Produced by Jo Churcher
THE WOULDBEGOODS
BEING THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE TREASURE SEEKERS
By E. Nesbit
TO
My Dear Son
Fabian Bland
CONTENTS
1. The Jungle
2. The Wouldbegoods
3. Bill’s Tombstone
4. The Tower of Mystery
5. The Waterworks
6. The Circus
7. Being Beavers; or, The Young Explorers (Arctic or Otherwise)
8. The High-Born Babe
9. Hunting the Fox
10. The Sale of Antiquities
11. The Benevolent Bar
12. The Canterbury Pilgrims
13. The Dragon’s Teeth; or, Army Seed
14. Albert’s Uncle’s Grandmother; or, The Long-Lost
CHAPTER 1. THE JUNGLE
Children are like jam: all very well in the proper place, but you can’t
stand them all over the shop--eh, what?’
These were the dreadful words of our Indian uncle. They made us feel
very young and angry; and yet we could not be comforted by calling him
names to ourselves, as you do when nasty grown-ups say nasty things,
because he is not nasty, but quite the exact opposite when not
irritated. And we could not think it ungentlemanly of him to say we were
like jam, because, as Alice says, jam is very nice indeed--only not on
furniture and improper places like that. My father said, ‘Perhaps they
had better go to boarding-school.’ And that was awful, because we know
Father disapproves of boarding-schools. And he looked at us and said, ‘I
am ashamed of them, sir!’
Your lot is indeed a dark and terrible one when your father is ashamed
of you. And we all knew this, so that we felt in our chests just as if
we had swallowed a hard-boiled egg whole. At least, this is what
Oswald felt, and Father said once that Oswald, as the eldest, was the
representative of the family, so, of course, the others felt the same.
And then everybody said nothing for a short time. At last Father said--
‘You may go--but remember--’
The words that followed I am not going to tell you. It is no use telling
you what you know before--as they do in schools. And you must all have
had such words said to you many times. We went away when it was over.
The girls cried, and we boys got out books and began to read, so that
nobody should think we cared. But we felt it deeply in our interior
hearts, especially Oswald, who is the eldest and the representative of
the family.
We felt it all the more because we had not really meant to do anything
wrong. We only thought perhaps the grown-ups would not be quite pleased
if they knew, and that is quite different. Besides, we meant to put all
the things back in their proper places when we had done with them before
anyone found out about it. But I must not anticipate (that means telling
the end of the story before the beginning. I tell you this because it is
so sickening to have words you don’t know in a story, and to be told to
look it up in the dicker).
We are the Bastables--Oswald, Dora, Dicky, Alice, Noel, and H. O. If you
want to know why we call our youngest brother H. O. you can jolly well
read The Treasure Seekers and find out. We were the Treasure Seekers,
and we sought it high and low, and quite regularly, because we
particularly wanted to find it. And at last we did not find it, but
we were found by a good, kind Indian uncle, who helped Father with his
business, so that Father was able to take us all to live in a jolly big
red house on Blackheath, instead of in the Lewisham Road, where we lived
when we were only poor but honest Treasure Seekers. When we were poor
but honest we always used to think that if only Father had plenty of
business, and we did not have to go short of pocket money and wear
shabby clothes (I don’t mind this myself, but the girls do), we should
be happy and very, very good.
And when we were taken to the beautiful big Blackheath house we
thought now all would be well, because it was a house with vineries and
pineries, and gas and water, and shrubberies and stabling, and replete
with every modern convenience, like it says in Dyer & Hilton’s list
of Eligible House Property. I read all about it, and I have copied the
words quite right.
It is a beautiful house, all the furniture solid and strong, no casters
off the chairs, and the tables not scratched, and the silver not dented;
and lots of servants, and the most decent meals every day--and lots of
pocket-money.
