He said, 'Yes, I wonder'; but I could tell from his tone that he did not
wonder a bit.
The others were yelling with laughter. Have you ever noticed how very
amused people always are when you're not there? If you're in bed--ill,
or in disgrace, or anything--it always sounds like far finer jokes than
ever occur when you are not out of things.
'Do you like reading?' said I--who am Rupert--in the tones of despair.
'Yes,' said the cousin.
'Then take a book,' I said hastily, for I really could not stand it
another second, 'and you just read till the surprise is ready. I think I
ought to go and help the others. I'm the eldest, you know.'
I did not wait--I suppose if you're ten you can choose a book for
yourself--and I went.
Hilda's idea was just Indians, but I thought a wigwam would be nice. So
we made one with the hall table and the fur rugs off the floor. If
everything had been different, and Aunt Ellie hadn't been ill, we were
to have had turkey for dinner. The turkey's feathers were splendid for
Indians, and the striped blankets off Hugh's and my beds, and all
mother's beads. The hall is big like a room, and there was a fire. The
afternoon passed like a beautiful dream. When Rupert had done his own
feathering and blanketing, as well as brown paper moccasins, he helped
the others. The tea-bell rang before we were quite dressed. We got
Louisa to go up and tell our cousin that the surprise was ready, and we
all got inside the wigwam. It was a very tight fit, with the feathers
and the blankets.
He came down the stairs very slowly, reading all the time, and when he
got to the mat at the bottom of the stairs we burst forth in all our
war-paint from the wigwam. It upset, because Hugh and Hilda stuck
between the table's legs, and it fell on the stone floor with quite a
loud noise. The wild Indians picked themselves up out of the ruins and
did the finest war-dance I've ever seen in front of my cousin Sidney.
He gave one little scream, and then sat down suddenly on the bottom
steps. He leaned his head against the banisters and we thought he was
admiring the war-dance, till Eliza, who had been laughing and making as
much noise as any one, suddenly went up to him and shook him.
'Stop that noise,' she said to us, 'he's gone off into a dead faint.'
He had.
Of course we were very sorry and all that, but we never thought he'd be
such a muff as to be frightened of three Red Indians and a wigwam that
happened to upset. He was put to bed, and we had our teas.
'I wish we hadn't,' Hilda said.
'So do I,' said Hugh.
But Rupert said, 'No one _could_ have expected a cousin of ours to be a
chicken-hearted duffer. He's a muff. It's bad enough to have a muff in
the house at all, and at Christmas time, too. But a related muff!'
Still the affair had cast a gloom, and we were glad when it was
bed-time.
Next day was Christmas Day, and no presents, and nobody but the servants
to wish a Merry Christmas to.
Our cousin Sidney came down to breakfast, and as it was Christmas Day
Rupert bent his proud spirit to own he was sorry about the Indians.
Sidney said, 'It doesn't matter. I'm sorry too. Only I didn't expect
it.'
We suggested two or three games, such as Parlour Cricket, National
Gallery, and Grab--but Sidney said he would rather read. So we said
would he mind if we played out the Indian game which we had dropped, out
of politeness, when he fainted.
He said:
'I don't mind at all, now I know what it is you're up to. No, thank you,
I'd rather read,' he added, in reply to Rupert's unselfish offer to
dress him for the part of Sitting Bull.
So he read _Treasure Island_, and we fought on the stairs with no
casualties except the gas globes, and then we scalped all the
dolls--putting on paper scalps first because Hilda wished it--and we
scalped Eliza as she passed through the hall--hers was a white scalp
with lacey stuff on it and long streamers.
[Illustration: 'We scalped Eliza as she passed through the hall.']
And when it was beginning to get dark we thought of flying machines. Of
course Sidney wouldn't play at that either, and Hilda and Hugh were
contented with paper wings--there were some rolls of rather decent
yellow and pink crinkled paper that mother had bought to make lamp
shades of. They made wings of this, and then they played at fairies up
and down the stairs, while Sidney sat at the bottom of the stairs and
went on reading _Treasure Island_. But Rupert was determined to have a
flying machine, with real flipper-flappery wings, like at Hendon. So he
got two brass fire-guards out of the spare room and mother's bedroom,
and covered them with newspapers fastened on with string. Then he got a
tea-tray and fastened it on to himself with rug-straps, and then he
slipped his arms in between the string and the fire-guards, and went to
the top of the stairs and shouting, 'Look out below there! Beware Flying
Machines!' he sat down suddenly on the tray, and tobogganed gloriously
down the stairs, flapping his fire-guard wings. It was a great success,
and felt more like flying than anything he ever played at. But Hilda had
not had time to look out thoroughly, because he did not wait any time
between his warning and his descent. So that she was still fluttering,
in the character of Queen of the Butterfly Fairies, about half-way down
the stairs when the flying machine, composed of the two guards, the
tea-tray, and Rupert, started from the top of them, and she could only
get out of the way by standing back close against the wall. Unluckily
the place where she was, was also the place where the gas was burning in
a little recess. You remember we had broken the globe when we were
playing Indians.
Now, of course, you know what happened, because you have read _Harriett
and the Matches_, and all the rest of the stories that have been written
to persuade children not to play with fire. No one was playing with fire
that day, it is true, or doing anything really naughty at all--but
however naughty we had been the thing that happened couldn't have been
much worse. For the flying machine as it came rushing round the curve of
the staircase banged against the legs of Hilda. She screamed and
stumbled back. Her pink paper wings went into the gas that hadn't a
globe. They flamed up, her hair frizzled, and her lace collar caught
fire. Rupert could not do anything because he was held fast in his
flying machine, and he and it were rolling painfully on the mat at the
bottom of the stairs.
[Illustration: Sidney threw the rug over her, and rolled her over and
over.]
Hilda screamed.
I have since heard that a great yellow light fell on the pages of
_Treasure Island_.
Next moment _Treasure Island_ went spinning across the room. Sidney
caught up the fur rug that was part of the wigwam, and as Hilda,
screaming horribly, and with wings not of paper but of flames, rushed
down the staircase, and stumbled over the flying machine, Sidney threw
the rug over her, and rolled her over and over on the floor.
'Lie down!' he cried. 'Lie down! It's the only way.'
But somehow people never will lie down when their clothes are on fire,
any more than they will lie still in the water if they think they are
drowning, and some one is trying to save them. It came to something very
like a fight. Hilda fought and struggled. Rupert got out of his
fire-guards and added himself and his tea-tray to the scrimmage. Hugh
slid down to the knob of the banisters and sat there yelling. The
servants came rushing in.
But by that time the fire was out. And Sidney gasped out, 'It's all
right. You aren't burned, Hilda, are you?'
Hilda was much too frightened to know whether she was burnt or not, but
Eliza looked her over, and it turned out that only her neck was a little
scorched, and a good deal of her hair frizzled off short.
Every one stood, rather breathless and pale, and every one's face was
much dirtier than customary, except Hugh's, which he had, as usual,
dirtied thoroughly quite early in the afternoon. Rupert felt perfectly
awful, ashamed and proud and rather sick. 'You're a regular hero,
Sidney,' he said--and it was not easy to say--'and yesterday I said you
were a related muff. And I'm jolly sorry I did. Shake hands, won't you?'
Sidney hesitated.
'Too proud?' Rupert's feelings were hurt, and I should not wonder if he
spoke rather fiercely.
'It's--it's a little burnt, I think,' said Sidney, 'don't be angry,' and
he held out the left hand.
Rupert grasped it.
'I do beg your pardon,' he said, 'you _are_ a hero!'
* * * * *
Sidney's hand was bad for ever so long, but we were tremendous chums
after that.
It was when they'd done the hand up with scraped potato and salad oil--a
great, big, fat, wet plaster of it--that I said to him:
'I don't care if you don't like games. Let's be pals.'
And he said, 'I do like games, but I couldn't care about anything with
mother so ill. I know you'll think I'm a muff, but I'm not really, only
I do love her so.'
And with that he began to cry, and I thumped him on the back, and told
him exactly what a beast I knew I was, to comfort him.
When Aunt Ellie was well again we kept Christmas on the 6th of January,
which used to be Christmas Day in middle-aged times.
Father came home before New Year, and he had a silver medal made, with a
flame on one side, and on the other Sidney's name, and 'For Bravery.'
If I had not been tied up in fire-guards and tea-trays perhaps I should
have thought of the rug and got the medal. But I do not grudge it to
Sidney. He deserved it. And he is not a muff. I see now that a person
might very well be frightened at finding Indians in the hall of a
strange house, especially if the person had just come from the kind of
India where the Indians are quite a different sort, and much milder,
with no feathers and wigwams and war-dances, but only dusky features and
University Degrees.
X