IT is very hard, when you have been accustomed to go to the seaside
every summer ever since you were quite little, to be made to stay in
London just because an aunt and an uncle choose to want to come and
stay at your house to see the Royal Academy and go to the summer sales.
Selim and Thomasina felt that it was very hard indeed. And aunt and
uncle were not the nice kind, either. If it had been Aunt Emma, who
dressed dolls and told fairy-tales—or Uncle Reggie, who took you to the
Crystal Palace, and gave you five bob at a time, and never even asked
what you spent it on, it would have been different. But it was Uncle
Thomas and Aunt Selina.
Aunt Selina was all beady, and sat bolt upright, and told you to mind
what you were told, and Selim had been named after her—as near as they
could get. And Uncle Thomas was the one Thomasina had been named after:
he was deaf, and he always told you what the moral of everything was,
and the housemaid said he was “near.”
“I know he is, worse luck,” said Thomasina.
“I mean, miss,” explained the housemaid, “he’s none too free with his
chink.”
Selim groaned. “He never gave me but a shilling in his life,” said
he, “and that turned out to be bad when I tried to change it at the
ginger-beer shop.”
The children could not understand why this aunt and uncle were allowed
to interfere with everything as they did: and they quite made up their
minds that when they were grown up they would never allow an aunt or an
uncle to cross their doorsteps. They never thought—poor, dear little
things—that some day they would grow up to be aunts and uncles in their
turn, or, at least, one of each.
It was very hot in London that year: the pavement was like hot pie,
and the asphalt was like hot pudding, and there was a curious wind
that collected dust and straw and dirty paper, and then got tired of
its collection, and threw it away in respectable people’s areas and
front gardens. The blind in the nursery had never been fixed up since
the day when the children took it down to make a drop-scene for a play
they were going to write and never did. So the hot afternoon sun came
burning in through the window, and the children got hotter and hotter,
and crosser and crosser, till at last Selim slapped Thomasina’s arms
till she cried, and Thomasina kicked Selim’s legs till he screamed.
Then they sat down in different corners of the nursery and cried, and
called each other names, and said they wished they were dead. This is
very naughty indeed, as, of course, you know; but you must remember how
hot it was.
When they had called each other all the names they could think of,
Thomasina said, suddenly, “All right, Silly,” (that was Selim’s pet
name)—“cheer up.”
“It’s too hot to cheer up,” said Selim, gloomily.
“We’ve been very naughty,” said Thomasina, rubbing her eyes with the
paint rag, “but it’s all the heat. I heard Aunt Selina telling mother
the weather wore her nerves to fiddle-strings. That just meant she was
cross.”
“Then it’s not _our_ fault,” said Selim. “People say be good and you’ll
be happy. Uncle Reggy says, ‘Be happy, and perhaps you’ll be good.’ _I_
could be good if I was happy.”
“So could I,” said Thomasina.
“What _would_ make you happy?” said a thick, wheezy voice from the toy
cupboard, and out rolled the big green and red india-rubber ball that
Aunt Emma had sent them last week. They had not played with it much,
because the garden was so hot and sunny—and when they wanted to play
with it in the street, on the shady side, Aunt Selina had said it was
not like respectable children, so they weren’t allowed.
Now the Ball rolled out very slowly—and the bright light on its new
paint seemed to make it wink at them. You will think that they were
surprised to hear a ball speak. Not at all. As you grow up, and more
and more strange things happen to you, you will find that the more
astonishing a thing is the less it surprises you. (I wonder why this
is. Think it over, and write and tell me what you think.)
Selim stood up, and said, “Halloa”; but that was only out of
politeness. Thomasina answered the Ball’s question.
“We want to be at the seaside—and no aunts—and none of the things we
don’t like—and no uncles, of course,” she said.
“Well,” said the Ball, “if you think you can be good, why not set me
bouncing?”
“We’re not allowed in here,” said Thomasina, “because of the crinkly
ornaments people give me on my birthdays.”
“Well, the street then,” said the Ball; “the nice shady side.”
“It’s not like respectable children,” said Selim sadly.
