It was very rough on Dora having her foot bad, but we took it in turns
to stay in with her, and she was very decent about it. Daisy was most
with her. I do not dislike Daisy, but I wish she had been taught how to
play. Because Dora is rather like that naturally, and sometimes I have
thought that Daisy makes her worse.
I talked to Albert's uncle about it one day when the others had gone to
church, and I did not go because of earache, and he said it came from
reading the wrong sort of books partly--she has read _Ministering
Children_, and _Anna Ross, or The Orphan of Waterloo_, and _Ready Work
for Willing Hands_, and _Elsie, or Like a Little Candle_, and even a
horrid little blue book about the something or other of Little Sins.
After this conversation Oswald took care she had plenty of the right
sort of books to read, and he was surprised and pleased when she got up
early one morning to finish _Monte Cristo_. Oswald felt that he was
really being useful to a suffering fellow-creature when he gave Daisy
books that were not all about being good.
A few days after Dora was laid up Alice called a council of the
Wouldbegoods, and Oswald and Dicky attended with darkly clouded brows.
Alice had the minute-book, which was an exercise-book that had not much
written in it. She had begun at the other end. I hate doing that myself,
because there is so little room at the top compared with right way up.
Dora and a sofa had been carried out on to the lawn, and we were on the
grass. It was very hot and dry. We had sherbet. Alice read:
"'Society of the Wouldbegoods.
"'We have not done much. Dicky mended a window, and we got the milk-pan
out of the moat that dropped through where he mended it. Dora, Oswald,
Dicky and me got upset in the moat. This was not goodness. Dora's foot
was hurt. We hope to do better next time.'"
Then came Noel's poem:
"'We are the Wouldbegoods Society,
We are not good yet, but we mean to try.
And if we try, and if we don't succeed,
It must mean we are very bad indeed.'"
This sounded so much righter than Noel's poetry generally does, that
Oswald said so, and Noel explained that Denny had helped him.
"He seems to know the right length for lines of poetry. I suppose it
comes of learning so much at school," Noel said.
Then Oswald proposed that anybody should be allowed to write in the book
if they found out anything good that any one else had done, but not
things that were public acts; and nobody was to write about themselves,
or anything other people told them, only what they found out.
After a brief jaw the others agreed, and Oswald felt, not for the first
time in his young life, that he would have made a good diplomatic hero
to carry despatches and outwit the other side. For now he had put it out
of the minute-book's power to be the kind of thing readers of
_Ministering Children_ would have wished.
"And if any one tells other people any good thing he's done he is to go
to Coventry for the rest of the day." And Denny remarked, "We shall do
good by stealth and blush to find it shame."
After that nothing was written in the book for some time. I looked
about, and so did the others, but I never caught any one in the act of
doing anything extra; though several of the others have told me since of
things they did at this time, and really wondered nobody had noticed.
I think I said before, that when you tell a story you cannot tell
everything. It would be silly to do it. Because ordinary kinds of play
are dull to read about; and the only other thing is meals, and to dwell
on what you eat is greedy and not like a hero at all. A hero is always
contented with a venison pasty and a horn of sack. All the same, the
meals _were_ very interesting; with things you do not get at home--Lent
pies with custard and currants in them, sausage rolls, and flede cakes,
and raisin cakes and apple turnovers, and honeycomb and syllabubs,
besides as much new milk as you cared about, and cream now and then, and
cheese always on the table for tea. Father told Mrs. Pettigrew to get
what meals she liked, and she got these strange but attractive foods.
