It was after we had had the measles, that fell and blighting disorder
which we got from Alice picking up five deeply infected shillings that a
bemeasled family had wrapped in a bit of paper to pay the doctor with
and then carelessly dropped in the street. Alice held the packet hotly
in her muff all through a charity concert. Hence these tears, as it says
in Virgil. And if you have ever had measles you will know that this is
not what is called figuring speech, because your eyes do run like mad
all the time.
When we were unmeasled again we were sent to stay at Lymchurch with a
Miss Sandal, and her motto was plain living and high thinking. She had a
brother, and his motto was the same, and it was his charity concert that
Alice held the fatal shillings in her muff throughout of. Later on he
was giving tracts to a bricklayer, and fell off a scaffold in his giddy
earnestness, and Miss Sandal had to go and nurse him. So the six of us
stayed in the plain living, high thinking house by ourselves, and old
Mrs. Beale from the village came in every day and did the housework. She
was of humble birth, but was a true lady in minding her own affairs,
which is what a great many ladies do not know how to do at all. We had
no lessons to do, and we were thus free to attend to any adventures
which came along. Adventures are the real business of life. The rest is
only in-betweenness--what Albert's uncle calls padding. He is an author.
Miss Sandal's house was very plain and clean, with lots of white paint,
and very difficult to play in. So we were out a good deal. It was
seaside, so, of course, there was the beach, and besides that the
marsh--big green fields with sheep all about, and wet dykes with sedge
growing, and mud, and eels in the mud, and winding white roads that all
look the same, and all very interesting, as though they might lead to
almost anything that you didn't expect. Really, of course, they lead to
Ashford and Romney and Ivychurch, and real live places like that. But
they don't look it.
The day when what I am going to tell you about happened, we were all
leaning on the stone wall looking at the pigs. The pigman is a great
friend of ours--all except H. O., who is my youngest brother. His name
is Horace Octavius, and if you want to know why we called him H. O. you
had better read 'The Treasure Seekers' and find out. He had gone to tea
with the schoolmaster's son--a hateful kid.
'Isn't that the boy you're always fighting?' Dora asked when H. O. said
he was going.
'Yes,' said H. O., 'but, then, he keeps rabbits.'
So then we understood and let him go.
Well, the rest of us were gazing fondly on the pigs, and two soldiers
came by.
We asked them where they were off to.
They told us to mind our own business, which is not manners, even if you
are a soldier on private affairs.
'Oh, all right,' said Oswald, who is the eldest. And he advised the
soldiers to keep their hair on. The little they had was cut very short.
'I expect they're scouts or something,' said Dicky; 'it's a field-day,
or a sham-fight, or something, as likely as not.'
'Let's go after them and see,' said Oswald, ever prompt in his
decidings. So we did.
We ran a bit at first, so as not to let the soldiers have too much of a
lead. Their red coats made it quite easy to keep them in sight on the
winding white marsh road. But we did not catch them up: they seemed to
go faster and faster. So we ran a little bit more every now and then,
and we went quite a long way after them. But they didn't meet any of
their officers or regiments or things, and we began to think that
perchance we were engaged in the disheartening chase of the wild goose.
This has sometimes occurred.
There is a ruined church about two miles from Lymchurch, and when we got
close to that we lost sight of the red coats, so we stopped on the
little bridge that is near there to reconnoitre.
The soldiers had vanished.
'Well, here's a go!' said Dicky.
'It _is_ a wild-goose chase,' said Noel. 'I shall make a piece of poetry
about it. I shall call the title the "Vanishing Reds, or, the Soldiers
that were not when you got there."'
'You shut up!' said Oswald, whose eagle eye had caught a glimpse of
scarlet through the arch of the ruin.
None of the others had seen this. Perhaps you will think I do not say
enough about Oswald's quickness of sight, so I had better tell you that
is only because Oswald is me, and very modest. At least, he tries to
be, because he knows it is what a true gentleman ought to.
'They're in the ruins,' he went on. 'I expect they're going to have an
easy and a pipe--out of the wind.'
'I think it's very mysterious,' said Noel. 'I shouldn't wonder if
they're going to dig for buried treasure. Let's go and see.'
