It began one morning at breakfast. It was the fifteenth of August--the
birthday of Napoleon the Great, Oswald Bastable, and another very nice
writer. Oswald was to keep his birthday on the Saturday, so that his
Father could be there. A birthday when there are only many happy returns
is a little like Sunday or Christmas Eve. Oswald had a birthday-card or
two--that was all; but he did not repine, because he knew they always
make it up to you for putting off keeping your birthday, and he looked
forward to Saturday.
Albert’s uncle had a whole stack of letters as usual, and presently he
tossed one over to Dora, and said, ‘What do you say, little lady? Shall
we let them come?’
But Dora, butter-fingered as ever, missed the catch, and Dick and Noel
both had a try for it, so that the letter went into the place where the
bacon had been, and where now only a frozen-looking lake of bacon fat
was slowly hardening, and then somehow it got into the marmalade, and
then H. O. got it, and Dora said--
‘I don’t want the nasty thing now--all grease and stickiness.’ So H. O.
read it aloud--
MAIDSTONE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUITIES AND FIELD CLUB
Aug. 14, 1900
‘DEAR SIR,--At a meeting of the--’
H. O. stuck fast here, and the writing was really very bad, like a
spider that has been in the ink-pot crawling in a hurry over the paper
without stopping to rub its feet properly on the mat. So Oswald took
the letter. He is above minding a little marmalade or bacon. He began to
read. It ran thus:
‘It’s not Antiquities, you little silly,’ he said; ‘it’s Antiquaries.’
‘The other’s a very good word,’ said Albert’s uncle, ‘and I never
call names at breakfast myself--it upsets the digestion, my egregious
Oswald.’
‘That’s a name though,’ said Alice, ‘and you got it out of “Stalky”,
too. Go on, Oswald.’
So Oswald went on where he had been interrupted:
‘MAIDSTONE SOCIETY OF “ANTIQUARIES” AND FIELD CLUB
Aug. 14,1900.
‘DEAR SIR,--At a meeting of the Committee of this Society it was agreed
that a field day should be held on Aug. 20, when the Society proposes to
visit the interesting church of Ivybridge and also the Roman remains
in the vicinity. Our president, Mr Longchamps, F.R.S., has obtained
permission to open a barrow in the Three Trees pasture. We venture to
ask whether you would allow the members of the Society to walk through
your grounds and to inspect--from without, of course--your beautiful
house, which is, as you are doubtless aware, of great historic interest,
having been for some years the residence of the celebrated Sir Thomas
Wyatt.--I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully,
‘EDWARD K. TURNBULL (Hon. Sec.).’
‘Just so,’ said Albert’s uncle; ‘well, shall we permit the eye of the
Maidstone Antiquities to profane these sacred solitudes, and the foot of
the Field Club to kick up a dust on our gravel?’
‘Our gravel is all grass,’ H. O. said.
And the girls said, ‘Oh, do let them come!’ It was Alice who said--
‘Why not ask them to tea? They’ll be very tired coming all the way from
Maidstone.’
‘Would you really like it?’ Albert’s uncle asked. ‘I’m afraid they’ll
be but dull dogs, the Antiquities, stuffy old gentlemen with amphorae
in their buttonholes instead of orchids, and pedigrees poking out of all
their pockets.’
We laughed--because we knew what an amphorae is. If you don’t you might
look it up in the dicker. It’s not a flower, though it sounds like one
out of the gardening book, the kind you never hear of anyone growing.
Dora said she thought it would be splendid.
‘And we could have out the best china,’ she said, ‘and decorate the
table with flowers. We could have tea in the garden. We’ve never had a
party since we’ve been here.’
‘I warn you that your guests may be boresome; however, have it your own
way,’ Albert’s uncle said; and he went off to write the invitation to
tea to the Maidstone Antiquities. I know that is the wrong word but
somehow we all used it whenever we spoke of them, which was often.
In a day or two Albert’s uncle came in to tea with a lightly-clouded
brow.
‘You’ve let me in for a nice thing,’ he said. ‘I asked the Antiquities
to tea, and I asked casually how many we might expect. I thought
we might need at least the full dozen of the best teacups. Now the
secretary writes accepting my kind invitation--’
‘Oh, good!’ we cried. ‘And how many are coming?’ ‘Oh, only about
sixty,’ was the groaning rejoinder. ‘Perhaps more, should the weather be
exceptionally favourable.’
Though stunned at first, we presently decided that we were pleased.
We had never, never given such a big party.
The girls were allowed to help in the kitchen, where Mrs Pettigrew made
cakes all day long without stopping. They did not let us boys be there,
though I cannot see any harm in putting your finger in a cake before
it is baked, and then licking your finger, if you are careful to put
a different finger in the cake next time. Cake before it is baked is
delicious--like a sort of cream.
Albert’s uncle said he was the prey of despair. He drove in to Maidstone
one day. When we asked him where he was going, he said--
‘To get my hair cut: if I keep it this length I shall certainly tear it
out by double handfuls in the extremity of my anguish every time I think
of those innumerable Antiquities.’
But we found out afterwards that he really went to borrow china and
things to give the Antiquities their tea out of; though he did have his
hair cut too, because he is the soul of truth and honour.
Oswald had a very good sort of birthday, with bows and arrows as well as
other presents. I think these were meant to make up for the pistol that
was taken away after the adventure of the fox-hunting. These gave us
boys something to do between the birthday-keeping, which was on the
Saturday, and the Wednesday when the Antiquities were to come.
We did not allow the girls to play with the bows and arrows, because
they had the cakes that we were cut off from: there was little or no
unpleasantness over this.
On the Tuesday we went down to look at the Roman place where the
Antiquities were going to dig. We sat on the Roman wall and ate nuts.