The Ball laughed. If you have never heard an india-rubber ball laugh
you won’t understand. It’s the sort of quicker, quicker, quicker,
softer, softer, softer chuckle of a bounce that it gives when it’s
settling down when you’re tired of bouncing it.
“The garden, then,” it said.
“I don’t mind, if you’ll go on talking,” said Selim kindly.
So they took the Ball down into the garden and began to bounce it in
the sun, on the dry, yellowy grass of the lawn.
“Come on,” said the Ball. “You do like me!”
“What?” said the children.
“Why, do like I do—bounce!” said the Ball. “That’s right—higher,
higher, higher!”
For then and there the two children had begun bouncing as if their
feet were india-rubber balls, and you have no idea what a delicious
sensation that gives you.
“Higher, higher,” cried the green and red ball, bouncing excitedly.
“Now, follow me, higher, higher.” And off it bounced down the blackened
gravel of the path, and the children bounced after it, shrieking with
delight at the new feeling. They bounced over the wall—all three of
them—and the children looked back just in time to see Uncle Thomas
tapping at the window, and saying, “Don’t.”
You have not the least idea how glorious it is to feel full of
bouncibleness; so that, instead of dragging one foot after the other,
as you do when you feel tired or naughty, you bounce along, and every
time your feet touch the ground you bounce higher, and all without
taking any trouble or tiring yourself. You have, perhaps, heard of the
Greek gentleman who got new strength every time he fell down. His name
was Antæus, and I believe he was an india-rubber ball, green on one
side where he touched the earth, and red on the other where he felt the
sun. But enough of classical research.
Thomasina and Selim bounced away, following the Bouncible Ball. They
went over fences and walls, and through parched, dry gardens and
burning-hot streets; they passed the region where fields of cabbages
and rows of yellow brick cottages mark the division between London and
the suburbs. They bounced through the suburbs, dusty and neat, with
geraniums in the front gardens, and all the blinds pulled half-way
down; and then the lamp-posts in the road got fewer and fewer, and
the fields got greener and the hedges thicker—it was real, true
country—with lanes instead of roads; and down the lanes the green and
red Ball went bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, and the children after it.
Thomasina, in her white, starched frock, very prickly round the neck,
and Selim, in his every-day sailor-suit, a little tight under the
arms. His Sunday one was a size larger. No one seemed to notice them,
but they noticed and pitied the children who were being “taken for a
walk” in the gritty suburban roads.
“Where are we going?” they asked the Ball, and it answered, with a
sparkling green and red smile—
“To the most delightful place in the world.”
“What’s it called?” asked Selim.
“It’s called Whereyouwantogoto,” the Ball answered, and on they went.
It was a wonderful journey—up and down, looking through the hedges and
over them, looking in at the doors of cottages, and then in at the top
windows, up and down—bounce—bounce—bounce.
And at last they came to the sea. And the Bouncing Ball said, “Here you
are! Now be good, for there’s nothing here but the things that make
people happy.” And with that he curled himself up like a ball in the
shadow of a wet sea-weedy rock, and went to sleep, for he was tired out
with his long journey. The children stopped bouncing, and looked about
them.
“Oh, Tommy;” said Selim.
[Illustration: THEY BOUNCED THROUGH THE SUBURBS.]
“Oh, Silly!” said Thomasina. And well they might! In the place to which
the Ball had brought them was all that your fancy can possibly paint,
and a great deal more beside.
The children feel exactly as you do when you’ve had the long, hot,
dirty train journey—and every one has been so cross about the boxes and
the little brown portmanteau that was left behind at the junction—and
then when you get to your lodgings you are told that you may run down
and have a look at the sea if you’re back by tea time, and mother and
nurse will unpack.
Only Thomasina and her brother had not had a tiresome journey—and there
were no nasty, stuffy lodgings for them, and no tea with oily butter
and a new pot of marmalade.
“There’s silver-sand,” said she—“miles of it.”
“And rocks,” said he.
“And cliffs.”
“And caves in the cliffs.”
“And how cool it is,” said Thomasina.
“And yet it’s nice and warm too,” said Selim.
“And what shells!”
“And seaweed.”
“And the downs behind!”
“And trees in the distance!”