'No,' said Oswald, who, though modest, is thoughtful. 'If we do they'll
stop digging, or whatever they're doing. When they've gone away, we'll
go and see if the ground is scratched about.'
So we delayed where we were, but we saw no more scarlet.
In a little while a dull-looking man in brown came by on a bicycle. He
stopped and got off.
'Seen a couple of Tommies about here, my lad?' he said to Oswald.
Oswald does not like being called anybody's lad, especially that kind of
man's; but he did not want to spoil the review, or field-day, or
sham-fight, or whatever it might be, so he said:
'Yes; they're up in the ruins.'
'You don't say so!' said the man. 'In uniform, I suppose? Yes, of
course, or you wouldn't have known they were soldiers. Silly cuckoos!'
He wheeled his bicycle up the rough lane that leads to the old ruin.
'It can't be buried treasure,' said Dicky.
'I don't care if it is,' said Oswald. 'We'll see what's happening. I
don't mind spoiling _his_ sport. "My ladding" me like that!'
So we followed the man with the bicycle. It was leaning against the
churchyard gate when we got there. The man off it was going up to the
ruin, and we went after him.
He did not call out to the soldiers, and we thought that odd; but it
didn't make us think where it might have made us if we had had any
sense. He just went creeping about, looking behind walls and inside
arches, as though he was playing at hide-and-seek. There is a mound in
the middle of the ruin, where stones and things have fallen during dark
ages, and the grass has grown all over them. We stood on the mound, and
watched the bicycling stranger nosing about like a ferret.
There is an archway in that ruin, and a flight of steps goes down--only
five steps--and then it is all stopped up with fallen stones and earth.
The stranger stopped at last at this arch, and stooped forward with his
hands on his knees, and looked through the arch and down the steps.
Then he said suddenly and fiercely:
'Come out of it, will you?'
And the soldiers came. I wouldn't have. They were two to his one. They
came cringing out like beaten dogs. The brown man made a sort of bound,
and next minute the two soldiers were handcuffed together, and he was
driving them before him like sheep.
'Back you go the same way as what you come,' he said.
And then Oswald saw the soldiers' faces, and he will never forget what
they looked like.
He jumped off the mound, and ran to where they were.
'What have they done?' he asked the handcuffer.
'Deserters,' said the man. 'Thanks to you, my lad, I got 'em as easy as
kiss your hand.'
Then one of the soldiers looked at Oswald. He was not very old--about as
big as a fifth-form boy. And Oswald answered what the soldier looked at
him.
'I'm _not_ a sneak,' he said. 'I wouldn't have told if I'd known. If
you'd told me, instead of saying to mind my own business I'd have helped
you.'
The soldier didn't answer, but the bicycle man did.
'Then you'd 'a helped yourself into the stone jug, my lad,' said he.
'Help a dirty deserter? You're young enough to know better. Come along,
you rubbish!'
And they went.
When they were gone Dicky said:
'It's very rum. I hate cowards. And deserters are cowards. I don't see
why we feel like this.'
Alice and Dora and Noel were now discovered to be in tears.
'Of course we did right to tell. Only when the soldier looked at me ...'
said Oswald.
'Yes,' said Dicky, 'that's just it.'
In deepest gloom the party retraced its steps.
As we went, Dora said with sniffs:
'I suppose it was the bicycle man's duty.'
'Of course,' said Oswald, 'but it wasn't _our_ duty. And I jolly well
wish we hadn't!'
'And such a beautiful day, too,' said Noel, sniffing in his turn.
It _was_ beautiful. The afternoon had been dull, but now the sun was
shining flat across the marshes, making everything look as if it had
been covered all over with the best gold-leaf--marsh and trees, and
roofs and stacks, and everything.
That evening Noel wrote a poem about it all. It began:
'Poor soldiers, why did you run away
On such a beautiful, beautiful day?
If you had run away in the rain,
Perhaps they would never have found you again,
Because then Oswald would not have been there
To show the hunter the way to your lair.'
Oswald would have licked him for that--only Noel is not very strong, and
there is something about poets, however young, that makes it rather like
licking a girl. So Oswald did not even say what he thought--Noel cries
at the least thing. Oswald only said, 'Let's go down to our pigman.'
And we all went except Noel. He never will go anywhere when in the midst
of making poetry. And Alice stayed with him, and H. O. was in bed.
We told the pigman all about the deserters, and about our miserable
inside remorsefulness, and he said he knew just how we felt.
'There's quite enough agin a pore chap that's made a bolt of it without
the rest of us a-joinin' in,' he said. 'Not as I holds with
deserting--mean trick I call it. But all the same, when the odds is
that heavy--thousands to one--all the army and the navy and the pleece
and Parliament and the King agin one pore silly bloke. You wouldn't 'a
done it a purpose, I lay.'
'Not much,' said Oswald in gloomy dejection. 'Have a peppermint? They're
extra strong.'
When the pigman had had one he went on talking.
'There's a young chap, now,' he said, 'broke out of Dover Gaol. I 'appen
to know what he's in for--nicked a four-pound cake, he did, off of a
counter at a pastrycook's--Jenner's it was, in the High Street--part
hunger, part playfulness. But even if I wasn't to know what he was
lagged for, do you think I'd put the coppers on to him? Not me. Give a
fellow a chance is what I say. But don't you grizzle about them there
Tommies. P'raps it'll be the making of 'em in the end. A slack-baked
pair as ever wore boots. _I_ seed 'em. Only next time just you take and
think afore you pipes up--see?'
We said that we saw, and that next time we would do as he said. And we
went home again. As we went Dora said:
'But supposing it was a cruel murderer that had got loose, you ought to
tell then.'
'Yes,' said Dicky; 'but before you do tell you ought to be jolly sure it
_is_ a cruel murderer, and not a chap that's taken a cake because he was
hungry. How do you know what _you'd_ do if you were hungry enough?'
'I shouldn't steal,' said Dora.
'I'm not so sure,' said Dicky; and they argued about it all the way
home, and before we got in it began to rain in torrents.
Conversations about food always make you feel as though it was a very
long time since you had had anything to eat. Mrs. Beale had gone home,
of course, but we went into the larder. It is a generous larder. No
lock, only a big wooden latch that pulls up with a string, like in Red
Riding Hood. And the floor is clean damp red brick. It makes ginger-nuts
soft if you put the bag on this floor. There was half a rhubarb pie, and
there were meat turnovers with potato in them. Mrs. Beale is a
thoughtful person, and I know many people much richer that are not
nearly so thoughtful.
We had a comfortable feast at the kitchen table, standing up to eat,
like horses.
Then we had to let Noel read us his piece of poetry about the soldier;
he wouldn't have slept if we hadn't. It was very long, and it began as
I have said, and ended up:
'Poor soldiers, learn a lesson from to-day,
It is very wrong to run away;
It is better to stay
And serve your King and Country--hurray!'
Noel owned that Hooray sounded too cheerful for the end of a poem about
soldiers with faces like theirs were.
'But I didn't mean it about the soldiers. It was about the King and
Country. Half a sec. I'll put that in.' So he wrote:
'P.S.--I do not mean to be unkind,
Poor soldiers, to you, so never mind.
When I say hurray or sing,
It is because I am thinking of my Country and my King.'
'You can't sing Hooray,' said Dicky. So Noel went to bed singing it,
which was better than arguing about it, Alice said. But it was noisier
as well.
Oswald and Dicky always went round the house to see that all the doors
were bolted and the shutters up. This is what the head of the house
always does, and Oswald is the head when father is not there. There are
no shutters upstairs, only curtains. The White House, which is Miss
Sandal's house's name, is not in the village, but 'quite a step' from
it, as Mrs. Beale says. It is the first house you come to as you come
along the road from the marsh.
We used to look in the cupboard and under the beds for burglars every
night. The girls liked us to, though they wouldn't look themselves, and
I don't know that it was much good. If there _is_ a burglar, it's
sometimes safer for you not to know it. Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis
folly to find a burglar, especially as he would be armed to the teeth as
likely as not. However, there is not much worth being a burglar about,
in houses where the motto is plain living and high thinking, and there
never was anyone in the cupboards or under the beds.
