The author of these few lines really does hope to goodness that no one
will be such an owl as to think from the number of things we did when we
were in the country, that we were wretched, neglected little children,
whose grown-up relations sparkled in the bright haunts of pleasure, and
whirled in the giddy what's-its-name of fashion, while we were left to
weep forsaken at home. It was nothing of the kind, and I wish you to
know that my father was with us a good deal--and Albert's uncle gave up
a good many of his valuable hours to us. And the father of Denny and
Daisy came now and then, and other people, quite as many as we wished to
see. And we had some very decent times with them; and enjoyed ourselves
very much indeed, thank you. In some ways the good times you have with
grown-ups are better than the ones you have by yourselves. At any rate,
they are safer. It is almost impossible, then, to do anything fatal
without being pulled up short by a grown-up ere yet the deed is done.
And, if you are careful, anything that goes wrong can be looked on as
the grown-up's fault. But these secure pleasures are not so interesting
to tell about as the things you do when there is no one to stop you on
the edge of the rash act.
It is curious, too, that many of our most interesting games happened
when grown-ups were far away. For instance, when we were pilgrims.
It was just after the business of the benevolent bar, and it was a wet
day. It is not so easy to amuse yourself indoors on a wet day as older
people seem to think, especially when you are far removed from your own
home, and haven't got all your own books and things. The girls were
playing Halma--which is a beastly game--Noel was writing poetry, H. O.
was singing "I don't know what to do" to the tune of "Canaan's Happy
Shore." It goes like this, and is very tiresome to listen to:
"I don't know what to do--oo--oo--oo!
I don't know what to do--oo--oo!
It is a beastly rainy day
And I don't know what to do."
The rest of us were trying to make him shut up. We put a carpet-bag over
his head, but he went on inside it; and then we sat on him, but he sang
under us; we held him upside down and made him crawl head first under
the sofa, but when, even there, he kept it up, we saw that nothing short
of violence would induce him to silence, so we let him go. And then he
said we had hurt him, and we said we were only in fun, and he said if we
were he wasn't, and ill feeling might have grown up even out of a
playful brotherly act like ours had been, only Alice chucked the Halma
and said:
"Let dogs delight. Come on--let's play something."
Then Dora said, "Yes, but look here. Now we're all together, I do want
to say something. What about the Wouldbegoods Society?"
Many of us groaned, and one said, "Hear! hear!" I will not say which
one, but it was not Oswald.
"No, but really," Dora said, "I don't want to be preachy--but you know
we _did_ say we'd try to be good. And it says in a book I was reading
only yesterday that _not_ being naughty is not enough. You must _be_
good. And we've hardly done anything. The Golden Deed book's almost
empty."
"Couldn't we have a book of leaden deeds," said Noel, coming out of his
poetry, "then there'd be plenty for Alice to write about if she wants
to, or brass or zinc or aluminium deeds? We sha'n't ever fill the book
with golden ones."
H. O. had rolled himself in the red table-cloth, and said Noel was only
advising us to be naughty, and again peace waved in the balance. But
Alice said, "Oh, H. O., _don't_--he didn't mean that; but really and
truly, I wish wrong things weren't so interesting. You begin to do a
noble act, and then it gets so exciting, and before you know where you
are you are doing something wrong as hard as you can lick."
"And enjoying it too," Dicky said.
"It's very curious," Denny said, "but you don't seem to be able to be
certain inside yourself whether what you're doing is right if you happen
to like doing it, but if you don't like doing it you know quite well. I
only thought of that just now. I wish Noel would make a poem about it."
"I am," Noel said; "it began about a crocodile, but it is finishing
itself up quite different from what I meant it to at first. Just wait a
minute."
He wrote very hard while his kind brothers and sisters and his little
friends waited the minute he had said, and then he read:
"The crocodile is very wise,
He lives in the Nile with little eyes,
He eats the hippopotamus too,
And if he could he would eat up you.
"The lovely woods and starry skies
He looks upon with glad surprise;
He sees the riches of the east,
And the tiger and lion, kings of beast.
"So let all be good and beware
Of saying sha'n't and won't and don't care;
For doing wrong is easier far
Than any of the right things I know about are.
And I couldn't make it king of beasts because of it not rhyming with
east, so I put the _s_ off beasts on to king. It comes even in the end."
We all said it was a very nice piece of poetry. Noel gets really ill if
you don't like what he writes, and then he said, "If it's trying that's
wanted, I don't care how hard we _try_ to be good, but we may as well
do it some nice way. Let's be Pilgrim's Progress, like I wanted to at
first."
And we were all beginning to say we didn't want to, when suddenly Dora
said, "Oh, look here! I know. We'll be the Canterbury Pilgrims. People
used to go pilgrimages to make themselves good."
"With pease in their shoes," the Dentist said. "It's in a piece of
poetry--only the man boiled his pease--which is quite unfair."
"Oh yes," said H. O., "and cocked hats."
"Not cocked--cockled"--it was Alice who said this. "And they had staffs
and scrips, and they told each other tales. We might as well."
Oswald and Dora had been reading about the Canterbury Pilgrims in a book
called A _Short History of the English People_. It is not at all short
really--three fat volumes--but it has jolly good pictures. It was
written by a gentleman named Green. So Oswald said:
"All right. I'll be the Knight."
"I'll be the wife of Bath," Dora said. "What will you be, Dicky?"
"Oh, I don't care, I'll be Mr. Bath if you like."
"We don't know much about the people," Alice said. "How many were
there?"
"Thirty," Oswald replied, "but we needn't be all of them. There's the
Nun-Priest."
"Is that a man or a woman?"
Oswald said he could not be sure by the picture, but Alice and Noel
could be it between them. So that was settled. Then we got the book and
looked at the dresses to see if we could make up dresses for the parts.
At first we thought we would, because it would be something to do, and
it was a very wet day; but they looked difficult, especially the
Miller's. Denny wanted to be the Miller, but in the end he was the
Doctor, because it was next door to Dentist, which is what we call him
for short. Daisy was to be the Prioress--because she is good, and has "a
soft little red mouth," and H. O. _would_ be the Manciple (I don't know
what that is), because the picture of him is bigger than most of the
others, and he said Manciple was a nice portmanteau word--half mandarin
and half disciple.
"Let's get the easiest parts of the dresses ready first," Alice
said--"the pilgrims' staffs and hats and the cockles."
So Oswald and Dicky braved the fury of the elements and went into the
wood beyond the orchard to cut ash-sticks. We got eight jolly good long
ones. Then we took them home, and the girls bothered till we changed our
clothes, which were indeed sopping with the elements we had faced.
Then we peeled the sticks. They were nice and white at first, but they
soon got dirty when we carried them. It is a curious thing: however
often you wash your hands they always seem to come off on anything
white. And we nailed paper rosettes to the tops of them. That was the
nearest we could get to cockle-shells.
"And we may as well have them there as on our hats," Alice said. "And
let's call each other by our right names to-day, just to get into it.
Don't you think so, Knight?"
"Yea, Nun-Priest," Oswald was replying, but Noel said she was only half
the Nun-Priest, and again a threat of unpleasantness darkened the air.
But Alice said:
"Don't be a piggy-wiggy, Noel, dear; you can have it all, I don't want
it. I'll just be a plain pilgrim, or Henry who killed Becket."
So she was called the Plain Pilgrim, and she did not mind.
We thought of cocked hats, but they are warm to wear, and the big garden
hats that make you look like pictures on the covers of plantation songs
did beautifully. We put cockle-shells on them. Sandals we did try, with
pieces of oil-cloth cut the shape of soles and fastened with tape, but
the dust gets into your toes so, and we decided boots were better for
such a long walk. Some of the pilgrims who were very earnest decided to
tie their boots with white tape crossed outside to pretend sandals.
Denny was one of these earnest palmers. As for dresses, there was no
time to make them properly, and at first we thought of nightgowns; but
we decided not to, in case people in Canterbury were not used to that
sort of pilgrim nowadays. We made up our minds to go as we were--or as
we might happen to be next day.
You will be ready to believe we hoped next day would be fine. It was.
Fair was the morn when the pilgrims arose and went down to breakfast.
Albert's uncle had had brekker early and was hard at work in his study.
We heard his quill-pen squeaking when we listened at the door. It is not
wrong to listen at doors when there is only one person inside, because
nobody would tell itself secrets aloud when it was alone.
We got lunch from the housekeeper, Mrs. Pettigrew. She seems almost to
_like_ us all to go out and take our lunch with us. Though I should
think it must be very dull for her all alone. I remember, though, that
Eliza, our late general at Lewisham, was just the same. We took the dear
dogs, of course. Since the Tower of Mystery happened we are not allowed
to go anywhere without the escort of these faithful friends of man. We
did not take Martha, because bull-dogs do not like long walks. Remember
this if you ever have one of those valuable animals.
When we were all ready, with our big hats and cockle-shells, and our
staves and our tape sandals, the pilgrims looked very nice.
"Only we haven't any scrips," Dora said.
"What is a scrip?"
"I think it's something to read. A roll of parchment or something."
So we had old newspapers rolled up, and carried them in our hands. We
took the _Globe_ and the _Westminster Gazette_ because they are pink and
green. The Dentist wore his white sand-shoes, sandalled with black tape,
and bare legs. They really looked almost as good as bare feet.
"We _ought_ to have pease in our shoes," he said. But we did not think
so. We knew what a very little stone in your boot will do, let alone
pease.
Of course we knew the way to go to Canterbury, because the old Pilgrims'
Road runs just above our house. It is a very pretty road, narrow, and
often shady. It is nice for walking, but carts do not like it because it
is rough and rutty; so there is grass growing in patches on it.
I have said that it was a fine day, which means that it was not raining,
but the sun did not shine all the time.
"'Tis well, O Knight," said Alice, "that the orb of day shines not in
undi--what's-its-name?--splendor."
"Thou sayest sooth, Plain Pilgrim," replied Oswald. "'Tis jolly warm
even as it is."
"I wish I wasn't two people," Noel said, "it seems to make me hotter. I
think I'll be a Reeve or something."
But we would not let him, and we explained that if he hadn't been so
beastly particular Alice would have been half of him, and he had only
himself to thank if being all of a Nun-Priest made him hot.
But it _was_ warm certainly, and it was some time since we'd gone so far
in boots. Yet when H. O. complained we did our duty as pilgrims and made
him shut up. He did as soon as Alice said that about whining and
grizzling being below the dignity of a Manciple.
It was so warm that the Prioress and the wife of Bath gave up walking
with their arms round each other in their usual silly way (Albert's
uncle calls it Laura Matildaing), and the Doctor and Mr. Bath had to
take their jackets off and carry them.
I am sure if an artist or a photographer, or any person who liked
pilgrims, had seen us he would have been very pleased. The paper
cockle-shells were first-rate, but it was awkward having them on the top
of the staffs, because they got in your way when you wanted the staff to
use as a walking-stick.
We stepped out like a man all of us, and kept it up as well as we could
in book-talk, and at first all was merry as a dinner-bell; but presently
Oswald, who was the "very perfect gentle knight," could not help
noticing that one of us was growing very silent and rather pale, like
people are when they have eaten something that disagrees with them
before they are quite sure of the fell truth.
So he said, "What's up, Dentist, old man?" quite kindly and like a
perfect knight, though, of course, he was annoyed with Denny. It is
sickening when people turn pale in the middle of a game and everything
is spoiled, and you have to go home, and tell the spoiler how sorry you
are that he is knocked up, and pretend not to mind about the game being
spoiled.
Denny said, "Nothing," but Oswald knew better.