“And here’s a dog, to go after sticks. Here, Rover, Rover.”
A big black dog answered at once to the name, because he was a
retriever, and they are all called Rover.
“And spades!” said the girl.
“And pails!” said the boy.
“And what pretty sea-poppies,” said the girl.
“And a basket—and grub in it!” said the boy. So they sat down and had
lunch.
It was a lovely lunch. Lobsters and ice-creams (strawberry and
pine-apple), and toffee and hot buttered toast and ginger-beer. They
ate and ate, and thought of the aunt and uncle at home, and the minced
veal and sago pudding, and they were very happy indeed.
Just as they were finishing their lunch they saw a swirling, swishing,
splashing commotion in the green sea a little way off, and they tore
off their clothes and rushed into the water to see what it was. It was
a seal. He was very kind and convenient. He showed them how to swim and
dive.
“But won’t it make us ill to bathe so soon after meals? Isn’t it
wrong?” asked Thomasina.
[Illustration: THE SEAL WAS VERY KIND AND CONVENIENT.]
“Not at all,” said the seal. “Nothing is wrong here—as long as you’re
good. Let me teach you water-leapfrog—a most glorious game, so cool,
yet so exciting. You try it.”
At last the seal said: “I suppose you wear man-clothes. They’re very
inconvenient. My two eldest have just outgrown their coats. If you’ll
accept them——”
And it dived, and came up with two golden sealskin coats over its arm,
and the children put them on.
“Thank you very much,” they said. “You _are_ kind.”
I am almost sure that it has never been your luck to wear a fur coat
that fitted you like a skin, and that could not be spoiled with sand or
water, or jam, or bread and milk, or any of the things with which you
mess up the nice new clothes your kind relations buy for you. But if
you like, you may try to imagine how jolly the little coats were.
Thomasina and Selim played all day on the beach, and when they were
tired then went into a cave, and found supper—salmon and cucumber, and
welsh-rabbit and lemonade—and then they went to bed in a great heap
of straw and grass and fern and dead leaves, and all the delightful
things you have often wished to sleep in. Only you have never been
allowed to.
In the morning there were plum-pudding for breakfast, and roast duck
and lemon jelly, and the day passed like a happy dream, only broken by
surprising and delightful meals. The Ball woke up and showed them how
to play water-polo; and they bounced him on the sand, with shrieks of
joy and pleasure. You know, a Ball likes to be bounced by people he is
fond of—it is like slapping a friend on the shoulder.
There were no houses in “Whereyouwantogoto,” and no bathing machines
or bands, no nursemaids or policemen or aunts or uncles. You could do
exactly what you liked as long as you were good.
“What will happen if we’re naughty?” Selim asked. The Ball looked very
grave, and answered—
“I must not tell you; and I very strongly advise you not to try to find
out.”
“We won’t—indeed, we won’t,” said they, and went off to play rounders
with the rabbits on the downs—who were friendly fellows, and very keen
on the game.
On the third evening Thomasina was rather silent, and the Ball said,
“What’s the matter, girl-bouncer? Out with it.”
So she said, “I was wondering how mother is, and whether she has one of
her bad headaches.”
The Ball said, “Good little girl! Come with me and I’ll show you
something.”
He bounced away, and they followed him, and he flopped into a rocky
pool, frightening the limpets and sea-anemones dreadfully, though he
did not mean to.
“Now look,” he called from under the water, and the children looked,
and the pool was like a looking-glass, only it was not their own faces
they saw in it.
They saw the drawing-room at home, and father and mother, who were
both quite well, only they looked tired—and the aunt and uncle were
there—and Uncle Thomas was saying, “What a blessing those children are
away.”
“Then they know where we are?” said Selim to the Ball.
“They think they know,” said the Ball, “or you think they think they
know. Anyway, they’re happy enough. Good-night.”
And he curled himself up like a ball in his favourite sleeping-place.
The two children crept into their pleasant, soft, sweet nest of straw
and leaves and fern and grass, and went to sleep. But Selim was vexed
with Thomasina because she had thought of mother before he had, and he
said she had taken all the fern—and they went to sleep rather cross.