But it is wonderful how soon you get used to things, even the things you
want most. Our watches, for instance. We wanted them frightfully; but
when I had mine a week or two, after the mainspring got broken and was
repaired at Bennett’s in the village, I hardly cared to look at the
works at all, and it did not make me feel happy in my heart any more,
though, of course, I should have been very unhappy if it had been taken
away from me. And the same with new clothes and nice dinners and having
enough of everything. You soon get used to it all, and it does not make
you extra happy, although, if you had it all taken away, you would be
very dejected. (That is a good word, and one I have never used before.)
You get used to everything, as I said, and then you want something more.
Father says this is what people mean by the deceitfulness of riches; but
Albert’s uncle says it is the spirit of progress, and Mrs Leslie said
some people called it ‘divine discontent’. Oswald asked them all what
they thought one Sunday at dinner. Uncle said it was rot, and what we
wanted was bread and water and a licking; but he meant it for a joke.
This was in the Easter holidays.
We went to live at the Red House at Christmas. After the holidays the
girls went to the Blackheath High School, and we boys went to the Prop.
(that means the Proprietary School). And we had to swot rather during
term; but about Easter we knew the deceitfulness of riches in the vac.,
when there was nothing much on, like pantomimes and things. Then there
was the summer term, and we swotted more than ever; and it was boiling
hot, and masters’ tempers got short and sharp, and the girls used to
wish the exams came in cold weather. I can’t think why they don’t. But
I suppose schools don’t think of sensible thinks like that. They teach
botany at girls’ schools.
Then the Midsummer holidays came, and we breathed again--but only for a
few days. We began to feel as if we had forgotten something, and did not
know what it was. We wanted something to happen--only we didn’t exactly
know what. So we were very pleased when Father said--
‘I’ve asked Mr Foulkes to send his children here for a week or two. You
know--the kids who came at Christmas. You must be jolly to them, and see
that they have a good time, don’t you know.’
We remembered them right enough--they were little pinky, frightened
things, like white mice, with very bright eyes. They had not been to our
house since Christmas, because Denis, the boy, had been ill, and they
had been with an aunt at Ramsgate.
Alice and Dora would have liked to get the bedrooms ready for the
honoured guests, but a really good housemaid is sometimes more ready to
say ‘Don’t’ than even a general. So the girls had to chuck it. Jane only
let them put flowers in the pots on the visitors’ mantelpieces, and then
they had to ask the gardener which kind they might pick, because nothing
worth gathering happened to be growing in our own gardens just then.
Their train got in at 12.27. We all went to meet them. Afterwards I
thought that was a mistake, because their aunt was with them, and she
wore black with beady things and a tight bonnet, and she said, when we
took our hats off--‘Who are you?’ quite crossly.
We said, ‘We are the Bastables; we’ve come to meet Daisy and Denny.’
The aunt is a very rude lady, and it made us sorry for Daisy and Denny
when she said to them--
‘Are these the children? Do you remember them?’ We weren’t very tidy,
perhaps, because we’d been playing brigands in the shrubbery; and we
knew we should have to wash for dinner as soon as we got back, anyhow.
But still--
Denny said he thought he remembered us. But Daisy said, ‘Of course they
are,’ and then looked as if she was going to cry.
So then the aunt called a cab, and told the man where to drive, and put
Daisy and Denny in, and then she said--
‘You two little girls may go too, if you like, but you little boys must
walk.’
So the cab went off, and we were left. The aunt turned to us to say a
few last words. We knew it would have been about brushing your hair and
wearing gloves, so Oswald said, ‘Good-bye’, and turned haughtily away,
before she could begin, and so did the others. No one but that kind
of black beady tight lady would say ‘little boys’. She is like Miss
Murdstone in David Copperfield. I should like to tell her so; but she
would not understand. I don’t suppose she has ever read anything but
Markham’s History and Mangnall’s Questions--improving books like that.
