Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  We went out into the streets. They were pretty quiet — nearly everybody was eating its Christmas dessert. But presently we met a woman in an apron. Oswald said very politely —

  “Please, are you a poor person?” And she told us to get along with us.

  The next we met was a shabby man with a hole in his left boot.

  Again Oswald said, “Please, are you a poor person, and have you any poor little children?”

  The man told us not to come any of our games with him, or we should laugh on the wrong side of our faces. We went on sadly. We had no heart to stop and explain to him that we had no games to come.

  The next was a young man near the Obelisk. Dora tried this time.

  She said, “Oh, if you please we’ve got some Christmas pudding in this basket, and if you’re a poor person you can have some.”

  “Poor as Job,” said the young man in a hoarse voice, and he had to come up out of a red comforter to say it.

  We gave him a slice of the pudding, and he bit into it without thanks or delay. The next minute he had thrown the pudding slap in Dora’s face, and was clutching Dicky by the collar.

  “Blime if I don’t chuck ye in the river, the whole bloomin’ lot of you!” he exclaimed.

  The girls screamed, the boys shouted, and though Oswald threw himself on the insulter of his sister with all his manly vigour, yet but for a friend of Oswald’s, who is in the police, passing at that instant, the author shudders to think what might have happened, for he was a strong young man, and Oswald is not yet come to his full strength, and the Quaggy runs all too near.

  Our policeman led our assailant aside, and we waited anxiously, as he told us to. After long uncertain moments the young man in the comforter loafed off grumbling, and our policeman turned to us.

  “Said you give him a dollop o’ pudding, and it tasted of soap and hair-oil.”

  I suppose the hair-oil must have been the Brown Windsoriness of the soap coming out. We were sorry, but it was still our duty to get rid of the pudding. The Quaggy was handy, it is true, but when you have collected money to feed poor children and spent it on pudding it is not right to throw that pudding in the river. People do not subscribe shillings and sixpences and half-crowns to feed a hungry flood with Christmas pudding.

  Yet we shrank from asking any more people whether they were poor persons, or about their families, and still more from offering the pudding to chance people who might bite into it and taste the soap before we had time to get away.

  It was Alice, the most paralysed with disgrace of all of us, who thought of the best idea.

  She said, “Let’s take it to the workhouse. At any rate they’re all poor people there, and they mayn’t go out without leave, so they can’t run after us to do anything to us after the pudding. No one would give them leave to go out to pursue people who had brought them pudding, and wreck vengeance on them, and at any rate we shall get rid of the conscience-pudding — it’s a sort of conscience-money, you know — only it isn’t money but pudding.”

  The workhouse is a good way, but we stuck to it, though very cold, and hungrier than we thought possible when we started, for we had been so agitated we had not even stayed to eat the plain pudding our good Father had so kindly and thoughtfully ordered for our Christmas dinner.

  The big bell at the workhouse made a man open the door to us, when we rang it. Oswald said (and he spoke because he is next eldest to Dora, and she had had jolly well enough of saying anything about pudding) — he said —

  “Please we’ve brought some pudding for the poor people.”

  He looked us up and down, and he looked at our basket, then he said: “You’d better see the Matron.”

  We waited in a hall, feeling more and more uncomfy, and less and less like Christmas. We were very cold indeed, especially our hands and our noses. And we felt less and less able to face the Matron if she was horrid, and one of us at least wished we had chosen the Quaggy for the pudding’s long home, and made it up to the robbed poor in some other way afterwards.

  Just as Alice was saying earnestly in the burning cold ear of Oswald, “Let’s put down the basket and make a bolt for it. Oh, Oswald, let’s!” a lady came along the passage. She was very upright, and she had eyes that went through you like blue gimlets. I should not like to be obliged to thwart that lady if she had any design, and mine was opposite. I am glad this is not likely to occur.

  She said, “What’s all this about a pudding?”

  H.O. said at once, before we could stop him, “They say I’ve stolen the pudding, so we’ve brought it here for the poor people.”

