The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (144 page)

The door was opened by a very neat servant in black, with a white apron; we saw her tying the strings as she came along the hall, through the different-coloured glass in the door. Her face was red, and I think she was Jane.

We asked if we could see Mr Mallow.

The servant said Mr Mallow was very busy with his sermon just then, but she would see.

But Oswald said, ‘It’s all right. He asked us to come.’

So she let us all in and shut the front door, and showed us into a very tidy room with a bookcase full of a lot of books covered in black cotton with white labels, and some dull pictures, and a harmonium. And Mr Mallow was writing at a desk with drawers, copying something out of a book. He was stout and short, and wore spectacles.

He covered his writing up when we went in—I didn’t know why. He looked rather cross, and we heard Jane or somebody being scolded outside by the voice. I hope it wasn’t for letting us in, but I have had doubts.

‘Well,’ said the clergyman, ‘what is all this about?’

‘You asked us to call,’ Dora said, ‘about your little Sunday school. We are the Bastables of Lewisham Road.’

‘Oh—ah, yes,’ he said; ‘and shall I expect you all tomorrow?’

He took up his pen and fiddled with it, and he did not ask us to sit down. But some of us did.

‘We always spend Sunday afternoon with Father,’ said Dora; ‘but we wished to thank you for being so kind as to ask us.’

‘And we wished to ask you something else!’ said Oswald; and he made a sign to Alice to get the sherry ready in the glass. She did—behind Oswald’s back while he was speaking.

‘My time is limited,’ said Mr Mallow, looking at his watch; ‘but still—’ Then he muttered something about the fold, and went on: ‘Tell me what is troubling you, my little man, and I will try to give you any help in my power. What is it you want?’

Then Oswald quickly took the glass from Alice, and held it out to him, and said, ‘I want your opinion on that.’

‘On
that
,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

‘It is a shipment,’ Oswald said; ‘but it’s quite enough for you to taste.’ Alice had filled the glass half-full; I suppose she was too excited to measure properly.

‘A shipment?’ said the clergyman, taking the glass in his hand.

‘Yes,’ Oswald went On; ‘an exceptional opportunity. Full-bodied and nutty.’

‘It really does taste rather like one kind of Brazil-nut.’ Alice put her oar in as usual.

The Vicar looked from Alice to Oswald, and back again, and Oswald went on with what he had learned from the printing. The clergyman held the glass at half-arm’s-length, stiffly, as if he had caught cold.

‘It is of a quality never before offered at the price. Old Delicate Amoro—what’s its name—’

‘Amorolio,’ said H. O.

‘Amoroso,’ said Oswald. ‘H. O., you just shut up—Castilian Amoroso—it’s a true after-dinner wine, stimulating and yet…’

‘
Wine
?’ said Mr Mallow, holding the glass further off. ‘Do you
know
,’ he went on, making his voice very thick and strong (I expect he does it like that in church), ‘have you never been
taught
that it is the drinking of
wine
and
spirits
—yes, and
beer
, which makes half the homes in England full of
wretched
little children, and
degraded
,
miserable
parents?’

‘Not if you put sugar in it,’ said Alice firmly; ‘eight lumps and shake the bottle. We have each had more than a teaspoonful of it, and we were not ill at all. It was something else that upset H. O. Most likely all those acorns he got out of the Park.’

The clergyman seemed to be speechless with conflicting emotions, and just then the door opened and a lady came in. She had a white cap with lace, and an ugly violet flower in it, and she was tall, and looked very strong, though thin. And I do believe she had been listening at the door.

‘But why,’ the Vicar was saying, ‘why did you bring this dreadful fluid, this curse of our country, to
me
to taste?’

‘Because we thought you might buy some,’ said Dora, who never sees when a game is up. ‘In books the parson loves his bottle of old port; and new sherry is just as good—with sugar—for people who like sherry. And if you would order a dozen of the wine, then we should get two shillings.’

The lady said (and it
was
the voice), ‘Good gracious! Nasty, sordid little things! Haven’t they any one to teach them better?’

And Dora got up and said, ‘No, we are not those things you say; but we are sorry we came here to be called names. We want to make our fortune just as much as Mr Mallow does—only no one would listen to us if we preached, so it’s no use our copying out sermons like him.’

And I think that was smart of Dora, even if it was rather rude.

Then I said perhaps we had better go, and the lady said, ‘I should think so!’

But when we were going to wrap up the bottle and glass the clergyman said, ‘No; you can leave that,’ and we were so upset we did, though it wasn’t his after all.

We walked home very fast and not saying much, and the girls went up to their rooms. When I went to tell them tea was ready, and there was a teacake, Dora was crying like anything and Alice hugging her. I am afraid there is a great deal of crying in this chapter, but I can’t help it. Girls will sometimes; I suppose it is their nature, and we ought to be sorry for their affliction.

