Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  There was nothing to do but to go home, and go to sleep, knowing that when they woke the next morning it would be to a day in the course of which they would have to explain their wet clothes to their parents.

  “Even you’ll have to do that,” Mavis reminded the Spangled Boy.

  He received her remark in what they afterwards remembered to have been a curiously deep silence.

  “I don’t know how on earth we are to explain,” said Francis. “I really don’t. Come on — let’s get home. No more adventures for me, thank you. Bernard knew what he was talking about.”

  Mavis, very tired indeed, agreed.

  They had got over the beach by this time, recovered the wheelbarrow, and trundled it up and along the road. At the corner the Spangled Boy suddenly said:

  “Well then, so long, old sports,” and vanished down a side lane.

  The other two went on together — with the wheelbarrow, which, I may remind you, was as wet as any of them.

  They went along by the hedge and the mill and up to the house.

  Suddenly Mavis clutched at her brother’s arm.

  “There’s a light,” she said, “in the house.”

  There certainly was, and the children experienced that terrible empty sensation only too well known to all of us — the feeling of the utterly-found-out.

  They could not be sure which window it was, but it was a downstairs window, partly screened by ivy. A faint hope still buoyed up Francis of getting up to bed unnoticed by whoever it was that had the light; and he and his sister crept round to the window out of which they had crept; but such a very long time ago it seemed. The window was shut.

  Francis suggested hiding in the mill and trying to creep in unobserved later on, but Mavis said:

  “No. I’m too tired for anything. I’m too tired to live, I think. Let’s go and get it over, and then we can go to bed and sleep, and sleep, and sleep.”

  So they went and peeped in at the kitchen window, and there was no one but Mrs Pearce, and she had a fire lighted and was putting a big pot on it.

  The children went to the back door and opened it.

  “You’re early, for sure,” said Mrs Pearce, not turning.

  This seemed a bitter sarcasm. It was too much. Mavis answered it with a sob. And at that Mrs Pearce turned very quickly.

  “What to gracious!” she said—”whatever to gracious is the matter? Where’ve you been?” She took Mavis by the shoulder. “Why, you’re all sopping wet. You naughty, naughty little gell, you. Wait till I tell your Ma — been shrimping I lay, — or trying to — never asking when the tide was right. And not a shrimp to show for it, I know, with the tide where it is. You wait till we hear what your Ma’s got to say about it. And look at my clean flags and you dripping all over ’em like a fortnight’s wash in wet weather.”

  Mavis twisted a little in Mrs Pearce’s grasp.

  “Oh, don’t scold us, dear Mrs Pearce,” she said, putting a wet arm up towards Mrs Pearce’s neck. “We are so miserable.”

  “And so you deserve to be,” said Mrs Pearce, smartly. “Here, young chap, you go into the wash-house and get them things off, and drop them outside the door, and have a good rub with the jack-towel; and little miss can undress by the fire and put hern in this clean pail — and I’ll pop up soft-like and so as your Ma don’t hear, and bring you down something dry.”

  A gleam of hope fell across the children’s hearts, — a gleam wild and watery as that which the moonlight had cast across the sea, into which the Mermaid had disappeared. Perhaps after all Mrs Pearce wasn’t going to tell Mother. If she was, why should she pop up soft-like? Perhaps she would keep their secret. Perhaps she would dry their clothes. Perhaps, after all, that impossible explanation would never have to be given.

  The kitchen was a pleasant place, with bright brasses and shining crockery, and a round three-legged table with a clean cloth and blue-and-white teacups on it.

  Mrs Pearce came down with their nightgowns and the warm dressing-gowns that Aunt Enid had put in in spite of their expressed wishes. How glad they were of them now!

  “There, that’s a bit more like,” said Mrs Pearce; “here, don’t look as if I was going to eat you, you little Peter Grievouses. I’ll hot up some milk and here’s a morsel of bread and dripping to keep the cold out. Lucky for you I was up — getting the boys’ breakfast ready. The boats’ll be in directly. The boys will laugh when I tell them — laugh fit to bust theirselves they will.”

  “Oh, don’t tell,” said Mavis, “don’t, please don’t. Please, please don’t.”

