Kenneth's cousins had often stayed with him, but he had never till now
stayed with them. And you know how different everything is when you are
in your own house. You are certain exactly what games the grown-ups
dislike and what games they will not notice; also what sort of mischief
is looked over and what sort is not. And, being accustomed to your own
sort of grown-ups, you can always be pretty sure when you are likely to
catch it. Whereas strange houses are, in this matter of catching it,
full of the most unpleasing surprises.
You know all this. But Kenneth did not. And still less did he know what
were the sort of things which, in his cousins' house, led to
disapproval, punishment, scoldings; in short, to catching it. So that
that business of cousin Ethel's jewel-case, which is where this story
ought to begin, was really not Kenneth's fault at all. Though for a
time.... But I am getting on too fast.
Kenneth's cousins were four,--Conrad, Alison, George, and Ethel. The
three first were natural sort of cousins somewhere near his own age, but
Ethel was hardly like a cousin at all, more like an aunt. Because she
was grown-up. She wore long dresses and all her hair on the top of her
head, a mass of combs and hairpins; in fact she had just had her
twenty-first birthday with iced cakes and a party and lots of presents,
most of them jewelry. And that brings me again to that affair of the
jewel-case, or would bring me if I were not determined to tell things in
their proper order, which is the first duty of a story-teller.
Kenneth's home was in Kent, a wooden house among cherry orchards, and
the nearest river five miles away. That was why he looked forward in
such a very extra and excited way to his visit to his cousins. Their
house was very old, red brick with ivy all over it. It had a secret
staircase, only the secret was not kept any longer, and the housemaids
carried pails and brooms up and down the staircase. And the house was
surrounded by a real deep moat, with clear water in it, and long weeds
and water-lilies and fish--the gold and the silver and the everyday
kinds.
[Illustration: Early next morning he tried to catch fish with several
pieces of string knotted together and a hairpin.]
The first evening of Kenneth's visit passed uneventfully. His bedroom
window looked over the moat, and early next morning he tried to catch
fish with several pieces of string knotted together and a hairpin kindly
lent to him by the parlourmaid. He did not catch any fish, partly
because he baited the hairpin with brown windsor soap, and it washed
off.
'Besides, fish hate soap,' Conrad told him, 'and that hook of yours
would do for a whale perhaps. Only we don't stock our moat with whales.
But I'll ask father to lend you his rod, it's a spiffing one, much
jollier than ours. And I won't tell the kids because they'd never let it
down on you. Fishing with a hairpin!'
'Thank you very much,' said Kenneth, feeling that his cousin was a man
and a brother. The kids were only two or three years younger than he
was, but that is a great deal when you are the elder; and besides, one
of the kids was a girl.
'Alison's a bit of a sneak,' Conrad used to say when anger overcome
politeness and brotherly feeling. Afterwards, when the anger was gone
and the other things left, he would say, 'You see she went to a beastly
school for a bit, at Brighton, for her health. And father says they must
have bullied her. All girls are not like it, I believe.'
But her sneakish qualities, if they really existed, were generally
hidden, and she was very clever at thinking of new games, and very kind
if you got into a row over anything.
George was eight and stout. He was not a sneak, but concealment was
foreign to his nature, so he never could keep a secret unless he forgot
it. Which fortunately happened quite often.
The uncle very amiably lent Kenneth his fishing-rod, and provided real
bait in the most thoughtful and generous manner. And the four children
fished all the morning and all the afternoon. Conrad caught two roach
and an eel. George caught nothing, and nothing was what the other two
caught. But it was glorious sport. And the next day there was to be a
picnic. Life to Kenneth seemed full of new and delicious excitement.
In the evening the aunt and the uncle went out to dinner, and Ethel, in
her grown-up way, went with them, very grand in a blue silk dress and
turquoises. So the children were left to themselves.
You know the empty hush which settles down on a house when the grown-ups
have gone out to dinner and you have the whole evening to do what you
like in. The children stood in the hall a moment after the carriage
wheels had died away with the scrunching swish that the carriage wheels
always made as they turned the corner by the lodge, where the gravel was
extra thick and soft owing to the droppings from the trees. From the
kitchen came the voices of the servants, laughing and talking.
'It's two hours at least to bedtime,' said Alison. 'What shall we do?'
Alison always began by saying 'What shall we do?' and always ended by
deciding what should be done. 'You all say what you think,' she went
on, 'and then we'll vote about it. You first, Ken, because you're the
visitor.'
'Fishing,' said Kenneth, because it was the only thing he could think
of.
'Make toffee,' said Conrad.
'Build a great big house with all the bricks,' said George.
'We can't make toffee,' Alison explained gently but firmly, 'because you
know what the pan was like last time, and cook said, "never again, not
much." And it's no good building houses, Georgie, when you could be out
of doors. And fishing's simply rotten when we've been at it all day.
I've thought of something.'