They woke crosser. So far they had both helped to make the bed every
morning, but to-day neither wanted to.
“I don’t see why I should make the beds,” said he; “it’s a girl’s work,
not a boy’s.”
“I don’t see why I should do it,” said Thomasina; “it’s a servant’s
place, not a young lady’s.”
And then a very strange and terrible thing happened. Quite suddenly,
out of nothing and out of nowhere, appeared a housemaid—large and stern
and very neat indeed, and she said—
“You are quite right, miss; it is my place to make the beds. And I am
instructed to see that you are both in bed by seven.”
Think how dreadful this must have been to children who had been going
to bed just when they felt inclined. They went out on to the beach.
“You see what comes of being naughty,” said Thomasina; and Selim
said, “Oh, shut up, do!”
[Illustration: SUDDENLY, OUT OF NOTHING AND NOWHERE, APPEARED A LARGE,
STERN HOUSEMAID.]
They cheered up towards dinner-time—it was roast pigeons that day and
bread sauce, and whitebait and syllabubs—and for the rest of the day
they were as good as gold, and very polite to the Ball. Selim told it
all about the dreadful apparition of the housemaid, and it shook its
head (I know _you’ve_ never seen a ball do that, and very likely you
never will) and said—
“My Bouncible Boy, you may be happy here for ever and ever if you’re
contented and good. Otherwise—well, it’s a quarter to seven—you’ve got
to go.”
And, sure enough, they had to. And the housemaid put them to bed, and
washed them with yellow soap, and some of it got in their eyes. And
she lit a night-light, and sat with them till they went to sleep, so
that they couldn’t talk, and were ever so much longer getting to sleep
than they would have been if she had not been there. And the beds were
iron, with mattresses and hot, stuffy, fluffy sheets and many more new
blankets than they wanted.
The next day they got out as early as they could and played water
football with the seal and the Bouncible Ball, and when dinner-time
came it was lobster and ices. But Thomasina was in a bad temper. She
said, “I wish it was duck.” And before the words had left her lips it
was cold mutton and rice-pudding, and they had to sit up to table and
eat it properly too, and the housemaid came round to see that they
didn’t leave any bits on the edges of their plates, or talk with their
mouths full.
There were no more really nice meals after that, only the sort of
things you get at home. But it is possible to be happy even without
really nice meals. But you have to be very careful. The days went by
pleasantly enough. All the sea and land creatures were most kind and
attentive. The seal taught them all it knew, and was always ready to
play with them. The star-fish taught them astronomy, and the jelly-fish
taught them fancy cooking. The limpets taught them dancing as well
as they could for their lameness. The sea-birds taught them to make
nests—a knowledge they have never needed to apply—and if the oysters
did not teach them anything it was only because oysters are so very
stupid, and not from any lack of friendly feeling.
The children bathed every day in the sea, and if they had only been
content with this all would have been well. But they weren’t.
[Illustration: A LONG, POINTED THING CAME SLOWLY UP OUT OF THE SAND.]
“Let’s dig a bath,” said Selim, “and the sea will come in and fill it,
and then we can bathe in it.”
So they fetched their spades and dug—and there was no harm in that, as
you very properly remark.
But when the hole was finished, and the sea came creep, creep, creeping
up—and at last a big wave thundered up the sand and swirled into the
hole, Thomasina and Selim were struggling on the edge, fighting which
should go in first, and the wave drew sandily back into the sea, and
neither of them had bathed in the new bath. And now it was all wet and
sandy, and its nice sharp edges rounded off, and much shallower. And
as they looked at it angrily, the sandy bottom of the bath stirred and
shifted and rose up, as if some great sea-beast were heaving underneath
with his broad back. The wet sand slipped back in slabs at each side,
and a long pointed thing like a thin cow’s back came slowly up. It
showed broader and broader, and presently the flakes of wet sand were
dropping heavily off the top of a brand-new bathing machine that stood
on the sand over where their bath had been.
“Well,” said Selim, “we’ve done it this time.”
They certainly had, for on the door of the bathing machine was painted:
“You must not bathe any more except through me.”
So there was no more running into the sea just when and how they liked.