When we got home we found all four of those who had ridden in the cab
sitting in our sitting-room--we don’t call it nursery now--looking very
thoroughly washed, and our girls were asking polite questions and the
others were saying ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, and ‘I don’t know’. We boys did not
say anything. We stood at the window and looked out till the gong
went for our dinner. We felt it was going to be awful--and it was. The
newcomers would never have done for knight-errants, or to carry the
Cardinal’s sealed message through the heart of France on a horse; they
would never have thought of anything to say to throw the enemy off the
scent when they got into a tight place.
They said ‘Yes, please’, and ‘No, thank you’; and they ate very neatly,
and always wiped their mouths before they drank, as well as after, and
never spoke with them full.
And after dinner it got worse and worse.
We got out all our books and they said ‘Thank you’, and didn’t look at
them properly. And we got out all our toys, and they said ‘Thank you,
it’s very nice’ to everything. And it got less and less pleasant, and
towards teatime it came to nobody saying anything except Noel and H.
O.--and they talked to each other about cricket.
After tea Father came in, and he played ‘Letters’ with them and the
girls, and it was a little better; but while late dinner was going on--I
shall never forget it. Oswald felt like the hero of a book--‘almost
at the end of his resources’. I don’t think I was ever glad of bedtime
before, but that time I was.
When they had gone to bed (Daisy had to have all her strings and buttons
undone for her, Dora told me, though she is nearly ten, and Denny said
he couldn’t sleep without the gas being left a little bit on) we held
a council in the girls’ room. We all sat on the bed--it is a mahogany
fourposter with green curtains very good for tents, only the housekeeper
doesn’t allow it, and Oswald said--
‘This is jolly nice, isn’t it?’
‘They’ll be better to-morrow,’ Alice said, ‘they’re only shy.’
Dicky said shy was all very well, but you needn’t behave like a perfect
idiot.
‘They’re frightened. You see we’re all strange to them,’ Dora said.
‘We’re not wild beasts or Indians; we shan’t eat them. What have they
got to be frightened of?’ Dicky said this.
Noel told us he thought they were an enchanted prince and princess who’d
been turned into white rabbits, and their bodies had got changed back
but not their insides.
But Oswald told him to dry up.
‘It’s no use making things up about them,’ he said. ‘The thing is:
what are we going to DO? We can’t have our holidays spoiled by these
snivelling kids.’
‘No,’ Alice said, ‘but they can’t possibly go on snivelling for ever.
Perhaps they’ve got into the habit of it with that Murdstone aunt. She’s
enough to make anyone snivel.’
‘All the same,’ said Oswald, ‘we jolly well aren’t going to have another
day like today. We must do something to rouse them from their snivelling
leth--what’s its name?--something sudden and--what is it?--decisive.’
‘A booby trap,’ said H. O., ‘the first thing when they get up, and an
apple-pie bed at night.’
But Dora would not hear of it, and I own she was right.
‘Suppose,’ she said, ‘we could get up a good play--like we did when we
were Treasure Seekers.’
We said, well what? But she did not say.
‘It ought to be a good long thing--to last all day,’ Dicky said, ‘and if
they like they can play, and if they don’t--’
‘If they don’t, I’ll read to them,’ Alice said.
But we all said ‘No, you don’t--if you begin that way you’ll have to go
on.’
And Dicky added, ‘I wasn’t going to say that at all. I was going to say
if they didn’t like it they could jolly well do the other thing.’
We all agreed that we must think of something, but we none of us could,
and at last the council broke up in confusion because Mrs Blake--she is
the housekeeper--came up and turned off the gas.
But next morning when we were having breakfast, and the two strangers
were sitting there so pink and clean, Oswald suddenly said--
‘I know; we’ll have a jungle in the garden.’
And the others agreed, and we talked about it till brek was over. The
little strangers only said ‘I don’t know’ whenever we said anything to
them.
After brekker Oswald beckoned his brothers and sisters mysteriously
apart and said--
‘Do you agree to let me be captain today, because I thought of it?’
And they said they would.
Then he said, ‘We’ll play Jungle Book, and I shall be Mowgli. The rest
of you can be what you like--Mowgli’s father and mother, or any of the
beasts.’