Then we put out all the lights very carefully in
case of fire--all except Noel's. He does not like the dark. He says
there are things in it that go away when you light a candle, and however
much you talk reason and science to him, it makes no difference at all.
Then we got into our pyjamas. It was Oswald who asked father to let us
have pyjamas instead of nightgowns; they are so convenient for dressing
up when you wish to act clowns, or West Indian planters, or any
loose-clothed characters. Then we got into bed, and then we got into
sleep.
Little did the unconscious sleepers reck of the strange destiny that was
advancing on them by leaps and bounds through the silent watches of the
night.
Although we were asleep, the rain went on raining just the same, and the
wind blowing across the marsh with the fury of a maniac who has been
transformed into a blacksmith's bellows. And through the night, and the
wind, and the rain, our dreadful destiny drew nearer and nearer. I wish
this to sound as if something was going to happen, and I hope it does. I
hope the reader's heart is now standing still with apprehensionness on
our account, but I do not want it to stop altogether, so I will tell you
that we were not all going to be murdered in our beds, or pass
peacefully away in our sleeps with angel-like smiles on our young and
beautiful faces. Not at all. What really happened was this. Some time
must have elapsed between our closing our eyes in serene slumber and the
following narrative:
Oswald was awakened by Dicky thumping him hard in the back, and saying
in accents of terror--at least, he says not, but Oswald knows what they
sounded like:
'What's that?'
Oswald reared up on his elbow and listened, but there was nothing to
listen to except Dicky breathing like a grampus, and the giggle-guggle
of the rain-water overflowing from the tub under the window.
'What's what?' said Oswald.
He did not speak furiously, as many elder brothers would have done when
suddenly awakened by thumps.
'_That!_' said Dicky. 'There it is again!'
And this time, certainly, there it was, and it sounded like somebody
hammering on the front-door with his fists. There is no knocker to the
plain-living, high-thinking house.
Oswald controlled his fears, if he had any (I am not going to say
whether he had or hadn't), and struck a match. Before the candle had had
time to settle its flame after the first flare up that doesn't last, the
row began again.
Oswald's nerves are of iron, but it would have given anybody a start to
see two white figures in the doorway, yet so it was. They proved to be
Alice and Dora in their nighties; but no one could blame anyone for not
being sure of this at first.
'Is it burglars?' said Dora; and her teeth did chatter, whatever she may
say.
'_I_ think it's Mrs. Beale,' said Alice. 'I expect she's forgotten the
key.'
Oswald pulled his watch out from under his pillow.
'It's half-past one,' he said.
And then the knocking began again. So the intrepid Oswald went to the
landing window that is over the front-door. The others went too. And he
opened the window in his pyjamas and said, 'Who's there?'
There was the scraping sound of boots on the doorstep, as somebody down
there stepped back.
'Is this the way to Ashford?' said the voice of a man.
'Ashford's thirteen miles off,' said Oswald. 'You get on to the Dover
road.'
'I don't want to get on the Dover road,' said the voice; 'I've had
enough of Dover.'
A thrill ran through every heart. We all told each other so afterwards.
'Well,' said Dicky, 'Ashford's thirteen miles----'
'Anybody but you in the house?'
'Say we've got men and dogs and guns,' whispered Dora.
'There are six of us,' said Oswald, 'all armed to the teeth.'
The stranger laughed.
'I'm not a burglar,' he said; 'I've lost my way, that's all. I thought I
should have got to Ashford before dusk, but I missed the way. I've been
wandering all over these marshes ever since, in the rain. I expect
they're out after me now, but I'm dead beat. I can't go on. Won't you
let me in? I can sit by the kitchen fire.'
Oswald drew his head back through the window, and a hasty council took
place on the landing.
'It _is_,' said Alice.
'You heard what he said about Dover, and their being out after him?'
'I say, you might let a chap in,' said the voice outside. 'I'm perfectly
respectable. Upon my word I am.'
'I wish he hadn't said that,' whispered Dora. [** ']Such a dreadful
story! And we didn't even ask him if he was.'