  “Well, I like that,” said Mrs Pearce, pouring herself some tea from a hot which, the children learned later, stood on the hob all day and most of the night; “it’s the funniest piece I’ve heard this many a day. Shrimping at high-tide!”

  “I thought,” said Mavis, “perhaps you’d forgive us, and dry our clothes, and not tell anybody.”

  “Oh, you did, did you? “ said Mrs Pearce. “Anything else — ?”

  “No, nothing else, thank you,” said Mavis, “only I want to say thank you for being so kind, and it isn’t high-tide yet, and please we haven’t done any harm to the barrow — but I’m afraid it’s rather wet, and we oughtn’t to have taken it without asking, I know, but you were in bed and-”

  “The barrow?” Mrs Pearce repeated, “that great hulking barrow — you took the barrow to bring the shrimps home in ? No — I can’t keep it to myself — that really I can’t-” she lay back in the arm-chair and shook with silent laughter.

  The children looked at each other. It is not pleasant to be laughed at, especially for something you have never done — but they both felt that Mrs Pearce would have laughed quite as much, or even more, if they had told her what it really was they had wanted the barrow for.

  “Oh, don’t go on laughing,” said Mavis, creeping close to Mrs Pearce, “though you are a ducky darling not to be cross any more. And you won’t tell, will you?”

  “Ah well — I’ll let you off this time. But you’ll promise faithful never to do it again, now, won’t you?”

  “We faithfully won’t ever,” said both children, earnestly.

  “Then off you go to your beds, and I’ll dry the things when your Ma’s out. I’ll press ’em to-morrow morning while I’m waiting for the boys to come in.”

  “You are an angel,” said Mavis, embracing her.

  “More than you are then, you young limbs,” said Mrs Pearce, returning the embrace. “Now off you go, and get what sleep you can.”

  It was with a feeling that Fate had not, after all, been unduly harsh with them that Mavis and Francis came down to a very late breakfast.

  “Your Ma and Pa’s gone off on their likes,” said Mrs Pearce, bringing in the eggs and bacon,—”won’t be back till dinner. So I let you have your sleep out. The little ‘uns had theirs three hours ago and out on the sands. I told them to let you sleep, though I know they wanted to hear how many shrimps you caught. I lay they expected a barrowful, same as what you did.”

  “How did you know they knew we’d been out?” Francis asked.

  “Oh, the way they was being secret in corners, and looking the old barrow all over was enough to make a cat laugh. Hurry up, now. I’ve got the washing-up to do-and your things is well-nigh dry.”

  “You are a darling,” said Mavis. “Suppose you’d been different, whatever would have become of us?”

  “You’d a got your deserts — bed and bread and water, instead of this nice egg and bacon and the sands to play on. So now you know,” said Mrs Pearce.

  .....

  On the sands they found Kathleen and Bernard, and it really now, in the bright warm sunshine, seemed almost worth while to have gone through last night’s adventures, if only for the pleasure of telling the tale of them to the two who had been safe and warm and dry in bed all the time.

  “Though really,” said Mavis, when the tale was told, “sitting here and seeing the tents and the children digging, and the ladies knitting, and th
e gentlemen smoking and throwing stones, it does hardly seem as though there could be any magic. And yet, you know, there was.”

  “It’s like I told you about radium and things,” said Bernard. “Things aren’t magic because they haven’t been found out yet. There’s always been Mermaids, of course, only people didn’t know it.”

  “But she talks,” said Francis.

  “Why not?” said Bernard placidly. “Even parrots do that.”

  “But she talks English,” Mavis urged.

  “Well,” said Bernard, unmoved, “what would you have had her talk?”

  And so, in pretty sunshine, between blue sky and good sands, the adventure of the Mermaid seemed to come to an end, to be now only as a tale that is told. And when the four went slowly home to dinner all were, I think, a little sad that this should be so.

  “Let’s go round and have a look at the empty barrow,” Mavis said; “it’ll bring it all back to us, and remind us of what was in it, like ladies’ gloves and troubadours.”

  The barrow was where they had left it, but it was not empty. A very dirty piece of folded paper lay in it, addressed in pencilled and uncertain characters : —

  “TO FRANCE.”