‘I don’t suppose they know the book,’ said Noel. ‘They don’t look as if
they read anything, except at lesson times.’
‘Then they can go on being beasts all the time,’ Oswald said. ‘Anyone
can be a beast.’
So it was settled.
And now Oswald--Albert’s uncle has sometimes said he is clever at
arranging things--began to lay his plans for the jungle. The day was
indeed well chosen. Our Indian uncle was away; Father was away; Mrs
Blake was going away, and the housemaid had an afternoon off. Oswald’s
first conscious act was to get rid of the white mice--I mean the little
good visitors. He explained to them that there would be a play in the
afternoon, and they could be what they liked, and gave them the Jungle
Book to read the stories he told them to--all the ones about Mowgli.
He led the strangers to a secluded spot among the sea-kale pots in the
kitchen garden and left them. Then he went back to the others, and we
had a jolly morning under the cedar talking about what we would do when
Blakie was gone. She went just after our dinner.
When we asked Denny what he would like to be in the play, it turned out
he had not read the stories Oswald told him at all, but only the ‘White
Seal’ and ‘Rikki Tikki’.
We then agreed to make the jungle first and dress up for our parts
afterwards. Oswald was a little uncomfortable about leaving the
strangers alone all the morning, so he said Denny should be his
aide-de-camp, and he was really quite useful. He is rather handy with
his fingers, and things that he does up do not come untied. Daisy might
have come too, but she wanted to go on reading, so we let her, which is
the truest manners to a visitor. Of course the shrubbery was to be the
jungle, and the lawn under the cedar a forest glade, and then we began
to collect the things. The cedar lawn is just nicely out of the way of
the windows. It was a jolly hot day--the kind of day when the sunshine
is white and the shadows are dark grey, not black like they are in the
evening.
We all thought of different things. Of course first we dressed up
pillows in the skins of beasts and set them about on the grass to look
as natural as we could. And then we got Pincher, and rubbed him all
over with powdered slate-pencil, to make him the right colour for Grey
Brother. But he shook it all off, and it had taken an awful time to do.
Then Alice said--
‘Oh, I know!’ and she ran off to Father’s dressing-room, and came back
with the tube of creme d’amande pour la barbe et les mains, and we
squeezed it on Pincher and rubbed it in, and then the slate-pencil stuff
stuck all right, and he rolled in the dust-bin of his own accord, which
made him just the right colour. He is a very clever dog, but soon after
he went off and we did not find him till quite late in the afternoon.
Denny helped with Pincher, and with the wild-beast skins, and when
Pincher was finished he said--
‘Please, may I make some paper birds to put in the trees? I know how.’
And of course we said ‘Yes’, and he only had red ink and newspapers, and
quickly he made quite a lot of large paper birds with red tails. They
didn’t look half bad on the edge of the shrubbery.
While he was doing this he suddenly said, or rather screamed, ‘Oh?’
And we looked, and it was a creature with great horns and a fur
rug--something like a bull and something like a minotaur--and I don’t
wonder Denny was frightened. It was Alice, and it was first-class.
Up to now all was not yet lost beyond recall. It was the stuffed fox
that did the mischief--and I am sorry to own it was Oswald who thought
of it. He is not ashamed of having THOUGHT of it. That was rather clever
of him. But he knows now that it is better not to take other people’s
foxes and things without asking, even if you live in the same house with
them.