'He sounds very tired,' said Alice.
'And wet,' said Oswald. 'I heard the water squelching in his boots.'
'What'll happen if we don't let him in?' said Dicky.
'He'll be caught and taken back, like the soldiers,' said Oswald. 'Look
here, I'm going to chance it. You others can lock yourselves into your
rooms if you're frightened.'
Then Oswald put his brave young head out of the window, and the rain
dripped on to the back of his bold young neck off the roof, like a
watering-pot on to a beautiful flower, and he said:
'There's a porch to the side door. Just scoot round there and shelter,
and I'll come down in half a sec.'
A resolve made in early youth never to face midnight encounters without
boots was the cause of this delay. Oswald and Dicky got into their boots
and jackets, and told the girls to go back to bed.
Then we went down and opened the front-door. The stranger had heard the
bolts go, and he was outside waiting.
We held the door open politely, and he stepped in and began at once to
drip heavily on the doormat.
We shut the door. He looked wildly round.
'Be calm! You are safe,' said Oswald.
'Thanks,' said the stranger; 'I see I am.'
All our hearts were full of pity for the outcast. He was, indeed, a
spectacle to shock the benevolent. Even the prison people, Oswald
thought, or the man he took the cake from, would have felt their
fierceness fade if they could have seen him then. He was not in prison
dress. Oswald would have rather liked to see that, but he remembered
that it was safer for the man that he had found means to rid himself of
the felon's garb. He wore a gray knickerbocker suit, covered with mud.
The lining of his hat must have been blue, and it had run down his face
in streaks like the gentleman in Mr. Kipling's story. He was wetter than
I have ever seen anyone out of a bath or the sea.
'Come into the kitchen,' said Oswald; 'you can drip there quite
comfortably. The floor is brick.'
He followed us into the kitchen.
'Are you kids alone in the house?' he said.
'Yes,' said Oswald.
'Then I suppose it's no good asking if you've got a drop of brandy?'
'Not a bit,' said Dicky.
[Illustration: '"Come into the kitchen," said Oswald, "you can drip
there quite comfortably."'--Page 52]
'Whisky would do, or gin--any sort of spirit,' said the smeared stranger
hopefully.
'Not a drop,' said Oswald; 'at least, I'll look in the medicine
cupboard. And, I say, take off your things and put them in the sink.
I'll get you some other clothes. There are some of Mr. Sandal's.'
The man hesitated.
'It'll make a better disguise,' said Oswald in a low, significant
whisper, and turned tactfully away, so as not to make the stranger feel
awkward.
Dicky got the clothes, and the stranger changed in the back-kitchen. The
only spirit Oswald could find was spirits of salts, which the stranger
said was poison, and spirits of camphor. Oswald gave him some of this on
sugar; he knows it is a good thing when you have taken cold. The
stranger hated it. He changed in the back-kitchen, and while he was
doing it we tried to light the kitchen fire, but it would not; so Dicky
went up to ask Alice for some matches, and finding the girls had not
gone to bed as ordered, but contrarily dressed themselves, he let them
come down. And then, of course, there was no reason why they should not
light the fire. They did.
When the unfortunate one came out of the back-kitchen he looked quite a
decent chap, though still blue in patches from the lining of his hat.
Dicky whispered to me what a difference clothes made.
He made a polite though jerky bow to the girls, and Dora said:
'How do you do? I hope you are quite well.'
'As well as can be expected,' replied the now tidy outcast, 'considering
what I've gone through.'
'Tea or cocoa?' said Dora. 'And do you like cheese or cold bacon best?'
'I'll leave it to you entirely,' he answered. And he added, without a
pause, 'I'm sure I can trust you.'
'Indeed you can,' said Dora earnestly; 'you needn't be a bit afraid.
You're perfectly safe with us.'
He opened his eyes at this.
'He didn't expect such kindness,' Alice whispered. 'Poor man! he's quite
overcome.'
We gave him cocoa, and cheese, and bacon, and butter and bread, and he
ate a great deal, with his feet in Mr. Sandal's all-wool boots on the
kitchen fender.
The girls wrung the water out of his clothes, and hung them on the
clothes-horse on the other side of the fire.