‘It’s no good,’ Dora was saying, ‘you all hate me, and you think I’m a prig and a busybody, but I do try to do right—oh, I do! Oswald, go away; don’t come here making fun of me!’

So I said, ‘I’m not making fun, Sissy; don’t cry, old girl.’

Mother taught me to call her Sissy when we were very little and before the others came, but I don’t often somehow, now we are old. I patted her on the back, and she put her head against my sleeve, holding on to Alice all the time, and she went on. She was in that laughy-cryey state when people say things they wouldn’t say at other times.

‘Oh dear, oh dear—I do try, I do. And when Mother died she said, “Dora, take care of the others, and teach them to be good, and keep them out of trouble and make them happy.” She said, “Take care of them for me, Dora dear.” And I have tried, and all of you hate me for it; and today I let you do this, though I knew all the time it was silly.’

I hope you will not think I was a muff but I kissed Dora for some time. Because girls like it. And I will never say again that she comes the good elder sister too much. And I have put all this in though I do hate telling about it, because I own I have been hard on Dora, but I never will be again. She is a good old sort; of course we never knew before about what Mother told her, or we wouldn’t have ragged her as we did. We did not tell the little ones, but I got Alice to speak to Dicky, and we three can sit on the others if requisite.

This made us forget all about the sherry; but about eight o’clock there was a knock, and Eliza went, and we saw it was poor Jane, if her name was Jane, from the Vicarage. She handed in a brown-paper parcel and a letter. And three minutes later Father called us into his study.

On the table was the brown-paper parcel, open, with our bottle and glass on it, and Father had a letter in his hand. He Pointed to the bottle and sighed, and said, ‘What have you been doing now?’ The letter in his hand was covered with little black writing, all over the four large pages.

So Dicky spoke up, and he told Father the whole thing, as far as he knew it, for Alice and I had not told about the dead sailors’ lady.

And when he had done, Alice said, ‘Has Mr Mallow written to you to say he will buy a dozen of the sherry after all? It is really not half bad with sugar in it.’

Father said no, he didn’t think clergymen could afford such expensive wine; and he said
he
would like to taste it. So we gave him what there was left, for we had decided coming home that we would give up trying for the two pounds a week in our spare time.

Father tasted it, and then he acted just as H. O. had done when he had his teaspoonful, but of course we did not say anything. Then he laughed till I thought he would never stop.

I think it was the sherry, because I am sure I have read somewhere about ‘wine that maketh glad the heart of man.’ He had only a very little, which shows that it was a good after-dinner wine, stimulating, and yet…I forget the rest.

But when he had done laughing he said, ‘It’s all right, kids. Only don’t do it again. The wine trade is overcrowded; and besides, I thought you promised to consult me before going into business?’

‘Before buying one I thought you meant,’ said Dicky. ‘This was only on commission.’ And Father laughed again. I am glad we got the Castilian Amoroso, because it did really cheer Father up, and you cannot always do that, however hard you try, even if you make jokes, or give him a comic paper.

CHAPTER 12

THE NOBLENESS OF OSWALD

The part about his nobleness only comes at the end, but you would not understand it unless you knew how it began. It began, like nearly everything about that time, with treasure-seeking.

Of course as soon as we had promised to consult my Father about business matters we all gave up wanting to go into business. I don’t know how it is, but having to consult about a thing with grown-up people, even the bravest and the best, seems to make the thing not worth doing afterwards.

We don’t mind Albert’s uncle chipping in sometimes when the thing’s going on, but we are glad he never asked us to promise to consult him about anything. Yet Oswald saw that my Father was quite right; and I daresay if we had had that hundred pounds we should have spent it on the share in that lucrative business for the sale of useful patent, and then found out afterwards that we should have done better to spend the money in some other way. My Father says so, and he ought to know. We had several ideas about that time, but having so little chink always stood in the way.

This was the case with H. O.’s idea of setting up a coconut-shy on this side of the Heath, where there are none generally. We had no sticks or wooden balls, and the greengrocer said he could not book so many as twelve dozen coconuts without Mr Bastable’s written order. And as we did not wish to consult my Father it was decided to drop it. And when Alice dressed up Pincher in some of the dolls’ clothes and we made up our minds to take him round with an organ as soon as we had taught him to dance, we were stopped at once by Dicky’s remembering how he had once heard that an organ cost seven hundred pounds. Of course this was the big church kind, but even the ones on three legs can’t be got for one-and-sevenpence, which was all we had when we first thought of it. So we gave that up too.

It was a wet day, I remember, and mutton hash for dinner—very tough with pale gravy with lumps in it. I think the others would have left a good deal on the sides of their plates, although they know better, only Oswald said it was a savoury stew made of the red deer that Edward shot. So then we were the Children of the New Forest, and the mutton tasted much better. No one in the New Forest minds venison being tough and the gravy pale.

Then after dinner we let the girls have a dolls’ tea-party, on condition they didn’t expect us boys to wash up; and it was when we were drinking the last of the liquorice water out of the little cups that Dicky said—

‘This reminds me.’

So we said, ‘What of?’

Dicky answered us at once, though his mouth was full of bread with liquorice stuck in it to look like cake. You should not speak with your mouth full, even to your own relations, and you shouldn’t wipe your mouth on the back of your hand, but on your handkerchief, if you have one. Dicky did not do this. He said—

‘Why, you remember when we first began about treasure-seeking, I said I had thought of something, only I could not tell you because I hadn’t finished thinking about it.’

We said ‘Yes.’

‘Well, this liquorice water—’

‘Tea,’ said Alice softly.

‘Well, tea then—made me think.’ He was going on to say what it made him think, but Noël interrupted and cried out, ‘I say; let’s finish off this old tea-party and have a council of war.’

So we got out the flags and the wooden sword and the drum, and Oswald beat it while the girls washed up, till Eliza came up to say she had the jumping toothache, and the noise went through her like a knife. So of course Oswald left off at once. When you are polite to Oswald he never refuses to grant your requests.

When we were all dressed up we sat down round the camp fire, and Dicky began again.

‘Every one in the world wants money. Some people get it. The people who get it are the ones who see things. I have seen one thing.’

Dicky stopped and smoked the pipe of peace. It is the pipe we did bubbles with in the summer, and somehow it has not got broken yet. We put tea-leaves in it for the pipe of peace, but the girls are not allowed to have any. It is not right to let girls smoke. They get to think too much of themselves if you let them do everything the same as men. Oswald said, ‘Out with it.’

‘I see that glass bottles only cost a penny. H. O., if you dare to snigger I’ll send you round selling old bottles, and you shan’t have any sweets except out of the money you get for them. And the same with you, Noël.’

‘Noël wasn’t sniggering,’ said Alice in a hurry; ‘it is only his taking so much interest in what you were saying makes him look like that. Be quiet, H. O., and don’t you make faces, either. Do go on, Dicky dear.’

So Dicky went on.

‘There must be hundreds of millions of bottles of medicines sold every year. Because all the different medicines say, “Thousands of cures daily,” and if you only take that as two thousand, which it must be, at least, it mounts up. And the people who sell them must make a great deal of money by them because they are nearly always two-and-ninepence the bottle, and three-and-six for one nearly double the size. Now the bottles, as I was saying, don’t cost anything like that.’

‘It’s the medicine costs the money,’ said Dora; ‘look how expensive jujubes are at the chemist’s, and peppermints too.’

‘That’s only because they’re nice,’ Dicky explained; ‘nasty things are not so dear. Look what a lot of brimstone you get for a penny, and the same with alum. We would not put the nice kinds of chemist’s things in our medicine.’

Then he went on to tell us that when we had invented our medicine we would write and tell the editor about it, and he would put it in the paper, and then people would send their two-and-ninepence and three-and-six for the bottle nearly double the size, and then when the medicine had cured them they would write to the paper and their letters would be printed, saying how they had been suffering for years, and never thought to get about again, but thanks to the blessing of our ointment—’

Dora interrupted and said, ‘Not ointment—it’s so messy.’ And Alice thought so too. And Dicky said he did not mean it, he was quite decided to let it be in bottles. So now it was all settled, and we did not see at the time that this would be a sort of going into business, but afterwards when Albert’s uncle showed us we saw it, and we were sorry. We only had to invent the medicine. You might think that was easy, because of the number of them you see every day in the paper, but it is much harder than you think. First we had to decide what sort of illness we should like to cure, and a ‘heated discussion ensued,’ like in Parliament.

Dora wanted it to be something to make the complexion of dazzling fairness, but we remembered how her face came all red and rough when she used the Rosabella soap that was advertised to make the darkest complexion fair as the lily, and she agreed that perhaps it was better not. Noël wanted to make the medicine first and then find out what it would cure, but Dicky thought not, because there are so many more medicines than there are things the matter with us, so it would be easier to choose the disease first. Oswald would have liked wounds. I still think it was a good idea, but Dicky said, ‘Who has wounds, especially now there aren’t any wars? We shouldn’t sell a bottle a day!’ So Oswald gave in because he knows what manners are, and it was Dicky’s idea. H. O. wanted a cure for the uncomfortable feeling that they give you powders for, but we explained to him that grown-up people do not have this feeling, however much they eat, and he agreed. Dicky said he did not care a straw what the loathsome disease was, as long as we hurried up and settled on something. Then Alice said—