New Treasure Seekers Part 11

It was one Sunday--the Somethingth Sunday in Advent, I think--and Denny and Daisy and their father and Albert's uncle came to dinner, which is in the middle of the day on that day of rest and the same things to eat for grown-ups and us. It is nearly always roast beef and Yorks.h.i.+re, but the puddings and vegetables are brightly variegated and never the same two Sundays running.

At dinner some one said something about the coat-of-arms that is on the silver tankards which once, when we were poor and honest, used to stay at the shop having the dents slowly taken out of them for months and months. But now they are always at home and are put at the four corners of the table every day, and any grown-up who likes can drink beer out of them.

After some talk of the sort you don't listen to, in which bends and lioncels and gules and things played a promising part, Albert's uncle said that Mr. Turnbull had told him something about that coat-of-arms being carved on a bridge somewhere in Cambridges.h.i.+re, and again the conversation wandered into things like Albert's uncle had talked about to the Maidstone Antiquarian Society the day they came over to see his old house in the country and we arranged the time-honoured Roman remains for them to dig up. So, hearing the words king-post and mullion and moulding and underpin, Oswald said might we go; and we went, and took our dessert with us and had it in our own common-room, where you can roast chestnuts with a free heart and never mind what your fingers get like.

When first we knew Daisy we used to call her the White Mouse, and her brother had all the appearance of being one too, but you know how untruthful appearances are, or else it was that we taught him happier things, for he certainly turned out quite different in the end; and she was not a bad sort of kid, though we never could quite cure her of wanting to be "ladylike"--that is the beastliest word there is, I think, and Albert's uncle says so, too. He says if a girl can't be a lady it's not worth while to be only like one--she'd better let it alone and be a free and happy bounder.

But all this is not what I was going to say, only the author does think of so many things besides the story, and sometimes he puts them in. This is the case with Thackeray and the Religious Tract Society and other authors, as well as Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Only I don't suppose you have ever heard of her, though she writes books that some people like very much. But perhaps they are her friends. I did not like the one I read about the Baronet. It was on a wet Sunday at the seaside, and nothing else in the house but Bradshaw and "Elsie; or like a----" or I shouldn't have. But what really happened to us before Christmas is strictly the following narrative.

"I say," remarked Denny, when he had burned his fingers with a chestnut that turned out a bad one after all--and such is life--and he had finished sucking his fingers and getting rid of the chestnut, "about these antiquaries?"

"Well, what about them?" said Oswald. He always tries to be gentle and kind to Denny, because he knows he helped to make a man of the young Mouse.

"I shouldn't think," said Denny, "that it was so very difficult to be one."

"I don't know," said d.i.c.ky. "You have to read very dull books and an awful lot of them, and remember what you read, what's more."

"I don't think so," said Alice. "That girl who came with the antiquities--the one Albert's uncle said was upholstered in red plush like furniture--_she_ hadn't read anything, you bet."

Dora said, "You ought not to bet, especially on Sunday," and Alice altered it to "You may be sure."

"Well, but what then?" Oswald asked Denny. "Out with it," for he saw that his youthful friend had got an idea and couldn't get it out. You should always listen patiently to the ideas of others, no matter how silly you expect them to be.

"I do wish you wouldn't hurry me so," said Denny, snapping his fingers anxiously. And we tried to be patient.

"Why shouldn't we _be_ them?" Denny said at last.

"He means antiquaries," said Oswald to the bewildered others. "But there's nowhere to go and nothing to do when we get there."

The Dentist (so-called for short, his real name being Denis) got red and white, and drew Oswald aside to the window for a secret discussion.

Oswald listened as carefully as he could, but Denny always buzzes so when he whispers.

"Right oh," he remarked, when the confidings of the Dentist had got so that you could understand what he was driving at. "Though you're being shy with us now, after all we went through together in the summer, is simply skittles."

Then he turned to the polite and attentive others and said--

[Ill.u.s.tration: OSWALD LISTENED AS CAREFULLY AS HE COULD, BUT DENNY ALWAYS BUZZES SO WHEN HE WHISPERS.]

"You remember that day we went to Bexley Heath with Albert's uncle?

Well, there was a house, and Albert's uncle said a clever writer lived there, and in more ancient years that chap in history--Sir Thomas What's his name; and Denny thinks he might let us be antiquaries there. It looks a ripping place from the railway."

It really does. It's a fine big house, and splendid gardens, and a lawn with a sundial, and the tallest trees anywhere about here.

"But what could we _do_?" said d.i.c.ky. "I don't suppose _he'd_ give _us_ tea," though such, indeed, had been our hospitable conduct to the antiquaries who came to see Albert's uncle.

"Oh, I don't know," said Alice. "We might dress up for it, and wear spectacles, and we could all read papers. It would be lovely--something to fill up the Christmas holidays--the part before the wedding, I mean.

Do let's."

"All right, I don't mind. I suppose it would be improving," said Dora.

"We should have to read a lot of history. You can settle it. I'm going to show Daisy our bridesmaids' dresses."

It was, alas! too true. Albert's uncle was to be married but shortly after, and it was partly our faults, though that does not come into this story.

So the two D.'s went to look at the clothes--girls like this--but Alice, who wishes she had never consented to be born a girl, stayed with us, and we had a long and earnest council about it.

"One thing," said Oswald, "it can't possibly be wrong--so perhaps it won't be amusing."

"Oh, Oswald!" said Alice, and she spoke rather like Dora.

"I don't mean what you mean," said Oswald in lofty scorn. "What I mean to say is that when a thing is quite sure to be right, it's not so--well--I mean to say there it is, don't you know; and if it might be wrong, and isn't, it's a score to you; and if it might be wrong, and is--as so often happens--well, you know yourself, adventures sometimes turn out wrong that you didn't think were going to, but seldom, or never, the uninteresting kind, and----"

d.i.c.ky told Oswald to dry up--which, of course, no one stands from a younger brother, but though Oswald explained this at the time, he felt in his heart that he has sometimes said what he meant with more clearness. When Oswald and d.i.c.ky had finished, we went on and arranged everything.

Every one was to write a paper--and read it.

"If the papers are too long to read while we're there," said Noel, "we can read them in the long winter evenings when we are grouped along the household hearthrug. I shall do my paper in poetry--about Agincourt."

Some of us thought Agincourt wasn't fair, because no one could be sure about any knight who took part in that well-known conflict having lived in the Red House; but Alice got us to agree, because she said it would be precious dull if we all wrote about nothing but Sir Thomas Whatdoyoucallhim--whose real name in history Oswald said he would find out, and then write his paper on that world-renowned person, who is a household word in all families. Denny said he would write about Charles the First, because they were just doing that part at his school.

"I shall write about what happened in 1066," said H.O. "I know that."

Alice said, "If I write a paper it will be about Mary Queen of Scots."

Dora and Daisy came in just as she said this, and it transpired that this ill-fated but good-looking lady was the only one they either of them wanted to write about. So Alice gave it up to them and settled to do Magna Charta, and they could settle something between themselves for the one who would have to give up Mary Queen of Scots in the end. We all agreed that the story of that lamented wearer of pearls and black velvet would not make enough for two papers.

Everything was beautifully arranged, when suddenly H.O. said--

"Supposing he doesn't let us?"

"Who doesn't let us what?"

"The Red House man--read papers at his Red House."

This was, indeed, what n.o.body had thought of--and even now we did not think any one could be so lost to proper hospitableness as to say no.

Yet none of us liked to write and ask. So we tossed up for it, only Dora had feelings about tossing up on Sunday, so we did it with a hymn-book instead of a penny.

We all won except Noel, who lost, so he said he would do it on Albert's uncle's typewriter, which was on a visit to us at the time, waiting for Mr. Remington to fetch it away to mend the "M." We think it was broken through Albert's uncle writing "Margaret" so often, because it is the name of the lady he was doomed to be married by.

The girls had got the letter the Maidstone Antiquarian Society and Field Clubs Secretary had sent to Albert's uncle--H.O. said they kept it for a momentum of the day--and we altered the dates and names in blue chalk and put in a piece about might we skate on the moat, and gave it to Noel, who had already begun to make up his poetry about Agincourt, and so had to be shaken before he would attend. And that evening, when Father and our Indian uncle and Albert's uncle were seeing the others on the way to Forest Hill, Noel's poetry and pencil were taken away from him and he was shut up in Father's room with the Remington typewriter, which we had never been forbidden to touch. And I don't think he hurt it much, except quite at the beginning, when he jammed the "S" and the "J" and the thing that means per cent. so that they stuck--and d.i.c.ky soon put that right with a screwdriver.

He did not get on very well, but kept on writing MOR7E HOAS5 or MORD6M HOVCE on new pieces of paper and then beginning again, till the floor was strewn with his remains; so we left him at it, and went and played Celebrated Painters--a game even Dora cannot say anything about on Sunday, considering the Bible kind of pictures most of them painted. And much later, the library door having banged once and the front door twice, Noel came in and said he had posted it, and already he was deep in poetry again, and had to be roused when requisite for bed.

It was not till next day that he owned that the typewriter had been a fiend in disguise, and that the letter had come out so odd that he could hardly read it himself.

"The hateful engine of destruction wouldn't answer to the bit in the least," he said, "and I'd used nearly a wastepaper basket of Father's best paper, and I thought he might come in and say something, so I just finished it as well as I could, and I corrected it with the blue chalk--because you'd bagged that B.B. of mine--and I didn't notice what name I'd signed till after I'd licked the stamp."

The hearts of his kind brothers and sisters sank low. But they kept them up as well as they could, and said--