It was Oswald who undid the back of the glass case in the hall and got
out the fox with the green and grey duck in its mouth, and when the
others saw how awfully like life they looked on the lawn, they all
rushed off to fetch the other stuffed things. Uncle has a tremendous
lot of stuffed things. He shot most of them himself--but not the fox, of
course. There was another fox’s mask, too, and we hung that in a bush to
look as if the fox was peeping out. And the stuffed birds we fastened on
to the trees with string. The duck-bill--what’s its name?--looked very
well sitting on his tail with the otter snarling at him. Then Dicky had
an idea; and though not nearly so much was said about it afterwards as
there was about the stuffed things, I think myself it was just as bad,
though it was a good idea, too. He just got the hose and put the end
over a branch of the cedar-tree. Then we got the steps they clean
windows with, and let the hose rest on the top of the steps and run. It
was to be a waterfall, but it ran between the steps and was only wet and
messy; so we got Father’s mackintosh and uncle’s and covered the steps
with them, so that the water ran down all right and was glorious, and it
ran away in a stream across the grass where we had dug a little channel
for it--and the otter and the duck-bill-thing were as if in their native
haunts. I hope all this is not very dull to read about. I know it was
jolly good fun to do. Taking one thing with another, I don’t know that
we ever had a better time while it lasted.
We got all the rabbits out of the hutches and put pink paper tails on
to them, and hunted them with horns made out of The Times. They got away
somehow, and before they were caught next day they had eaten a good
many lettuces and other things. Oswald is very sorry for this. He rather
likes the gardener.
Denny wanted to put paper tails on the guinea-pigs, and it was no use
our telling him there was nothing to tie the paper on to. He thought we
were kidding until we showed him, and then he said, ‘Well, never mind’,
and got the girls to give him bits of the blue stuff left over from
their dressing-gowns.
‘I’ll make them sashes to tie round their little middles,’ he said. And
he did, and the bows stuck up on the tops of their backs. One of the
guinea-pigs was never seen again, and the same with the tortoise when we
had done his shell with vermilion paint. He crawled away and returned no
more. Perhaps someone collected him and thought he was an expensive kind
unknown in these cold latitudes.
The lawn under the cedar was transformed into a dream of beauty,
what with the stuffed creatures and the paper-tailed things and the
waterfall. And Alice said--
‘I wish the tigers did not look so flat.’ For of course with pillows you
can only pretend it is a sleeping tiger getting ready to make a spring
out at you. It is difficult to prop up tiger-skins in a life-like manner
when there are no bones inside them, only pillows and sofa cushions.
‘What about the beer-stands?’ I said. And we got two out of the cellar.
With bolsters and string we fastened insides to the tigers--and they
were really fine. The legs of the beer-stands did for tigers’ legs. It
was indeed the finishing touch.
Then we boys put on just our bathing drawers and vests--so as to be able
to play with the waterfall without hurting our clothes. I think this was
thoughtful. The girls only tucked up their frocks and took their shoes
and stockings off. H. O. painted his legs and his hands with Condy’s
fluid--to make him brown, so that he might be Mowgli, although Oswald
was captain and had plainly said he was going to be Mowgli himself. Of
course the others weren’t going to stand that. So Oswald said--
‘Very well. Nobody asked you to brown yourself like that. But now you’ve
done it, you’ve simply got to go and be a beaver, and live in the dam
under the waterfall till it washes off.’
He said he didn’t want to be beavers. And Noel said--
‘Don’t make him. Let him be the bronze statue in the palace gardens that
the fountain plays out of.’
So we let him have the hose and hold it up over his head. It made a
lovely fountain, only he remained brown. So then Dicky and Oswald and
I did ourselves brown too, and dried H. O. as well as we could with our
handkerchiefs, because he was just beginning to snivel. The brown did
not come off any of us for days.
Oswald was to be Mowgli, and we were just beginning to arrange the
different parts. The rest of the hose that was on the ground was Kaa,
the Rock Python, and Pincher was Grey Brother, only we couldn’t find
him. And while most of us were talking, Dicky and Noel got messing about
with the beer-stand tigers.
And then a really sad event instantly occurred, which was not really our
fault, and we did not mean to.
That Daisy girl had been mooning indoors all the afternoon with the
Jungle Books, and now she came suddenly out, just as Dicky and Noel had
got under the tigers and were shoving them along to fright each other.