  “TO BE OPENED.”

  Francis opened it and read aloud: —

  “I went back and she came back and she wants you to come back at ded of nite.

  “RUBE.”

  “Well, I shan’t go,” said Francis.

  A voice from the bush by the gate male them all start.

  “Don’t let on you see me,” said the Spangled Boy, putting his head out cautiously.

  “You seem very fond of hiding in bushes,” said Francis.

  “I am,” said the boy briefly. “Ain’t you going — to see her again, I mean?”

  “No,” said Francis, “I’ve had enough dead of night to last me a long time.”

  “You a-going, miss?” the boy asked. “No? You are a half-livered crew. It’ll be only me, I suppose.”

  “You’re going, then,?”

  “Well,” said the boy, “what do you think?”

  “I should go if I were you,” said Bernard impartially.

  “No, you wouldn’t; not if you were me,” said Francis. “You don’t know how disagreeable she was. I’m fed up with her. And besides, we simply can’t get out at dead of night now. Mrs Pearce’ll be on the look-out. No — it’s no go.”

  “But you must manage it somehow,” said Kathleen; “you can’t let it drop like this. I shan’t believe it was magic at all if you do.”

  “If you were us, you’d have had enough of magic,” said Francis. “Why don’t you go yourselves — you and Bernard.”

  “I’ve a good mind to,” said Bernard unexpectedly. “Only not in the middle of the night, because of my being certain to drop my boots. Would you come, Cathay?”

  “You know I wanted to before,” said Kathleen reproachfully.

  “But how?” the others asked.

  “Oh,” said Bernard, “we must think about that. I say, you chap, we must get to our dinner. Will you be be here after?”

  “Yes. I ain’t going to move from here. You might bring me a bit of grub with you-I ain’t had a bite since yesterday tea-time.”

  “I say,” said Francis kindly, “did they stop your grub to punish you for getting wet.”

  “They didn’t know nothing about my getting wet,” he said darkly. “I didn’t never go back to the tents. I’ve cut my lucky, I ‘ave ‘ooked it, skedaddled, done a bunk, run away.”

  “And where are you going?”

  “I dunno,” said the Spangled Boy. “I’m running from, not to.”

  CHAPTER VI. THE MERMAIDS HOME

  THE parents of Mavis, Francis, Kathleen and Bernard were extremely sensible people. If they had not been, this story could never have happened. They were as jolly as any father and mother you ever met, but they were not always fussing and worrying about their children, and they understood perfectly well that children do not care to be absolutely always under the parental eye. So that, while there were always plenty of good times in which the whole family took part, there were also times when Father and Mother went off together and enjoyed themselves in their own grown-up way, while the children enjoyed themselves in theirs. It happened that on this particular afternoon there was to be a concert at Lymington — Father and Mother were going. The children were asked whether they would like to go, and replied with equal courtesy and firmness.

  “Very well then,” said Mother, “you do whatever you like best. I should play on the shore, I think, if I were you. Only don’t go round the corner of the cliff, because that’s dangerous at high-tide. It’s safe so long as you’re within sight of the coastguards. Anyone have any more pie? No — then I think I’ll run and dress.”

  “Mother,” said Kathleen suddenly, “may we take some pie and things to a little boy who said he hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday?”

  “Where is he?” Father asked.

  Kathleen blushed purple, but Mavis cautiously replied, “Outside. I’m sure we shall be able to find him.”

  “Very well,” said Mother, “and you might ask Mrs Pearce to give you some bread and cheese as well. Now, I must simply fly.”

  “Cathay and I’ll help you, Mother,” said Mavis, and escaped the further questioning she saw in her father’s eye. The boys had slipped away at the first word of what seemed to be Kathleen’s amazing indiscretion about the waiting Rube.

  “It was quite all right,” Kathleen argued later, as they went up the field, carefully carrying a plate of plum pie and the bread and cheese with not so much care and a certain bundle not carefully at all. “I saw flying in Mother’s eye before I spoke. And if you can ask leave before you do a thing it’s always safer.”

