to be lots of sweets, and then everyone would buy them.

  Oswald said someone would have to ask my father, and he said he would do it if the others liked. He did this because of an inside feeling in his mind that he knew might come on at any moment. So he did. And ‘Yes’ was the answer. And then the uncle gave Oswald a whole quid to buy things to sell at the bazaar, and my father gave him ten bob for the same useful and generous purpose, and said he was glad to see we were trying to do good to others.

  When he said that the inside feeling in Oswald’s mind began that he had felt afraid would, some time, and he told my father about him and Dicky moving the ladder, and about the hateful fives ball, and everything. And my father was awfully decent about it, so that Oswald was glad he had told.

  The girls wrote the invitations to all our friends that very day. We boys went down to look in the shops and see what we could buy for the bazaar. And we went to ask how Mr. Augustus Victor Plunkett’s arm was getting on, and to see the Goat.

  The others liked the Goat almost as much as Oswald, and even Dicky agreed that it was our clear duty to buy the Goat for the sake of poor Mr. Plunkett.

  Because, as Oswald said, if it was worth one pound two and six, we could easily sell it again for that, and we should have gained fifteen shillings for the sufferer.

  So we bought the Goat, and changed the ten shillings to do it. The man untied the other end of the Goat’s rope, and Oswald took hold of it, and said he hoped we were not robbing the man by taking his Goat from him for such a low price. And he said:

  ‘Not at all, young gents. Don’t you mention it. Pleased to oblige a friend any day of the week.’

  So we started to take the Goat home. But after about half a street he would not come any more. He stopped still, and a lot of boys and people came round, just as if they had never seen a Goat before. We were beginning to feel quite uncomfortable, when Oswald remembered the Goat liked cocoanut ice, so Noël went into a shop and got threepenn’orth, and then the cheap animal consented to follow us home. So did the street boys. The cocoanut ice was more for the money than usual, but not so nice.

  My father was not pleased when he saw the Goat. But when Alice told him it was for the bazaar, he laughed, and let us keep it in the stableyard.

  It got out early in the morning, and came right into the house, and butted the cook in her own back-kitchen, a thing even Oswald himself would have hesitated before doing. So that showed it was a brave Goat.

  The groom did not like the Goat, because it bit a hole in a sack of corn, and then walked up it like up a mountain, and all the oats ran out and got between the stones of the stableyard, and there was a row. But we explained it was not for long, as the bazaar was in three days. And we hurried to get things ready.

  We were each to have a stall. Dora took the refreshment stall. The uncle made Miss Blake get all that ready.

  Alice had a stall for pincushions and brush-and-comb bags, and other useless things that girls make with stuff and ribbons.

  Noël had a poetry stall, where you could pay twopence and get a piece of poetry and a sweet wrapped up in it. We chose sugar almonds, because they are not so sticky.

  H. O.’s stall was to be sweets, if he promised on his word of honour as a Bastable only to eat one of each kind.

  Dicky wished to have a stall for mechanical toys and parts of clocks. He has a great many parts of clocks, but the only mechanical toy was his clockwork engine, that was broken ages ago, so he had to give it up, and he couldn’t think of anything else. So he settled to help Oswald, and keep an eye on H. O.

  Oswald’s stall was meant to be a stall for really useful things, but in the end it was just a lumber stall for the things other people did not want. But he did not mind, because the others agreed he should have the entire selling of the Goat, and he racked his young brains to think how to sell it in the most interesting and unusual way. And at last he saw how, and he said:

  ‘He shall be a lottery, and we’ll make people take tickets, and then draw a secret number out of a hat, and whoever gets the right number gets the Goat. I wish it was me.’

  ‘We ought to advertise it, though,’ Dicky said. ‘Have handbills printed, and send out sandwich-men.’

  Oswald inquired at the printers in Greenwich, and handbills were an awful price, and sandwich-men a luxury far beyond our means. So he went home sadly; and then Alice thought of the printing-press. We got it out, and cleaned it where the ink had been upset into it, and mended the broken parts as well as we could, and got some more printers’ ink, and wrote the circular and printed it. It was:

  SECRET LOTTERY.

  Exceptionable and Rare Chance.

  An Object of Value—

  ‘It ought to be object of virtue,’ said Dicky. ‘I saw it in the old iron and china and picture shop. It was a carved ivory ship, and there was a ticket on it: “Rare Object of Virtue.”’

  ‘The Goat’s an object, certainly,’ Alice said, ‘and it’s valuable. As for virtue, I’m not so sure.’

  But Oswald thought the two V’s looked well, and being virtuous is different to being valuable; but, all the same, the Goat might be both when you got to know him really well. So we put it in.

  SECRET LOTTERY.

  Exceptionable and Rare Chance.

  An Obj
ect of Value and Virtue

  will be lotteried for on Saturday next, at four o’clock. Tickets one or two shillings each, according to how many people want them. The object is not disclosed till after the Lottery, but it cost a lot of money, and is honestly worth three times as much. If you win it, it is the same as winning money. Apply at Morden House, Blackheath, at 3 o’clock next Saturday. Take tickets early to prevent disappointment.

  We printed these, and though they looked a bit rum, we had not time to do them again, so we went out about dusk and dropped them in people’s letter-boxes. Then next day Oswald, who is always very keen on doing the thing well, got two baking-boards out of the kitchen and bored holes in them with an auger I had, and pasted paper on them, and did on them with a paint-brush and ink the following lines:

  SECRET LOTTERY.

  Object of Value and Virtue.

  Tickets 1/- and 2/-.

  If you win, it will be the same as winning money.

  Lottery at Morden House, Blackheath.

  Saturday at 4. Come at 3.

  And he slung the boards round his neck, and tied up his mouth in one of those knitted comforters he despises so much at other times, and, pulling a cap of father’s over his bold ears, he got Dicky to let him out of the side-door. And then the brave boy went right across the heath and three times up and down the village, till those boys that followed him and the Goat home went for him near the corner of Wemyss Road, and he made a fight for it, taking off the boards and using them as shields. But at last, being far outnumbered, which is no disgrace, he had to chuck the boards and run for it.

  Saturday was fine. We had hung the greenhouse with evergreens and paper roses that looked almost like real among the green, and Miss Blake let us have some Chinesy-looking curtains to cover over the shelves and staging with. And the gardener let us have a lot of azaleas and things in pots, so that it was all very bowery and flowery.