Of course, this is not in the Mowgli book at all: but they did look
jolly like real tigers, and I am very far from wishing to blame the
girl, though she little knew what would be the awful consequence of her
rash act. But for her we might have got out of it all much better than
we did. What happened was truly horrid.
As soon as Daisy saw the tigers she stopped short, and uttering a shriek
like a railway whistle she fell flat on the ground.
‘Fear not, gentle Indian maid,’ Oswald cried, thinking with surprise
that perhaps after all she did know how to play, ‘I myself will protect
thee.’ And he sprang forward with the native bow and arrows out of
uncle’s study.
The gentle Indian maiden did not move.
‘Come hither,’ Dora said, ‘let us take refuge in yonder covert while
this good knight does battle for us.’ Dora might have remembered that we
were savages, but she did not. And that is Dora all over. And still the
Daisy girl did not move.
Then we were truly frightened. Dora and Alice lifted her up, and her
mouth was a horrid violet-colour and her eyes half shut. She looked
horrid. Not at all like fair fainting damsels, who are always of an
interesting pallor. She was green, like a cheap oyster on a stall.
We did what we could, a prey to alarm as we were. We rubbed her hands
and let the hose play gently but perseveringly on her unconscious brow.
The girls loosened her dress, though it was only the kind that comes
down straight without a waist. And we were all doing what we could as
hard as we could, when we heard the click of the front gate. There was
no mistake about it.
‘I hope whoever it is will go straight to the front door,’ said Alice.
But whoever it was did not. There were feet on the gravel, and there was
the uncle’s voice, saying in his hearty manner--
‘This way. This way. On such a day as this we shall find our young
barbarians all at play somewhere about the grounds.’
And then, without further warning, the uncle, three other gentlemen and
two ladies burst upon the scene.
We had no clothes on to speak of--I mean us boys. We were all wet
through. Daisy was in a faint or a fit, or dead, none of us then knew
which. And all the stuffed animals were there staring the uncle in the
face. Most of them had got a sprinkling, and the otter and the duck-bill
brute were simply soaked. And three of us were dark brown. Concealment,
as so often happens, was impossible.
The quick brain of Oswald saw, in a flash, exactly how it would strike
the uncle, and his brave young blood ran cold in his veins. His heart
stood still.
‘What’s all this--eh, what?’ said the tones of the wronged uncle.
Oswald spoke up and said it was jungles we were playing, and he didn’t
know what was up with Daisy. He explained as well as anyone could, but
words were now in vain.
The uncle had a Malacca cane in his hand, and we were but ill prepared
to meet the sudden attack. Oswald and H. O. caught it worst. The other
boys were under the tigers--and of course my uncle would not strike a
girl. Denny was a visitor and so got off.
But it was bread and water for us for the next three days, and our own
rooms. I will not tell you how we sought to vary the monotonousness of
imprisonment. Oswald thought of taming a mouse, but he could not find
one. The reason of the wretched captives might have given way but for
the gutter that you can crawl along from our room to the girls’. But
I will not dwell on this because you might try it yourselves, and it
really is dangerous. When my father came home we got the talking to,
and we said we were sorry--and we really were--especially about Daisy,
though she had behaved with muffishness, and then it was settled that
we were to go into the country and stay till we had grown into better
children.
Albert’s uncle was writing a book in the country; we were to go to his
house. We were glad of this--Daisy and Denny too. This we bore nobly. We
knew we had deserved it. We were all very sorry for everything, and we
resolved that for the future we WOULD be good.
I am not sure whether we kept this resolution or not. Oswald thinks now
that perhaps we made a mistake in trying so very hard to be good all at
once. You should do everything by degrees.
P.S.--It turned out Daisy was not really dead at all. It was only
fainting--so like a girl.
N.B.--Pincher was found on the drawing-room sofa.
Appendix.--I have not told you half the things we did for the
jungle--for instance, about the elephants’ tusks and the horse-hair
sofa-cushions, and uncle’s fishing-boots.