  “No, we didn’t!” “That wasn’t why!” “The money was given!” “It was meant for the poor!” “Shut up, H.O.!” said the rest of us all at once.

  Then there was an awful silence. The lady gimleted us again one by one with her blue eyes.

  Then she said: “Come into my room. You all look frozen.”

  She took us into a very jolly room with velvet curtains and a big fire, and the gas lighted, because now it was almost dark, even out of doors. She gave us chairs, and Oswald felt as if his was a dock, he felt so criminal, and the lady looked so Judgular.

  Then she took the arm-chair by the fire herself, and said, “Who’s the eldest?”

  “I am,” said Dora, looking more like a frightened white rabbit than I’ve ever seen her.

  “Then tell me all about it.”

  Dora looked at Alice and began to cry. That slab of pudding in the face had totally unnerved the gentle girl. Alice’s eyes were red, and her face was puffy with crying; but she spoke up for Dora and said —

  “Oh, please let Oswald tell. Dora can’t. She’s tired with the long walk. And a young man threw a piece of it in her face, and — —”

  The lady nodded and Oswald began. He told the story from the very beginning, as he has always been taught to, though he hated to lay bare the family honour’s wound before a stranger, however judgelike and gimlet-eyed He told all — not concealing the pudding-throwing, nor what the young man said about soap.

  “So,” he ended, “we want to give the conscience-pudding to you. It’s like conscience-money — you know what that is, don’t you? But if you really think it is soapy and not just the young man’s horridness, perhaps you’d better not let them eat it. But the figs and things are all right.”

  When he had done the lady said, for most of us were crying more or less —

  “Come, cheer up! It’s Christmas-time, and he’s very little — your brother, I mean. And I think the rest of you seem pretty well able to take care of the honour of the family. I’ll take the conscience-pudding off your minds. Where are you going now?”

  “Home, I suppose,” Oswald said. And he thought how nasty and dark and dull it would be. The fire out most likely and Father away.

  “And your Father’s not at home, you say,” the blue-gimlet lady went on. “What do you say to having tea with me, and then seeing the entertainment we have got up for our old people?”

  Then the lady smiled and the blue gimlets looked quite merry.

  The room was so warm and comfortable and the invitation was the last thing we expected. It was jolly of her, I do think.

  No one thought quite at first of saying how pleased we should be to accept her kind invitation. Instead we all just said “Oh!” but in a tone which must have told her we meant “Yes, please,” very deeply.

  Oswald (this has more than once happened) was the first to restore his manners. He made a proper bow like he has been taught, and said —

  “Thank you very much. We should like it very much. It is very much nicer than going home. Thank you very much.”

  I need not tell the reader that Oswald could have made up a much better speech if he had had more time to make it up in, or if he had not been so filled with mixed flusteredness and furification by the shameful events of the day.

  We washed our faces and hands and had a first rate muffin and crumpet tea, with slices of cold meats, and many nic
e jams and cakes. A lot of other people were there, most of them people who were giving the entertainment to the aged poor.

  After tea it was the entertainment. Songs and conjuring and a play called “Box and Cox,” very amusing, and a lot of throwing things about in it — bacon and chops and things — and nigger minstrels. We clapped till our hands were sore.

  When it was over we said goodbye. In between the songs and things Oswald had had time to make up a speech of thanks to the lady.

  He said —

  “We all thank you heartily for your goodness. The entertainment was beautiful. We shall never forget your kindness and hospitableness.”

  The lady laughed, and said she had been very pleased to have us. A fat gentleman said —

  “And your teas? I hope you enjoyed those — eh?”

  Oswald had not had time to make up an answer to that, so he answered straight from the heart, and said —

  “Ra — ther!”

  And every one laughed and slapped us boys on the back and kissed the girls, and the gentleman who played the bones in the nigger minstrels saw us home. We ate the cold pudding that night, and H.O. dreamed that something came to eat him, like it advises you to in the advertisements on the hoardings. The grown-ups said it was the pudding, but I don’t think it could have been that, because, as I have said more than once, it was so very plain.