'I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you,' he said; 'real charity I call
this. I shan't forget it, I assure you. I ought to apologise for
knocking you up like this, but I'd been hours tramping through this
precious marsh of yours wet to the skin, and not a morsel of food since
mid-day. And yours was the first light I'd seen for a couple of hours.'
'I'm very glad it _was_ us you knocked up,' said Alice.
'So am I,' said he; 'I might have knocked at a great many doors before I
got such a welcome. I'm quite aware of that.'
He spoke all right, not like a labouring man; but it wasn't a
gentleman's voice, and he seemed to end his sentences off short at the
end, as though he had it on the tip of his tongue to say 'Miss' or
'Sir.'
Oswald thought how terrible it must be to be out alone in the rain and
the dark, with the police after you, and no one to be kind to you if you
knocked at their doors.
'You must have had an awful day,' he said.
'I believe you,' said the stranger, cutting himself more bacon. 'Thank
you, miss (he really did say it that time), just half a cup if you don't
mind. I believe you! I never want to have such a day again, I can tell
you. I took one or two little things in the morning, but I wasn't in the
mood or something. You know how it is sometimes.'
'I can fancy it,' said Alice.
'And then the afternoon clouded over. It cleared up at sunset, you
remember, but then it was too late. And then the rain came on. Not half!
My word! I've been in a ditch. Thought my last hour had come, I tell
you. Only got out by the skin of my teeth. Got rid of my whole outfit.
There's a nice thing to happen to a young fellow! Upon my Sam, it's
enough to make a chap swear he'll never take another thing as long as he
lives.'
'I hope you never will,' said Dora earnestly; 'it doesn't pay, you
know.'
'Upon my word, that's nearly true, though I don't know how _you_ know,'
said the stranger, beginning on the cheese and pickles.
'I wish,' Dora was beginning, but Oswald interrupted. He did not think
it was fair to preach at the man.
'So you lost your outfit in the ditch,' he said; 'and how did you get
those clothes?'
He pointed to the steaming gray suit.
'Oh,' replied the stranger, 'the usual way.'
Oswald was too polite to ask what was the usual way of getting a gray
suit to replace a prison outfit. He was afraid the usual way was the way
the four-pound cake had been got.
Alice looked at me helplessly. I knew just how she felt.
Harbouring a criminal when people are 'out after him' gives you a very
chilly feeling in the waistcoat--or, if in pyjamas, in the part that the
plaited cotton cord goes round. By the greatest good luck there were a
few of the extra-strong peppermints left. We had two each, and felt
better.
The girls put the sheets off Oswald's bed on to the bed Miss Sandal used
to sleep in when not in London nursing the shattered bones of her
tract-distributing brother.
'If you will go to bed now,' Oswald said to the stranger, 'we will wake
you in good time. And you may sleep as sound as you like. We'll wake you
all right.'
'You might wake me about eight,' he said; 'I ought to be getting on.
I'm sure I don't know what to say in return for the very handsome
reception you've given me. Good-night to you all, I'm sure.'
'Good-night,' said everyone. And Dora added, 'Don't you bother. While
you're asleep we'll think what's best to be done.'
'Don't _you_ bother,' said the stranger, and he absently glanced at his
own clothes. 'What's big enough to get out of's big enough to get into.'
Then he took the candle, and Dicky showed him to his room.
'What's big enough to get out of,' repeated Alice. 'Surely he doesn't
mean to creep back into prison, and pretend he was there all the time,
only they didn't notice him?'
'Well, what are we to do?' asked Dicky, rejoining the rest of us. 'He
told me the dark room at Dover was a disgrace. Poor chap!'
'We must invent a disguise,' said Dora.
'Let's pretend he's our aunt, and dress him up--like in "Hard Cash,"'
said Alice.
It was now three o'clock, but no one was sleepy. No one wanted to go to
sleep at all till we had taken our candles up into the attic and
rummaged through Miss Sandal's trunks, and found a complete disguise
exactly suited to an aunt. We had everything--dress, cloak, bonnet,
veil, gloves, petticoats, and even boots, though we knew all the time,
in our hearts, that these were far too small. We put all ready on the
parlour sofa, and then at last we began to feel in our eyes and ears and
jaws how late it was. So we went back to bed. Alice said she knew how to
wake exact to the minute, and we had known her do it before, so we
trusted her, and agreed that she was to wake us at six.