In a story about Wouldbegoods it is not proper to tell of times when
only some of us were naughty, so I will pass lightly over the time when
Noel got up the kitchen chimney and brought three bricks and an old
starling's nest and about a ton of soot down with him when he fell. They
never use the big chimney in the summer, but cook in the wash-house. Nor
do I wish to dwell on what H. O. did when he went into the dairy. I do
not know what his motive was. But Mrs. Pettigrew said _she_ knew; and
she locked him in, and said if it was cream he wanted he should have
enough, and she wouldn't let him out till tea-time. The cat had also got
into the dairy for some reason of her own, and when H. O. was tired of
whatever he went in for he poured all the milk into the churn and tried
to teach the cat to swim in it. He must have been desperate. The cat did
not even try to learn, and H. O. had the scars on his hands for weeks. I
do not wish to tell tales of H. O., for he is very young, and whatever
he does he always catches it for; but I will just allude to our being
told not to eat the greengages in the garden. And we did not. And
whatever H. O. did was Noel's fault--for Noel told H. O. that greengages
would grow again all right if you did not bite as far as the stone, just
as wounds are not mortal except when you are pierced through the heart.
So the two of them bit bites out of every greengage they could reach.
And of course the pieces did not grow again.
Oswald did not do things like these, but then he is older than his
brothers. The only thing he did just about then was making a booby-trap
for Mrs. Pettigrew when she had locked H. O. up in the dairy, and
unfortunately it was the day she was going out in her best things, and
part of the trap was a can of water. Oswald was not willingly vicious;
it was but a light and thoughtless act which he had every reason to be
sorry for afterwards. And he is sorry even without those reasons,
because he knows it is ungentlemanly to play tricks on women.
I remember mother telling Dora and me when we were little that you ought
to be very kind and polite to servants, because they have to work very
hard, and do not have so many good times as we do. I used to think about
mother more at the Moat House than I did at Blackheath, especially in
the garden. She was very fond of flowers, and she used to tell us about
the big garden where she used to live; and, I remember, Dora and I
helped her to plant seeds. But it is no use wishing. She would have
liked that garden, though.
The girls and the white mice did not do anything boldly wicked--though
of course they used to borrow Mrs. Pettigrew's needles, which made her
very nasty. Needles that are borrowed might just as well be stolen. But
I say no more.
I have only told you these things to show the kind of events which
occurred on the days I don't tell you about. On the whole, we had an
excellent time.
It was on the day we had the pillow-fight that we went for the long
walk. Not the Pilgrimage--that is another story. We did not mean to have
a pillow-fight. It is not usual to have them after breakfast, but Oswald
had come up to get his knife out of the pocket of his Etons, to cut some
wire we were making rabbit snares of. It is a very good knife, with a
file in it, as well as a corkscrew and other things--and he did not come
down at once, because he was detained by having to make an apple-pie bed
for Dicky. Dicky came up after him to see what we was up to, and when he
did see he buzzed a pillow at Oswald, and the fight began. The others,
hearing the noise of battle from afar, hastened to the field of action,
all except Dora, who couldn't, because of being laid up with her foot,
and Daisy, because she is a little afraid of us still, when we are all
together. She thinks we are rough. This comes of having only one
brother.
Well, the fight was a very fine one. Alice backed me up, and Noel and H.
O. backed Dicky, and Denny heaved a pillow or two; but he cannot shy
straight, so I don't know which side he was on.
And just as the battle raged most fiercely, Mrs. Pettigrew came in and
snatched the pillows away, and shook those of the warriors who were
small enough for it. _She_ was rough if you like. She also used
language I should have thought she would be above. She said, "Drat you!"
and "Drabbit you!" The last is a thing I have never heard said before.
She said:
"There's no peace of your life with you children. Drat your antics! And
that poor, dear, patient gentleman right underneath, with his headache
and his handwriting: and you rampaging about over his head like young
bull-calves. I wonder you haven't more sense, a great girl like you."
She said this to Alice, and Alice answered gently, as we are told to do:
"I really am awfully sorry; we forgot about the headache. Don't be
cross, Mrs. Pettigrew; we didn't mean to; we didn't think."
"You never do," she said, and her voice, though grumpy, was no longer
violent. "Why on earth you can't take yourselves off for the day I don't
know."