They had to use the bathing machine, and it smelt of stale salt water
and other people’s wet towels.
After this the children did not seem to care so much about the seaside,
and they played more on the downs, where the rabbits were very kind
and hospitable, and in the woods, where all sorts of beautiful flowers
grew wild—and there was nobody to say “Don’t” when you picked them. The
children thought of what Uncle Thomas would have said if he had been
there, and they were very, very happy.
But one day Thomasina had pulled a lot of white convolvulus and some
pink geraniums and calceolarias—the kind you are never allowed to pick
at home—and she had made a wreath of them and put it on her head.
Then Selim said, “You _are_ silly! You look like a Bank Holiday.”
And his sister said, “I can’t help it. They’d look lovely on a hat, if
they were only artificial. I wish I had a hat.”
And she had. A large stiff hat that hurt her head just where the
elastic was sewn on, and she had her stiff white frock that scratched,
her tiresome underclothing, all of it, and stockings and heavy boots;
and Selim had his sailor suit—the every-day one that was too tight in
the arms; and they had to wear them always, and their fur coats were
taken away.
They went sadly, all stiff and uncomfortable, and told the Bouncible
Ball. It looked very grave, and great tears of salt water rolled down
its red and green cheeks as it sat by the wet, seaweed-covered rock.
“Oh, you silly children,” it said, “haven’t you been warned enough?
You’ve everything a reasonable child could wish for. Can’t you be
contented?”
“Of course we can,” they said—and so they were—for a day and a half.
And then it wasn’t exactly discontent but real naughtiness that brought
them to grief.
They were playing on the downs by the edge of the wood under the
heliotrope tree. A hedge of camellia bushes cast a pleasant shadow, and
out in the open sunlight on the downs the orchids grew like daisies,
and the carnations like buttercups. All about was that kind of turf
on which the gardener does not like you to play, and they had pulled
armfuls of lemon verbena and made a bed of it. But Selim’s blouse was
tight under the arms. So when Thomasina said—
“Oh, Silly dear, how beautiful it is, just like fairyland,” he said—
“Silly yourself. There’s no such thing as fairyland.”
Just then a fairy, with little bright wings the colour of a peacock’s
tail, fluttered across the path, and settled on a magnolia flower.
“Oh! Silly darling,” cried Thomasina, “it _is_ fairyland, and there’s a
fairy, such a beautiful dear. Look—there she goes.”
But Selim would not look—he turned over and hid his eyes.
“There’s no such thing as fairyland, I tell you,” he grunted, “and I
don’t believe in fairies.”
And then, quite suddenly and very horribly the fairy turned into a
policeman—because every one knows there are such things as policemen,
and any one can believe in _them_.
And all the rare and beautiful flowers withered up and disappeared,
and only thorns and thistles were left, and the misty, twiny trim
little grass path that led along the top of the cliffs turned into
a parade, and the policeman walked up and down it incessantly, and
watched the children at their play, and you know how difficult it is
to play when any one is watching you, especially a policeman. Selim
was extremely vexed: that was why, he said, there couldn’t possibly be
glow-worms as big as bicycle lamps, which, of course, there were in
“Whereyouwantogoto.” It was after that that the gas-lamps were put all
along the parade, and a pier sprang up on purpose to be lighted with
electricity, and a band played, because it is nonsense to have a pier
without a band.
[Illustration: IT IS DIFFICULT TO PLAY WHEN ANY ONE IS WATCHING YOU,
ESPECIALLY A POLICEMAN.]
“Oh, you naughty, silly children,” said the Bouncible Ball, turning red
with anger, except in the part where he was green with disgust; “it
makes me bounce with rage to see how you’ve thrown away your chances,
and what a seaside resort you’re making of ‘Whereyouwantogoto.’”
And he did bounce, angrily, up and down the beach till the housemaid
looked out of the cave and told the children not to be so noisy, and
the policeman called out—
“Now then, move along there, move along. You’re obstructing of the
traffic.”
And now I have something to tell you which you will find it hard to
make any excuses for. I can’t make any myself. I can only ask you to
remember how hard it is to be even moderately good, and how easy it is
to be extremely naughty.