But, alas! Alice had deemed herself cleverer than she was, by long
chalks, and it was not her that woke us.
We were aroused from deep slumber by the voice of Mrs. Beale.
'Hi!' it remarked,'wake up, young gentlemen! It's gone the half after
nine, and your gentleman friend's up and dressed and a-waiting for his
breakfast.'
We sprang up.
'I say, Mrs. Beale,' cried Oswald, who never even in sleep quite loses
his presence of mind, 'don't let on to anyone that we've got a visitor.'
She went away laughing. I suppose she thought it was some silly
play-secret. She little knew.
We found the stranger looking out of the window.
'I wouldn't do that,' said Dora softly; 'it isn't safe. Suppose someone
saw you?'
'Well,' said he, 'suppose they did?'
'They might take you, you know,' said Dora; 'it's done in a minute. We
saw two poor men taken yesterday.'
Her voice trembled at the gloomy recollection.
'Let 'em take me,' said the man who wore the clothes of the plain-living
and high-thinking Mr. Sandal; '_I_ don't mind so long as my ugly mug
don't break the camera!'
'We want to save you,' Dora was beginning; but Oswald, far-sighted
beyond his years, felt a hot redness spread over his youthful ears and
right down his neck. He said:
'Please, what were you doing in Dover? And what did you take yesterday?'
'I was in Dover on business,' said the man, 'and what I took was Hythe
Church and Burmarsh Church, and----'
'Then you didn't steal a cake and get put into Dover Gaol, and break
loose, and----' said Dicky, though I kicked him as a sign not to.
'_Me?_' said our friend. 'Not exactly!'
'Then, _what_ are you? If you're not that poor escaped thief, what are
you?' asked Dora fiercely, before Oswald could stop her.
'I'm a photographer, miss,' said he--'a travelling photographer.'
Then slowly but surely he saw it all, and I thought he would never have
done laughing.
* * * * *
'Breakfast is getting cold,' said Oswald.
'So it is,' said our guest. 'Lordy, what a go! This'll be something to
talk about between friends for many a year.'
'No,' said Alice suddenly; 'we thought you were a runaway thief, and we
wanted to help you whatever you were.' She pointed to the sofa, where
the whole costume of the untrue aunt was lying in simple completeness.
'And you're in honour bound never to tell a soul. Think,' she added in
persuading tones--'think of the cold bacon and the cheese, and all those
pickles you had, and the fire and the cocoa, and us being up all night,
and the dry all-wool boots.'
'Say no more, miss,' said the photographer (for such he indeed was)
nobly. 'Your will is my law; I won't never breathe a word.'
And he sat down to the ham and eggs as though it was weeks since he had
tasted bacon.
* * * * *
But we found out afterwards he went straight up to the Ship, and told
everybody all about it. I wonder whether all photographers are
dishonourable and ungrateful. Oswald hopes they are not, but he cannot
feel at all sure.
Lots of people chaffed us about it afterwards, but the pigman said we
were jolly straight young Britons, and it is something to be called that
by a man you really respect. It doesn't matter so much what the other
people say--the people you don't really care about.
When we told our Indian uncle about it he said, 'Nonsense! you ought
never to try and shield a criminal.' But that was not at all the way we
felt about it at the time when the criminal was there (or we thought he
was), all wet, and hunted, and miserable, with people 'out after him.'
He meant his friends who were expecting him, but we thought he meant
police. It is very hard sometimes to know exactly what is right. If what
_feels_ right _isn't_ right, how are you to know, I wonder.
* * * * *
The only comforting thing about it all is that we heard next day that
the soldiers had got away from the brown bicycle beast after all. I
suppose it came home to them suddenly that they _were_ two to one, and
they shoved him into a ditch and got away. They were never caught; I am
very glad. And I suppose _that's_ wrong too--so many things are. But I
_am_.