There was a silent interval.
"Speak up, Daisy, my child," Oswald said; "fear not to lay bare the
utmost thoughts of that faithful heart."
Daisy giggled. Our own girls never giggle; they laugh right out or hold
their tongues. Their kind brothers have taught them this. Then Daisy
said:
"If we could have a sort of play to keep us out of the way. I once read
a story about an animal race. Everybody had an animal, and they had to
go how they liked, and the one that got in first got the prize. There
was a tortoise in it, and a rabbit, and a peacock, and sheep, and dogs,
and a kitten."
This proposal left us cold, as Albert's uncle says, because we knew
there could not be any prize worth bothering about. And though you may
be ever ready and willing to do anything for nothing, yet if there's
going to be a prize there must _be_ a prize and there's an end of it.
Thus the idea was not followed up. Dicky yawned and said, "Let's go into
the barn and make a fort."
So we did, with straw. It does not hurt straw to be messed about with
like it does hay.
The down-stairs--I mean down-ladder--part of the barn was fun too,
especially for Pincher. There was as good ratting there as you could
wish to see. Martha tried it, but she could not help running kindly
beside the rat, as if she was in double harness with it. This is the
noble bull-dog's gentle and affectionate nature coming out. We all
enjoyed the ratting that day, but it ended, as usual, in the girls
crying because of the poor rats. Girls cannot help this; we must not be
waxy with them on account of it, they have their nature, same as
bull-dogs have, and it is this that makes them so useful in smoothing
the pillows of the sick-bed and tending wounded heroes.
However, the forts, and Pincher, and the girls crying, and having to be
thumped on the back, passed the time very agreeably till dinner. There
was roast mutton with onion sauce, and a roly-poly pudding.
Albert's uncle said we had certainly effaced ourselves effectually,
which means we hadn't bothered.
So we determined to do the same during the afternoon, for he told us his
heroine was by no means out of the wood yet.
And at first it was easy. Jam roly gives you a peaceful feeling and you
do not at first care if you never play any runabout game ever any more.
But after a while the torpor begins to pass away. Oswald was the first
to recover from his.
He had been lying on his front part in the orchard, but now he turned
over on his back and kicked his legs up, and said:
"I say, look here; let's do something."[A]
[Footnote A: See page 137 for short story.]
Daisy looked thoughtful. She was chewing the soft yellow parts of grass,
but I could see she was still thinking about that animal race. So I
explained to her that it would be very poor fun without a tortoise and a
peacock, and she saw this, though not willingly.
It was H. O. who said:
"Doing anything with animals is prime! if they only will. Let's have a
circus!"
At the word the last thought of the pudding faded from Oswald's memory
and he stretched himself, sat up, and said:
"Bully for H. O. Let's!"
The others also threw off the heavy weight of memory, and sat up and
said "Let's!" too.
Never, never in all our lives had we had such a gay galaxy of animals at
our command. The rabbits and the guinea-pigs, and even all the bright,
glass-eyed, stuffed denizens of our late-lamented Jungle, paled into
insignificance before the number of live things on the farm.
(I hope you do not think that the words I use are getting too long. I
know they are the right words. And Albert's uncle says your style is
always altered a bit by what you read. And I have been reading the
Vicomte de Bragelonne. Nearly all my new words come out of those.)
"The worst of a circus is" Dora said, "that you've got to teach the
animals things. A circus where the performing creatures hadn't learned
performing would be a bit silly. Let's give up a week to teaching them
and then have the circus."
Some people have no idea of the value of time. And Dora is one of those
who do not understand that when you want to do a thing you _do_ want to,
and not to do something else, and perhaps your own thing, a week later.
Oswald said the first thing was to collect the performing animals.
"Then perhaps," he said, "we may find that they have hidden talents
hitherto unsuspected by their harsh masters."
So Denny took a pencil and wrote a list of the animals required.
This is it: