When we were sent down into the country to learn to be good we felt
it was rather good business, because we knew our being sent there was
really only to get us out of the way for a little while, and we knew
right enough that it wasn’t a punishment, though Mrs Blake said it was,
because we had been punished thoroughly for taking the stuffed animals
out and making a jungle on the lawn with them, and the garden hose. And
you cannot be punished twice for the same offence. This is the English
law; at least I think so. And at any rate no one would punish you three
times, and we had had the Malacca cane and the solitary confinement; and
the uncle had kindly explained to us that all ill-feeling between him
and us was wiped out entirely by the bread and water we had endured. And
what with the bread and water and being prisoners, and not being able
to tame any mice in our prisons, I quite feel that we had suffered it up
thoroughly, and now we could start fair.
I think myself that descriptions of places are generally dull, but I
have sometimes thought that was because the authors do not tell you what
you truly want to know. However, dull or not, here goes--because you
won’t understand anything unless I tell you what the place was like.
The Moat House was the one we went to stay at. There has been a house
there since Saxon times. It is a manor, and a manor goes on having a
house on it whatever happens. The Moat House was burnt down once or
twice in ancient centuries--I don’t remember which--but they always
built a new one, and Cromwell’s soldiers smashed it about, but it was
patched up again. It is a very odd house: the front door opens straight
into the dining-room, and there are red curtains and a black-and-white
marble floor like a chess-board, and there is a secret staircase, only
it is not secret now--only rather rickety. It is not very big, but there
is a watery moat all round it with a brick bridge that leads to the
front door. Then, on the other side of the moat there is the farm, with
barns and oast houses and stables, or things like that. And the other
way the garden lawn goes on till it comes to the churchyard. The
churchyard is not divided from the garden at all except by a little
grass bank. In the front of the house there is more garden, and the big
fruit garden is at the back.
The man the house belongs to likes new houses, so he built a big one
with conservatories and a stable with a clock in a turret on the top,
and he left the Moat House. And Albert’s uncle took it, and my father
was to come down sometimes from Saturday to Monday, and Albert’s uncle
was to live with us all the time, and he would be writing a book, and we
were not to bother him, but he would give an eye to us. I hope all this
is plain. I have said it as short as I can.
We got down rather late, but there was still light enough to see the
big bell hanging at the top of the house. The rope belonging to it went
right down the house, through our bedroom to the dining-room. H. O. saw
the rope and pulled it while he was washing his hands for supper, and
Dicky and I let him, and the bell tolled solemnly. Father shouted to him
not to, and we went down to supper.
But presently there were many feet trampling on the gravel, and Father
went out to see. When he came back he said--‘The whole village, or half
of it, has come up to see why the bell rang. It’s only rung for fire or
burglars. Why can’t you kids let things alone?’
Albert’s uncle said--
‘Bed follows supper as the fruit follows the flower. They’ll do no more
mischief to-night, sir. To-morrow I will point out a few of the things
to be avoided in this bucolic retreat.’
So it was bed directly after supper, and that was why we did not see
much that night.
But in the morning we were all up rather early, and we seemed to have
awakened in a new world rich in surprises beyond the dreams of anybody,
as it says in the quotation.
We went everywhere we could in the time, but when it was breakfast-time
we felt we had not seen half or a quarter. The room we had breakfast
in was exactly like in a story--black oak panels and china in corner
cupboards with glass doors. These doors were locked. There were green
curtains, and honeycomb for breakfast. After brekker my father went back
to town, and Albert’s uncle went too, to see publishers. We saw them to
the station, and Father gave us a long list of what we weren’t to do. It
began with ‘Don’t pull ropes unless you’re quite sure what will happen
at the other end,’ and it finished with ‘For goodness sake, try to keep
out of mischief till I come down on Saturday’. There were lots of other
things in between.
We all promised we would. And we saw them off and waved till the train
was quite out of sight. Then we started to walk home. Daisy was tired so
Oswald carried her home on his back. When we got home she said--
‘I do like you, Oswald.’
She is not a bad little kid; and Oswald felt it was his duty to be nice
to her because she was a visitor. Then we looked all over everything.
It was a glorious place. You did not know where to begin. We were all
a little tired before we found the hayloft, but we pulled ourselves
together to make a fort with the trusses of hay--great square
things--and we were having a jolly good time, all of us, when suddenly a
trap-door opened and a head bobbed up with a straw in its mouth. We knew
nothing about the country then, and the head really did scare us rather,
though, of course, we found out directly that the feet belonging to it
were standing on the bar of the loose-box underneath. The head said--
‘Don’t you let the governor catch you a-spoiling of that there hay,
that’s all.’ And it spoke thickly because of the straw.
It is strange to think how ignorant you were in the past. We can hardly
believe now that once we really did not know that it spoiled hay to mess
about with it. Horses don’t like to eat it afterwards.
Always remember this.
When the head had explained a little more it went away, and we turned
the handle of the chaff-cutting machine, and nobody got hurt, though the
head HAD said we should cut our fingers off if we touched it.
And then we sat down on the floor, which is dirty with the nice clean
dirt that is more than half chopped hay, and those there was room for
hung their legs down out of the top door, and we looked down at the
farmyard, which is very slushy when you get down into it, but most
interesting.
Then Alice said--
‘Now we’re all here, and the boys are tired enough to sit still for a
minute, I want to have a council.’
We said what about? And she said, ‘I’ll tell you.’ H. O., don’t wriggle
so; sit on my frock if the straws tickle your legs.’
You see he wears socks, and so he can never be quite as comfortable as
anyone else.
‘Promise not to laugh’ Alice said, getting very red, and looking at
Dora, who got red too.
We did, and then she said:
‘Dora and I have talked this over, and Daisy too, and we have written it
down because it is easier than saying it. Shall I read it? or will you,
Dora?’
Dora said it didn’t matter; Alice might. So Alice read it, and though
she gabbled a bit we all heard it. I copied it afterwards. This is what
she read:
NEW SOCIETY FOR BEING GOOD IN
‘I, Dora Bastable, and Alice Bastable, my sister, being of sound mind
and body, when we were shut up with bread and water on that jungle day,
we thought a great deal about our naughty sins, and we made our minds up
to be good for ever after. And we talked to Daisy about it, and she had
an idea. So we want to start a society for being good in. It is Daisy’s
idea, but we think so too.’
‘You know,’ Dora interrupted, ‘when people want to do good things they
always make a society. There are thousands--there’s the Missionary
Society.’
‘Yes,’ Alice said, ‘and the Society for the Prevention of something or
other, and the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Society, and the S.P.G.’
‘What’s S.P.G.?’ Oswald asked.
‘Society for the Propagation of the Jews, of course,’ said Noel, who
cannot always spell.
‘No, it isn’t; but do let me go on.’
Alice did go on.
‘We propose to get up a society, with a chairman and a treasurer and
secretary, and keep a journal-book saying what we’ve done. If that
doesn’t make us good it won’t be my fault.
‘The aim of the society is nobleness and goodness, and great and
unselfish deeds. We wish not to be such a nuisance to grown-up people
and to perform prodigies of real goodness. We wish to spread our
wings’--here Alice read very fast. She told me afterwards Daisy had
helped her with that part, and she thought when she came to the wings
they sounded rather silly--‘to spread our wings and rise above the kind
of interesting things that you ought not to do, but to do kindnesses to
all, however low and mean.’
Denny was listening carefully. Now he nodded three or four times.
‘Little words of kindness’ (he said),
‘Little deeds of love,
Make this earth an eagle
Like the one above.’
This did not sound right, but we let it pass, because an eagle does have
wings, and we wanted to hear the rest of what the girls had written. But
there was no rest.
‘That’s all,’ said Alice, and Daisy said--‘Don’t you think it’s a good
idea?’
‘That depends,’ Oswald answered, ‘who is president and what you mean by
being good.’
Oswald did not care very much for the idea himself, because being
good is not the sort of thing he thinks it is proper to talk about,
especially before strangers. But the girls and Denny seemed to like
it, so Oswald did not say exactly what he thought, especially as it was
Daisy’s idea. This was true politeness.
‘I think it would be nice,’ Noel said, ‘if we made it a sort of play.
Let’s do the Pilgrim’s Progress.’
We talked about that for some time, but it did not come to anything,
because we all wanted to be Mr Greatheart, except H. O., who wanted to
be the lions, and you could not have lions in a Society for Goodness.
Dicky said he did not wish to play if it meant reading books about
children who die; he really felt just as Oswald did about it, he told me
afterwards. But the girls were looking as if they were in Sunday school,
and we did not wish to be unkind.
At last Oswald said, ‘Well, let’s draw up the rules of the society, and
choose the president and settle the name.’
Dora said Oswald should be president, and he modestly consented. She was
secretary, and Denny treasurer if we ever had any money.
Making the rules took us all the afternoon. They were these:
RULES
1. Every member is to be as good as possible.
2. There is to be no more jaw than necessary about being good.
(Oswald and Dicky put that rule in.)
3. No day must pass without our doing some kind action to a suffering
fellow-creature.
4. We are to meet every day, or as often as we like.
5. We are to do good to people we don’t like as often as we can.
6. No one is to leave the Society without the consent of all the
rest of us.
7. The Society is to be kept a profound secret from all the world
except us.
8. The name of our Society is--
And when we got as far as that we all began to talk at once. Dora wanted
it called the Society for Humane Improvement; Denny said the Society for
Reformed Outcast Children; but Dicky said, No, we really were not so bad
as all that.
Then H. O. said, ‘Call it the Good Society.’
‘Or the Society for Being Good In,’ said Daisy.
‘Or the Society of Goods,’ said Noel.
‘That’s priggish,’ said Oswald; ‘besides, we don’t know whether we shall
be so very.’
‘You see,’ Alice explained, ‘we only said if we COULD we would be good.’
‘Well, then,’ Dicky said, getting up and beginning to dust the chopped
hay off himself, ‘call it the Society of the Wouldbegoods and have done
with it.’
Oswald thinks Dicky was getting sick of it and wanted to make himself
a little disagreeable. If so, he was doomed to disappointment. For
everyone else clapped hands and called out, ‘That’s the very thing!’
Then the girls went off to write out the rules, and took H. O. with
them, and Noel went to write some poetry to put in the minute book.
That’s what you call the book that a society’s secretary writes what it
does in. Denny went with him to help. He knows a lot of poetry. I think
he went to a lady’s school where they taught nothing but that. He was
rather shy of us, but he took to Noel. I can’t think why. Dicky and
Oswald walked round the garden and told each other what they thought of
the new society.
‘I’m not sure we oughtn’t to have put our foot down at the beginning,’
Dicky said. ‘I don’t see much in it, anyhow.’
‘It pleases the girls,’ Oswald said, for he is a kind brother.
‘But we’re not going to stand jaw, and “words in season”, and “loving
sisterly warnings”. I tell you what it is, Oswald, we’ll have to run
this thing our way, or it’ll be jolly beastly for everybody.’
Oswald saw this plainly.
‘We must do something,’ Dicky said; ‘it’s very very hard, though. Still,
there must be SOME interesting things that are not wrong.’
‘I suppose so,’ Oswald said, ‘but being good is so much like being a
muff, generally. Anyhow I’m not going to smooth the pillows of the sick,
or read to the aged poor, or any rot out of Ministering Children.’
‘No more am I,’ Dicky said. He was chewing a straw like the head had
in its mouth, ‘but I suppose we must play the game fair. Let’s begin by
looking out for something useful to do--something like mending things or
cleaning them, not just showing off.’
‘The boys in books chop kindling wood and save their pennies to buy tea
and tracts.’
‘Little beasts!’ said Dick. ‘I say, let’s talk about something
else.’ And Oswald was glad to, for he was beginning to feel jolly
uncomfortable.
We were all rather quiet at tea, and afterwards Oswald played draughts
with Daisy and the others yawned. I don’t know when we’ve had such a
gloomy evening. And everyone was horribly polite, and said ‘Please’ and
‘Thank you’ far more than requisite.
Albert’s uncle came home after tea. He was jolly, and told us stories,
but he noticed us being a little dull, and asked what blight had fallen
on our young lives. Oswald could have answered and said, ‘It is the
Society of the Wouldbegoods that is the blight,’ but of course he didn’t
and Albert’s uncle said no more, but he went up and kissed the girls
when they were in bed, and asked them if there was anything wrong. And
they told him no, on their honour.
The next morning Oswald awoke early. The refreshing beams of the morning
sun shone on his narrow white bed and on the sleeping forms of his dear
little brothers and Denny, who had got the pillow on top of his head and
was snoring like a kettle when it sings. Oswald could not remember
at first what was the matter with him, and then he remembered the
Wouldbegoods, and wished he hadn’t. He felt at first as if there was
nothing you could do, and even hesitated to buzz a pillow at Denny’s
head. But he soon saw that this could not be. So he chucked his boot and
caught Denny right in the waistcoat part, and thus the day began more
brightly than he had expected.
Oswald had not done anything out of the way good the night before,
except that when no one was looking he polished the brass candlestick in
the girls’ bedroom with one of his socks. And he might just as well have
let it alone, for the servants cleaned it again with the other things in
the morning, and he could never find the sock afterwards. There were two
servants. One of them had to be called Mrs Pettigrew instead of Jane and
Eliza like others. She was cook and managed things.
After breakfast Albert’s uncle said--
‘I now seek the retirement of my study. At your peril violate my
privacy before 1.30 sharp. Nothing short of bloodshed will warrant the
intrusion, and nothing short of man--or rather boy--slaughter shall
avenge it.’
So we knew he wanted to be quiet, and the girls decided that we ought to
play out of doors so as not to disturb him; we should have played out of
doors anyhow on a jolly fine day like that.
But as we were going out Dicky said to Oswald--
‘I say, come along here a minute, will you?’
So Oswald came along, and Dicky took him into the other parlour and shut
the door, and Oswald said--
‘Well, spit it out: what is it?’ He knows that is vulgar, and he would
not have said it to anyone but his own brother. Dicky said--
‘It’s a pretty fair nuisance. I told you how it would be.’ And Oswald
was patient with him, and said--
‘What is? Don’t be all day about it.’
Dicky fidgeted about a bit, and then he said--
‘Well, I did as I said. I looked about for something useful to do. And
you know that dairy window that wouldn’t open--only a little bit like
that? Well, I mended the catch with wire and whip cord and it opened
wide.’
‘And I suppose they didn’t want it mended,’ said Oswald. He knew but too
well that grown-up people sometimes like to keep things far different
from what we would, and you catch it if you try to do otherwise.
‘I shouldn’t have minded THAT,’ Dicky said, ‘because I could easily have
taken it all off again if they’d only said so. But the sillies went and
propped up a milk-pan against the window. They never took the trouble to
notice I had mended it. So the wretched thing pushed the window open all
by itself directly they propped it up, and it tumbled through into the
moat, and they are most awfully waxy. All the men are out in the fields
and they haven’t any spare milk-pans. If I were a farmer, I must say
I wouldn’t stick at an extra milk-pan or two. Accidents must happen
sometimes. I call it mean.’
Dicky spoke in savage tones. But Oswald was not so unhappy, first
because it wasn’t his fault, and next because he is a far-seeing boy.
‘Never mind,’ he said kindly. ‘Keep your tail up. We’ll get the beastly
milk-pan out all right. Come on.’ He rushed hastily to the garden and
gave a low, signifying whistle, which the others know well enough to
mean something extra being up.
And when they were all gathered round him he spoke.
‘Fellow countrymen,’ he said, ‘we’re going to have a rousing good time.’
‘It’s nothing naughty, is it,’ Daisy asked, ‘like the last time you had
that was rousingly good?’
Alice said ‘Shish’, and Oswald pretended not to hear.
‘A precious treasure,’ he said, ‘has inadvertently been laid low in the
moat by one of us.’
‘The rotten thing tumbled in by itself,’ Dicky said.
Oswald waved his hand and said, ‘Anyhow, it’s there. It’s our duty to
restore it to its sorrowing owners. I say, look here--we’re going to
drag the moat.’
Everyone brightened up at this. It was our duty and it was interesting
too. This is very uncommon.
So we went out to where the orchard is, at the other side of the moat.
There were gooseberries and things on the bushes, but we did not take
any till we had asked if we might. Alice went and asked. Mrs Pettigrew
said, ‘Law! I suppose so; you’d eat ‘em anyhow, leave or no leave.’
She little knows the honourable nature of the house of Bastable. But she
has much to learn.
The orchard slopes gently down to the dark waters of the moat. We sat
there in the sun and talked about dragging the moat, till Denny said,
‘How DO you drag moats?’
And we were speechless, because, though we had read many times about a
moat being dragged for missing heirs and lost wills, we really had never
thought about exactly how it was done.
‘Grappling-irons are right, I believe,’ Denny said, ‘but I don’t suppose
they’d have any at the farm.’
And we asked, and found they had never even heard of them. I think
myself he meant some other word, but he was quite positive.
So then we got a sheet off Oswald’s bed, and we all took our shoes and
stockings off, and we tried to see if the sheet would drag the bottom
of the moat, which is shallow at that end. But it would keep floating
on the top of the water, and when we tried sewing stones into one end
of it, it stuck on something in the bottom, and when we got it up it was
torn. We were very sorry, and the sheet was in an awful mess; but the
girls said they were sure they could wash it in the basin in their room,
and we thought as we had torn it anyway, we might as well go on. That
washing never came off.
‘No human being,’ Noel said, ‘knows half the treasures hidden in this
dark tarn.’
And we decided we would drag a bit more at that end, and work gradually
round to under the dairy window where the milk-pan was. We could not see
that part very well, because of the bushes that grow between the cracks
of the stones where the house goes down into the moat. And opposite the
dairy window the barn goes straight down into the moat too. It is like
pictures of Venice; but you cannot get opposite the dairy window anyhow.
We got the sheet down again when we had tied the torn parts together in
a bunch with string, and Oswald was just saying--
‘Now then, my hearties, pull together, pull with a will! One, two,
three,’ when suddenly Dora dropped her bit of the sheet with a piercing
shriek and cried out--
‘Oh! it’s all wormy at the bottom. I felt them wriggle.’ And she was out
of the water almost before the words were out of her mouth.
The other girls all scuttled out too, and they let the sheet go in such
a hurry that we had no time to steady ourselves, and one of us went
right in, and the rest got wet up to our waistbands. The one who went
right in was only H. O.; but Dora made an awful fuss and said it was our
fault. We told her what we thought, and it ended in the girls going in
with H. O. to change his things. We had some more gooseberries while
they were gone. Dora was in an awful wax when she went away, but she is
not of a sullen disposition though sometimes hasty, and when they all
came back we saw it was all right, so we said--
‘What shall we do now?’
Alice said, ‘I don’t think we need drag any more. It is wormy. I felt it
when Dora did. And besides, the milk-pan is sticking a bit of itself out
of the water. I saw it through the dairy window.’
‘Couldn’t we get it up with fish-hooks?’ Noel said. But Alice explained
that the dairy was now locked up and the key taken out. So then Oswald
said--
‘Look here, we’ll make a raft. We should have to do it some time, and
we might as well do it now. I saw an old door in that corner stable that
they don’t use. You know. The one where they chop the wood.’
We got the door.
We had never made a raft, any of us, but the way to make rafts is better
described in books, so we knew what to do.
We found some nice little tubs stuck up on the fence of the farm garden,
and nobody seemed to want them for anything just then, so we took them.
Denny had a box of tools someone had given him for his last birthday;
they were rather rotten little things, but the gimlet worked all right,
so we managed to make holes in the edges of the tubs and fasten them
with string under the four corners of the old door. This took us a long
time. Albert’s uncle asked us at dinner what we had been playing at, and
we said it was a secret, and it was nothing wrong. You see we wished to
atone for Dicky’s mistake before anything more was said. The house has
no windows in the side that faces the orchard.
The rays of the afternoon sun were beaming along the orchard grass when
at last we launched the raft. She floated out beyond reach with the last
shove of the launching. But Oswald waded out and towed her back; he is
not afraid of worms. Yet if he had known of the other things that were
in the bottom of that moat he would have kept his boots on. So would the
others, especially Dora, as you will see.
At last the gallant craft rode upon the waves. We manned her, though not
up to our full strength, because if more than four got on the water came
up too near our knees, and we feared she might founder if over-manned.
Daisy and Denny did not want to go on the raft, white mice that they
were, so that was all right. And as H. O. had been wet through once he
was not very keen. Alice promised Noel her best paint-brush if he’d give
up and not go, because we knew well that the voyage was fraught with
deep dangers, though the exact danger that lay in wait for us under the
dairy window we never even thought of.
So we four elder ones got on the raft very carefully; and even then,
every time we moved the water swished up over the raft and hid our feet.
But I must say it was a jolly decent raft.
Dicky was captain, because it was his adventure. We had hop-poles from
the hop-garden beyond the orchard to punt with. We made the girls stand
together in the middle and hold on to each other to keep steady. Then
we christened our gallant vessel. We called it the Richard, after Dicky,
and also after the splendid admiral who used to eat wine-glasses and
died after the Battle of the Revenge in Tennyson’s poetry.
Then those on shore waved a fond adieu as well as they could with the
dampness of their handkerchiefs, which we had had to use to dry our legs
and feet when we put on our stockings for dinner, and slowly and stately
the good ship moved away from shore, riding on the waves as though they
were her native element.
We kept her going with the hop-poles, and we kept her steady in the same
way, but we could not always keep her steady enough, and we could not
always keep her in the wind’s eye. That is to say, she went where we did
not want, and once she bumped her corner against the barn wall, and
all the crew had to sit down suddenly to avoid falling overboard into a
watery grave. Of course then the waves swept her decks, and when we got
up again we said that we should have to change completely before tea.
But we pressed on undaunted, and at last our saucy craft came into port,
under the dairy window and there was the milk-pan, for whose sake we
had endured such hardships and privations, standing up on its edge quite
quietly.
The girls did not wait for orders from the captain, as they ought to
have done; but they cried out, ‘Oh, here it is!’ and then both reached
out to get it. Anyone who has pursued a naval career will see that of
course the raft capsized. For a moment it felt like standing on the roof
of the house, and the next moment the ship stood up on end and shot the
whole crew into the dark waters.
We boys can swim all right. Oswald has swum three times across the
Ladywell Swimming Baths at the shallow end, and Dicky is nearly as good;
but just then we did not think of this; though, of course, if the water
had been deep we should have.
As soon as Oswald could get the muddy water out of his eyes he opened
them on a horrid scene.
Dicky was standing up to his shoulders in the inky waters; the raft had
righted itself, and was drifting gently away towards the front of the
house, where the bridge is, and Dora and Alice were rising from the
deep, with their hair all plastered over their faces--like Venus in the
Latin verses.
There was a great noise of splashing. And besides that a feminine voice,
looking out of the dairy window and screaming--
‘Lord love the children!’
It was Mrs Pettigrew. She disappeared at once, and we were sorry we
were in such a situation that she would be able to get at Albert’s uncle
before we could. Afterwards we were not so sorry.
Before a word could be spoken about our desperate position Dora
staggered a little in the water, and suddenly shrieked, ‘Oh, my foot!
oh, it’s a shark! I know it is--or a crocodile!’
The others on the bank could hear her shrieking, but they could not
see us properly; they did not know what was happening. Noel told me
afterwards he never could care for that paint-brush.
Of course we knew it could not be a shark, but I thought of pike, which
are large and very angry always, and I caught hold of Dora. She screamed
without stopping. I shoved her along to where there was a ledge of
brickwork, and shoved her up, till she could sit on it, then she got her
foot out of the water, still screaming.
It was indeed terrible. The thing she thought was a shark came up with
her foot, and it was a horrid, jagged, old meat-tin, and she had put
her foot right into it. Oswald got it off, and directly he did so blood
began to pour from the wounds. The tin edges had cut it in several
spots. It was very pale blood, because her foot was wet, of course.
She stopped screaming, and turned green, and I thought she was going to
faint, like Daisy did on the jungle day.
Oswald held her up as well as he could, but it really was one of the
least agreeable moments in his life. For the raft was gone, and she
couldn’t have waded back anyway, and we didn’t know how deep the moat
might be in other places.
But Mrs Pettigrew had not been idle. She is not a bad sort really.
Just as Oswald was wondering whether he could swim after the raft and
get it back, a boat’s nose shot out from under a dark archway a little
further up under the house. It was the boathouse, and Albert’s uncle had
got the punt and took us back in it. When we had regained the dark arch
where the boat lives we had to go up the cellar stairs. Dora had to be
carried.
There was but little said to us that day. We were sent to bed--those who
had not been on the raft the same as the others, for they owned up all
right, and Albert’s uncle is the soul of justice.
Next day but one was Saturday. Father gave us a talking to--with other
things.
The worst was when Dora couldn’t get her shoe on, so they sent for the
doctor, and Dora had to lie down for ever so long. It was indeed poor
luck.
When the doctor had gone Alice said to me--
‘It IS hard lines, but Dora’s very jolly about it. Daisy’s been telling
her about how we should all go to her with our little joys and sorrows
and things, and about the sweet influence from a sick bed that can be
felt all over the house, like in What Katy Did, and Dora said she hoped
she might prove a blessing to us all while she’s laid up.’
Oswald said he hoped so, but he was not pleased. Because this sort
of jaw was exactly the sort of thing he and Dicky didn’t want to have
happen.
The thing we got it hottest for was those little tubs off the garden
railings. They turned out to be butter-tubs that had been put out there
‘to sweeten’.
But as Denny said, ‘After the mud in that moat not all the perfumes of
somewhere or other could make them fit to use for butter again.’
I own this was rather a bad business. Yet we did not do it to please
ourselves, but because it was our duty. But that made no difference to
our punishment when Father came down. I have known this mistake occur
before.