Then Noel called Oswald names, and Oswald did not answer back but just
kept smiling pleasantly, and carelessly throwing up the ball and
catching it again with an air of studied indifference.
It was Martha's fault that what happened happened. She is the bull-dog,
and very stout and heavy. She had just been let loose and she came
bounding along in her clumsy way, and jumped up on Oswald, who is
beloved by all dumb animals. (You know how sagacious they are.) Well,
Martha knocked the ball out of Oswald's hands, and it fell on the grass,
and Noel pounced on it like a hooded falcon on its prey. Oswald would
scorn to deny that he was not going to stand this, and the next moment
the two were rolling over on the grass, and very soon Noel was made to
bite the dust. And serve him right. He is old enough to know his own
mind.
Then Oswald walked slowly away with the ball, and the others picked Noel
up, and consoled the beaten, but Dicky would not take either side.
And Oswald went up into his own room and lay on his bed, and reflected
gloomy reflections about unfairness.
Presently he thought he would like to see what the others were doing
without their knowing he cared. So he went into the linen-room and
looked out of its window, and he saw they were playing Kings and
Queens--and Noel had the biggest paper crown and the longest stick
sceptre.
Oswald turned away without a word, for it really was sickening.
Then suddenly his weary eyes fell upon something they had not before
beheld. It was a square trap-door in the ceiling of the linen-room.
Oswald never hesitated. He crammed the cricket-ball into his pocket and
climbed up the shelves and unbolted the trap-door, and shoved it up, and
pulled himself up through it. Though above all was dark and smelled of
spiders, Oswald fearlessly shut the trap-door down again before he
struck a match. He always carries matches. He is a boy fertile in every
subtle expedient. Then he saw he was in the wonderful, mysterious place
between the ceiling and the roof of the house. The roof is beams and
tiles. Slits of light show through the tiles here and there. The
ceiling, on its other and top side, is made of rough plaster and beams.
If you walk on the beams it is all right--if you walk on the plaster you
go through with your feet. Oswald found this out later, but some fine
instinct now taught the young explorer where he ought to tread and where
not. It was splendid. He was still very angry with the others, and he
was glad he had found out a secret they jolly well didn't know.
He walked along a dark, narrow passage. Every now and then cross-beams
barred his way, and he had to creep under them. At last a small door
loomed before him with cracks of light under and over. He drew back the
rusty bolts and opened it. It opened straight on to the leads, a flat
place between two steep red roofs, with a parapet two feet high back and
front, so that no one could see you. It was a place no one could have
invented better than, if they had tried, for hiding in.
Oswald spent the whole afternoon there. He happened to have a volume of
_Percy's Anecdotes_ in his pocket, the one about lawyers, as well as a
few apples. While he read he fingered the cricket-ball, and presently it
rolled away, and he thought he would get it by-and-by.
When the tea-bell rang he forgot the ball and went hurriedly down, for
apples do not keep the inside from the pangs of hunger.
Noel met him on the landing, got red in the face, and said:
"It wasn't _quite_ fair about the ball, because H. O. and I had eaten
the cocoanut. _You_ can have it."
"I don't want your beastly ball," Oswald said, "only I hate unfairness.
However, I don't know where it is just now. When I find it you shall
have it to bowl with as often as you want."
"Then you're not waxy?"
And Oswald said "No," and they went in to tea together. So that was all
right. There were raisin cakes for tea.
Next day we happened to want to go down to the river quite early. I
don't know why; this is called Fate, or Destiny. We dropped in at the
"Rose and Crown" for some ginger-beer on our way. The landlady is a
friend of ours and lets us drink it in her back parlor, instead of in
the bar, which would be improper for girls.
We found her awfully busy, making pies and jellies, and her two sisters
were hurrying about with great hams and pairs of chickens and rounds of
cold beef and lettuces and pickled salmon and trays of crockery and
glasses.
"It's for the angling competition," she said.