  “And look here,” said Mavis. “If the Mermaid wants to see us we’ve only got to go down and say ‘Sabrina fair,’ and she’s certain to turn up. If it’s just seeing us she wants, and not another deadly-night adventure.”

  Reuben did not eat with such pretty manners as yours, perhaps, but there was no doubt about his enjoyment of the food they had brought, though he only stopped eating for half a second, to answer, “Prime. Thank you,” to Kathleen’s earnest inquiries.

  “Now,” said Francis when the last crumb of cheese had disappeared and the last trace of plum juice had been licked from the spoon (a tin one, because, as Mrs Pearce very properly said, you never know),—”now, look here. We’re going straight down to the shore to try and see her. And if you like to come with us we can disguise you.”

  “What in?” Reuben asked. “I did disguise myself once in a false beard and a green-coloured moustache, but it didn’t take no one in for a moment, not even the dogs.”

  “We thought,” said Mavis gently, “that perhaps the most complete disguise for you would be girl’s clothes — because,” she added hastily to dispel the thundercloud on Reuben’s brow—”because you’re such a manly boy. Nobody would give vent to a moment’s suspicion. It would be so very unlike you.”

  “G’a long-” said the Spangled Child, his dignity only half soothed.

  “And I’ve brought you some of my things and some sand-shoes of France’s, because, of course, mine are just kiddy shoes.”

  At that Reuben burst out laughing and then hummed: “‘Go, flatterer, go, I’ll not trust to thy, vow,’” quite musically.

  “Oh, do you know the ‘Gipsy Countess’? How jolly!” said Kathleen.

  “Old Mother Romaine knew a power of songs,” he said, suddenly grave. “Come on, chuck us in the togs.”

  “You just take off your coat and come out and I’ll help you dress up,” was Francis’s offer.

  “Best get a skirt over my kicksies first,” said Reuben, “case anyone comes by and recognizes the gipsy cheild. Hand us in the silk attire and jewels have to spare.”

  They pushed the blue serge skirt and jersey through the branches which he held apart.

  “Now the ‘at,” he said, rea
ching a hand for it. But the hat was too large for the opening in the bush, and he had to come out of it. The moment he was out the girls crowned him with the big rush-hat, round whose crown a blue scarf was twisted, and Francis and Bernard each seizing a leg, adorned those legs with brown stockings and white sand-shoes. Reuben, the spangled runaway from the gipsy camp, stood up among his new friends a rather awkward and quite presentable little girl.

  “Now,” he said, looking down at his serge skirts with a queer smile, “now we shan’t be long.”

  Nor were they. Thrusting the tin spoon and the pie-plate and the discarded boots of Reuben into the kind shelter of the bush they made straight for the sea.

  When they got to that pleasant part of the shore which is smooth sand and piled shingle, lying between low rocks and high cliffs, Bernard stopped short.

  “Now, look here,” he said, “if Sabrina fair turns up trumps I don’t mind going on with the adventure, but I won’t do it if Kathleen’s to be in it.”

  “It’s not fair,” said Kathleen; “you said I might.”

  “Did I? “ — Bernard most handsomely referred the matter to the others.

  “Yes, you did,” said Francis shortly. Mavis said “Yes,” and Reuben clinched the matter by saying, “Why, you up and asked her yourself if she’d go along of you.”

  “All right,” said Bernard calmly. “Then I shan’t go myself. That’s all.”

  “Oh, bother,” said at least three of the five; and Kathleen said: “I don’t see why I should always be out of everything.”

  “Well,” said Mavis impatiently, “after all, there’s no danger in just trying to see the Mermaid. You promise you won’t do anything if Bernard says not — that’ll do, I suppose? Though why you should be a slave to him just because he chooses to say you’re his particular sister, I don’t see. Will that do, Bear?”

  “I’ll promise anything,” said Kathleen, almost in tears, “if you’ll only let me come with you all and see the Mermaid if she turns out to be seeable.”

  So that was settled.

  Now came the question of where the magic words should be said.

  Mavis and Francis voted for the edge of the rocks where the words had once already been so successfully spoken. Bernard said, “Why not here where we are?” Kathleen said rather sadly that any place would do as long as the Mermaid came when she was called. But Reuben, standing sturdily in his girl’s clothes, said: