"I didn't think he meant anything, but the day after Noel was talking
about singing ballads in Rome, and getting poet's lyres given him, H.O.
did say if Noel had been really keen on the Roman lyres and things he
could easily have been a stowaway, and gone unknown."
"A stowaway!" said my Father, sitting down suddenly and hard.
"In Aunt Margaret's big dress basket--the one she let him hide in when
we had hide-and-seek there. He talked a lot about it after Noel had said
that about the lyres--and the Italians being so poetical, you know. You
remember that day we had toffee."
My Father is prompt and decisive in action, so is his eldest son.
"I'm off to the Cedars," he said.
"Do let me come, Father," said the decisive son. "You may want to send a
message."
So in a moment Father was on his bike and Oswald on the step--a
dangerous but delightful spot--and off to the Cedars.
"Have your teas; and _don't_ any more of you get lost, and don't sit up
if we're late," Father howled to them as we rushed away. How glad then
the thoughtful Oswald was that he was the eldest. It was very cold in
the dusk on the bicycle, but Oswald did not complain.
At the Cedars my father explained in a few manly but well-chosen words,
and the apartment of the dear departed bride was searched.
"Because," said my father, "if H.O. really was little ass enough to get
into that basket, he must have turned out something to make room for
himself."
Sure enough, when they came to look, there was a great bundle rolled in
a sheet under the bed--all lace things and petticoats and ribbons and
dressing-gowns and ladies' flummery.
"If you will put the things in something else, I'll catch the express to
Dover and take it with me," Father said to Mrs. Ashleigh; and while she
packed the things he explained to some of the crying old ladies who had
been unable to leave off, how sorry he was that a son of his--but you
know the sort of thing.
Oswald said: "Father, I wish you'd let me come too. I won't be a bit of
trouble."
Perhaps it was partly because my Father didn't want to let me walk home
in the dark, and he didn't want to worry the Ashleighs any more by
asking them to send me home. He said this was why, but I hope it was his
loving wish to have his prompt son, so like himself in his decisiveness,
with him.
We went.
It was an anxious journey. We knew how far from pleased the bride would
be to find no dressing-gowns and ribbons, but only H.O. crying and cross
and dirty, as likely as not, when she opened the basket at the hotel at
Dover.
Father smoked to pass the time, but Oswald had not so much as a
peppermint or a bit of Spanish liquorice to help him through the
journey. Yet he bore up.
When we got out at Dover there were Mr. and Mrs. Albert's uncle on the
platform.
"Hullo," said Albert's uncle. "What's up? Nothing wrong at home, I
hope."
"We've only lost H.O.," said my father. "You don't happen to have him
with you?"
"No; but you're joking," said the bride. "We've lost a dress-basket."
_Lost a dress-basket!_ The words struck us dumb, but my father recovered
speech and explained. The bride was very glad when we said we had
brought her ribbons and things, but we stood in anxious gloom, for now
H.O. was indeed lost. The dress-basket might be on its way to Liverpool,
or rocking on the Channel, and H.O. might never be found again. Oswald
did not say these things. It is best to hold your jaw when you want to
see a thing out, and are liable to be sent to bed at a strange hotel if
any one happens to remember you.
Then suddenly the station master came with a telegram.
It said: "A dress-basket without label at Cannon Street detained for
identification suspicious sounds from inside detain inquirers dynamite
machine suspected."
He did not show us this till my Father had told him about H.O., which it
took some time for him to believe, and then he did and laughed, and said
he would wire them to get the dynamite machine to speak, and if so, to
take it out and keep it till its Father called for it.
So back we went to London, with hearts a little lighter, but not gay,
for we were a very long time from the last things we had had to eat. And
Oswald was almost sorry he had not taken those crystallised fruits.
It was quite late when we got to Cannon Street, and we went straight
into the cloakroom, and there was the man in charge, a very jolly chap,
sitting on a stool. And there was H.O., the guilty stowaway, dressed in
a red-and-white clown's dress, very dusty, and his face as dirty as I
have ever seen it, sitting on some one else's tin box, with his feet on
some body else's portmanteau, eating bread and cheese, and drinking ale
out of a can.
My Father claimed him at once, and Oswald identified the basket. It was
very large. There was a tray on the top with hats in it, and H.O. had
this on top of him. We all went to bed in Cannon Street Hotel. My Father
said nothing to H.O. that night. When we were in bed I tried to get H.O.
to tell me all about it, but he was too sleepy and cross. It was the
beer and the knocking about in the basket, I suppose. Next day we went
back to the Moat House, where the raving anxiousness of the others had
been cooled the night before by a telegram from Dover.
My Father said he would speak to H.O. in the evening. It is very horrid
not to be spoken to at once and get it over. But H.O. certainly deserved
something.
It is hard to tell this tale, because so much of it happened all at once
but at different places. But this is what H.O. said to us about it. He
said--
"Don't bother--let me alone."
But we were all kind and gentle, and at last we got it out of him what
had happened. He doesn't tell a story right from the beginning like
Oswald and some of the others do, but from his disjunctured words the
author has made the following narration. This is called editing, I
believe.
"It was all Noel's fault," H.O. said; "what did he want to go jawing
about Rome for?--and a clown's as good as a beastly poet, anyhow! You
remember that day we made toffee? Well, I thought of it then."
"You didn't tell us."
"Yes, I did. I half told Dicky. He never said don't, or you'd better
not, or gave me any good advice or anything. It's his fault as much as
mine. Father ought to speak to him to-night the same as me--and Noel,
too."
We bore with him just then because we wanted to hear the story. And we
made him go on.
"Well--so I thought if Noel's a cowardy custard I'm not--and I wasn't
afraid of being in the basket, though it was quite dark till I cut the
air-holes with my knife in the railway van. I think I cut the string off
the label. It fell off afterwards, and I saw it through the hole, but of
course I couldn't say anything. I thought they'd look after their silly
luggage better than that. It was all their fault I was lost."
"Tell us how you did it, H.O. dear," Dora said; "never mind about it
being everybody else's fault."
"It's yours as much as any one's, if you come to that," H.O. said. "You
made me the clown dress when I asked you. You never said a word about
not. So there!"
"Oh, H.O., you _are_ unkind!" Dora said. "You know you said it was for a
surprise for the bridal pair."
"So it would have been, if they'd found me at Rome, and I'd popped up
like what I meant to--like a jack-in-the-box--and said, 'Here we are
again!' in my clown's clothes, at them. But it's all spoiled, and
father's going to speak to me this evening." H.O. sniffed every time he
stopped speaking. But we did not correct him then. We wanted to hear
about everything.
"Why didn't you tell me straight out what you were going to do?" Dicky
asked.
"Because you'd jolly well have shut me up. You always do if I want to do
anything you haven't thought of yourself."
"What did you take with you, H.O.?" asked Alice in a hurry, for H.O. was
now sniffing far beyond a whisper.
"Oh, I'd saved a lot of grub, only I forgot it at the last. It's under
the chest of drawers in our room. And I had my knife--and I changed into
the clown's dress in the cupboard at the Ashleighs--over my own things
because I thought it would be cold. And then I emptied the rotten girl's
clothes out and hid them--and the top-hatted tray I just put it on a
chair near, and I got into the basket, and I lifted the tray up over my
head and sat down and fitted it down over me--it's got webbing bars, you
know, across it. And none of you would ever have thought of it, let
alone doing it."
"I should hope not," Dora said, but H.O. went on unhearing.
"I began to think perhaps I wished I hadn't directly they strapped up
the basket. It was beastly hot and stuffy--I had to cut an air-hole in
the cart, and I cut my thumb; it was so bumpety. And they threw me about
as if I was coals--and wrong way up as often as not. And the train was
awful wobbly, and I felt so sick, and if I'd had the grub I couldn't
have eaten it. I had a bottle of water. And that was all right till I
dropped the cork, and I couldn't find it in the dark till the water got
upset, and then I found the cork that minute.
"And when they dumped the basket on to the platform I was so glad to sit
still a minute without being jogged I nearly went to sleep. And then I
looked out, and the label was off, and lying close by. And then some one
gave the basket a kick--big brute, I'd like to kick him!--and said,
'What's this here?' And I daresay I did squeak--like a rabbit-noise, you
know--and then some one said, 'Sounds like live-stock, don't it? No
label.' And he was standing on the label all the time. I saw the string
sticking out under his nasty boot. And then they trundled me off
somewhere, on a wheelbarrow it felt like, and dumped me down again in a
dark place--and I couldn't see anything more."
"I wonder," said the thoughtful Oswald, "what made them think you were a
dynamite machine?"
"Oh, that was awful!" H.O. said. "It was my watch. I wound it up, just
for something to do. You know the row it makes since it was broken, and
I heard some one say, 'Shish! what's that?' and then, 'Sounds like an
infernal machine'--don't go shoving me, Dora, it was him said it, not
me--and then, 'If I was the inspector I'd dump it down in the river, so
I would. Any way, let's shift it.' But the other said, 'Let well alone,'
so I wasn't dumped any more. And they fetched another man, and there was
a heap of jaw, and I heard them say 'Police,' so I let them have it."
[Illustration: THEY LAUGHED EVER SO.]
"What _did_ you do?"
"Oh, I just kicked about in the basket, and I heard them all start off,
and I shouted, 'Hi, here! let me out, can't you!'"
"And did they?"
"Yes, but not for ever so long, I had to jaw at them through the cracks
of the basket. And when they opened it there was quite a crowd, and they
laughed ever so, and gave me bread and cheese, and said I was a plucky
youngster--and I am, and I do wish Father wouldn't put things off so. He
might just as well have spoken to me this morning. And I can't see I've
done anything so awful--and it's all your faults for not looking after
me. Aren't I your little brother? and it's your duty to see I do what's
right. You've told me so often enough."
These last words checked the severe reprimand trembling on the hitherto
patient Oswald's lips. And then H.O. began to cry, and Dora nursed him,
though generally he is much too big for this and knows it. And he went
to sleep on her lap, and said he didn't want any dinner.
When it came to Father's speaking to H.O. that evening it never came
off, because H.O. was ill in bed, not sham, you know, but real,
send-for-the-doctor ill. The doctor said it was fever from chill and
excitement, but I think myself it was very likely the things he ate at
lunch, and the shaking up, and then the bread and cheese, and the beer
out of a can.
He was ill a week. When he was better, not much was said. My Father, who
is the justest man in England, said the boy had been punished
enough--and so he had, for he missed going to the pantomime, and to
"Shock-Headed Peter" at the Garrick Theatre, which is far and away the
best play that ever was done, and quite different from any other acting
I ever saw. They are exactly like real boys; I think they must have been
reading about us. And he had to take a lot of the filthiest medicine I
ever tasted. I wonder if Father told the doctor to make it nasty on
purpose? A woman would have directly, but gentlemen are not generally so
sly. Any way, you live and learn. None of us would now ever consent to
be a stowaway, no matter who wanted us to, and I don't think H.O.'s very
likely to do it again.
The only _meant_ punishment he had was seeing the clown's dress burnt
before his eyes by Father. He had bought it all with his own saved-up
money, red trimmings and all.
Of course, when he got well we soon taught him not to say again that it
was any of our faults. As he owned himself, he _is_ our little brother,
and we are not going to stand that kind of cheek from _him_.
_THE CONSCIENCE-PUDDING_
IT was Christmas, nearly a year after Mother died. I cannot write about
Mother--but I will just say one thing. If she had only been away for a
little while, and not for always, we shouldn't have been so keen on
having a Christmas. I didn't understand this then, but I am much older
now, and I think it was just because everything was so different and
horrid we felt we _must_ do something; and perhaps we were not
particular enough _what_. Things make you much more unhappy when you
loaf about than when you are doing events.
Father had to go away just about Christmas. He had heard that his wicked
partner, who ran away with his money, was in France, and he thought he
could catch him, but really he was in Spain, where catching criminals is
never practised. We did not know this till afterwards.
Before Father went away he took Dora and Oswald into his study, and
said--
"I'm awfully sorry I've got to go away, but it is very serious business,
and I must go. You'll be good while I'm away, kiddies, won't you?"