  Some of H.O.’s brothers and sisters thought it was a judgment on him for pretending about who the poor children were he was collecting the money for. Oswald does not believe such a little boy as H.O. would have a real judgment made just for him and nobody else, whatever he did.

  But it certainly is odd. H.O. was the only one who had bad dreams, and he was also the only one who got any of the things we bought with that ill-gotten money, because, you remember, he picked a hole in the raisin-paper as he was bringing the parcel home. The rest of us had nothing, unless you count the scrapings of the pudding-basin, and those don’t really count at all.

  ARCHIBALD THE UNPLEASANT

  The house of Bastable was once in poor, but honest, circs. That was when it lived in a semi-detached house in the Lewisham Road, and looked for treasure. There were six scions of the house who looked for it — in fact there were seven, if you count Father. I am sure he looked right enough, but he did not do it the right way. And we did. And so we found a treasure of a great-uncle, and we and Father went to live with him in a very affluent mansion on Blackheath — with gardens and vineries and pineries and everything jolly you can think of. And then, when we were no longer so beastly short of pocket-money, we tried to be good, and sometimes it came out right, and sometimes it didn’t. Something like sums.

  And then it was the Christmas holidays — and we had a bazaar and raffled the most beautiful goat you ever saw, and we gave the money to the poor and needy.

  And then we felt it was time to do something new, because we were as rich as our worthy relative, the uncle, and our Father — now also wealthy, at least, compared to what he used to be — thought right for us; and we were as good as we could be without being good for nothing and muffs, which I hope no one calling itself a Bastable will ever stoop to.

  So then Oswald, so often the leader in hazardous enterprises, thought long and deeply in his interior self, and he saw that something must be done, because, though there was still the goat left over, unclaimed by its fortunate winner at the Bazaar, somehow no really fine idea seemed to come out of it, and nothing else was happening. Dora was getting a bit domineering, and Alice was too much taken up with trying to learn to knit. Dicky was bored and so was Oswald, and Noël was writing far more poetry than could be healthy for any poet, however young, and H.O. was simply a nuisance. His boots are always much louder when he is not amused, and that gets the rest of us into rows, because there are hardly any grown-up persons who can tell the difference between his boots and mine. Oswald decided to call a council (because even if nothing comes of a council it always means getting Alice to drop knitting, and making Noël chuck the poetical influences, that are no use and only make him silly), and he went into the room that is our room. It is called the common-room, like in colleges, and it is very different from the room that was ours when we were poor, but honest. It is a jolly room, with a big table and a big couch, that is most useful for games, and a thick carpet because of H.O.’s boots.

  Alice was knitting by the fire; it was for Father, but I am sure his feet are not at all that shape. He has a high and beautifully formed instep like Oswald’s. Noël was writing poetry, of course.

  “My dear sister sits

  And knits,

  I hope to goodness the stocking fits,”

  was as far as he had got.

  “It ought to be ‘my dearest sister’ to sound right,” he said, “but that wouldn’t be kind to Dora.”

  “Thank you,” said Dora, “You needn’t trouble to be kind to me, if you don’t want to.”

  “Shut up, Dora!” said Dicky, “Noël didn’t mean anything.”

  “He never does,” said H.O., “nor yet his poetry doesn’t neither.”

  “And his poetry doesn’t either,” Dora corrected; “and besides, you oughtn’t to say that at all, it’s unkind — —”

  “You’re too jolly down on the kid,” said Dicky.

  And Alice said, “Eighty-seven, eighty-eight — oh, do be quiet half a sec.! — eighty-nine, ninety — now I shall have to count the stitches all over again!”

  Oswald alone was silent and not cross. I tell you this to show that the sort of worryingness was among us that is catching, like measles. Kipling calls it the cameelious hump, and, as usual, that great and good writer is quite correct.

  So Oswald said, “Look here, let’s have a council. It says in Kipling’s book when you’ve got the hump go and dig till you gently perspire. Well, we can’t do that, because it’s simply pouring, but — —”

  The others all interrupted him, and said they hadn’t got the hump and they didn’t know what he meant. So he shrugged his shoulders patiently (it is not his fault that the others hate him to shrug his shoulders patiently) and he said no more.

  Then Dora said, “Oh, don’t be so disagreeable, Oswald, for goodness’ sake!”

  I assure you she did, though he had done simply nothing.

  Matters were in this cryptical state when the door opened and Father came in.

  “Hullo, kiddies!” he remarked kindly. “Beastly wet day, isn’t it? And dark too. I can’t think why the rain can’t always come in term time. It seems a poor arrangement to have it in ‘vac.,’ doesn’t it?”

  I think every one instantly felt better. I know one of us did, and it was me.

  Father lit the gas, and sat down in the armchair and took Alice on his knee.

  “First,” he said, “here is a box of chocs.” It was an extra big and beautiful one and Fuller’s best. “And besides the chocs., a piece of good news! You’re all asked to a party at Mrs. Leslie’s. She’s going to have all sorts of games and things, with prizes for every one, and a conjurer and a magic lantern.”

  The shadow of doom seemed to be lifted from each young brow, and we felt how much fonder we were of each other than any one would have thought. At least Oswald felt this, and Dicky told me afterwards he felt Dora wasn’t such a bad sort after all.

  “It’s on Tuesday week,” said Father. “I see the prospect pleases. Number three is that your cousin Archibald has come here to stay a week or two. His little sister has taken it into her head to have whooping-cough. And he’s downstairs now, talking to your uncle.”

  We asked what the young stranger was like, but Father did not know, because he and cousin Archibald’s father had not seen much of each other for some years. Father said this, but we knew it was because Archibald’s father hadn’t bothered to see ours when he was poor and honest, but now he was the wealthy sharer of the red-brick, beautiful Blackheath house it was different. This made us not like Uncle Archibald very much, but we were too just to blame it on to young Archi
bald. All the same we should have liked him better if his father’s previous career had not been of such a worldly and stuck-up sort. Besides, I do think Archibald is quite the most rotten sort of name. We should have called him Archie, of course, if he had been at all decent.

  “You’ll be as jolly to him as you can, I know,” Father said; “he’s a bit older than you, Oswald. He’s not a bad-looking chap.”

  Then Father went down and Oswald had to go with him, and there was Archibald sitting upright in a chair and talking to our Indian uncle as if he was some beastly grown-up. Our cousin proved to be dark and rather tall, and though he was only fourteen he was always stroking his lip to see if his moustache had begun to come.

  Father introduced us to each other, and we said, “How do you do?” and looked at each other, and neither of us could think of anything else to say. At least Oswald couldn’t. So then we went upstairs. Archibald shook hands with the others, and every one was silent except Dora, and she only whispered to H.O. to keep his feet still.

  You cannot keep for ever in melancholy silence however few things you have to say, and presently some one said it was a wet day, and this well-chosen remark made us able to begin to talk.

  I do not wish to be injurious to anybody, especially one who was a Bastable, by birth at least if not according to the nobler attributes, but I must say that Oswald never did dislike a boy so much as he did that young Archibald. He was as cocky as though he’d done something to speak of — been captain of his eleven, or passed a beastly exam., or something — but we never could find that he had done anything. He was always bragging about the things he had at home, and the things he was allowed to do, and all the things he knew all about, but he was a most untruthful chap. He laughed at Noël’s being a poet — a thing we never do, because it makes him cry and crying makes him ill — and of course Oswald and Dicky could not punch his head in their own house because of the laws of hospitableness, and Alice stopped it at last by saying she didn’t care if it was being a sneak, she would tell Father the very next time. I don’t think she would have, because we made a rule, when we were poor and honest, not to bother Father if we could possibly help it. And we keep it up still. But Archibald didn’t know that. Then this cousin, who is, I fear, the black sheep of the Bastables, and hardly worthy to be called one, used to pull the girls’ hair, and pinch them at prayers when they could not call out or do anything to him back.