And as we sat there, we saw coming through the beet-field two labourers
with picks and shovels, and a very young man with thin legs and a
bicycle. It turned out afterwards to be a free-wheel, the first we had
ever seen.
They stopped at a mound inside the Roman wall, and the men took their
coats off and spat on their hands.
We went down at once, of course. The thin-legged bicyclist explained his
machine to us very fully and carefully when we asked him, and then we
saw the men were cutting turfs and turning them over and rolling them up
and putting them in a heap. So we asked the gentleman with the thin legs
what they were doing. He said--
‘They are beginning the preliminary excavation in readiness for
to-morrow.’
‘What’s up to-morrow?’ H. O. asked.
‘To-morrow we propose to open this barrow and examine it.’
‘Then YOU’RE the Antiquities?’ said H. O.
‘I’m the secretary,’ said the gentleman, smiling, but narrowly.
‘Oh, you’re all coming to tea with us,’ Dora said, and added anxiously,
‘how many of you do you think there’ll be?’
‘Oh, not more than eighty or ninety, I should think,’ replied the
gentleman.
This took our breath away and we went home. As we went, Oswald,
who notices many things that would pass unobserved by the light and
careless, saw Denny frowning hard. So he said, ‘What’s up?’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ the Dentist said. ‘Let’s call a council.’ The
Dentist had grown quite used to our ways now. We had called him Dentist
ever since the fox-hunt day. He called a council as if he had been used
to calling such things all his life, and having them come, too; whereas
we all know that his former existing was that of a white mouse in a
trap, with that cat of a Murdstone aunt watching him through the bars.
(That is what is called a figure of speech. Albert’s uncle told me.)
Councils are held in the straw-loft. As soon as we were all there, and
the straw had stopped rustling after our sitting down, Dicky said--
‘I hope it’s nothing to do with the Wouldbegoods?’
‘No,’ said Denny in a hurry: ‘quite the opposite.’
‘I hope it’s nothing wrong,’ said Dora and Daisy together.
‘It’s--it’s “Hail to thee, blithe spirit--bird thou never wert”,’ said
Denny. ‘I mean, I think it’s what is called a lark.’
‘You never know your luck. Go on, Dentist,’ said Dicky.
‘Well, then, do you know a book called The Daisy Chain?’
We didn’t.
‘It’s by Miss Charlotte M. Yonge,’ Daisy interrupted, ‘and it’s about
a family of poor motherless children who tried so hard to be good,
and they were confirmed, and had a bazaar, and went to church at the
Minster, and one of them got married and wore black watered silk and
silver ornaments. So her baby died, and then she was sorry she had not
been a good mother to it. And--’ Here Dicky got up and said he’d got
some snares to attend to, and he’d receive a report of the Council after
it was over. But he only got as far as the trap-door, and then Oswald,
the fleet of foot, closed with him, and they rolled together on the
floor, while all the others called out ‘Come back! Come back!’ like
guinea-hens on a fence.
Through the rustle and bustle and hustle of the struggle with Dicky,
Oswald heard the voice of Denny murmuring one of his everlasting
quotations--
‘“Come back, come back!” he cried in Greek,
“Across the stormy water,
And I’ll forgive your Highland cheek,
My daughter, O my daughter!”’
When quiet was restored and Dicky had agreed to go through with the
Council, Denny said--
‘The Daisy Chain is not a bit like that really. It’s a ripping book. One
of the boys dresses up like a lady and comes to call, and another tries
to hit his little sister with a hoe. It’s jolly fine, I tell you.’
Denny is learning to say what he thinks, just like other boys. He would
never have learnt such words as ‘ripping’ and ‘jolly fine’ while under
the auntal tyranny.
Since then I have read The Daisy Chain. It is a first-rate book for
girls and little boys.
But we did not want to talk about The Daisy Chain just then, so Oswald
said--
‘But what’s your lark?’ Denny got pale pink and said--
‘Don’t hurry me. I’ll tell you directly. Let me think a minute.’
Then he shut his pale pink eyelids a moment in thought, and then opened
them and stood up on the straw and said very fast--
‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears, or if not ears, pots.
You know Albert’s uncle said they were going to open the barrow, to
look for Roman remains to-morrow. Don’t you think it seems a pity they
shouldn’t find any?’
‘Perhaps they will,’ Dora said.
But Oswald saw, and he said ‘Primus! Go ahead, old man.’
The Dentist went ahead.
‘In The Daisy Chain,’ he said, ‘they dug in a Roman encampment and the
children went first and put some pottery there they’d made themselves,
and Harry’s old medal of the Duke of Wellington. The doctor helped them
to some stuff to partly efface the inscription, and all the grown-ups
were sold. I thought we might--
‘You may break, you may shatter
The vase if you will;
But the scent of the Romans
Will cling round it still.’
Denny sat down amid applause. It really was a great idea, at least for
HIM. It seemed to add just what was wanted to the visit of the Maidstone
Antiquities. To sell the Antiquities thoroughly would be indeed
splendiferous. Of course Dora made haste to point out that we had not
got an old medal of the Duke of Wellington, and that we hadn’t any
doctor who would ‘help us to stuff to efface’, and etcetera; but we
sternly bade her stow it. We weren’t going to do EXACTLY like those
Daisy Chain kids.
The pottery was easy. We had made a lot of it by the stream--which was
the Nile when we discovered its source--and dried it in the sun, and
then baked it under a bonfire, like in Foul Play. And most of the
things were such queer shapes that they should have done for almost
anything--Roman or Greek, or even Egyptian or antediluvian, or
household milk-jugs of the cavemen, Albert’s uncle said. The pots were,
fortunately, quite ready and dirty, because we had already buried them
in mixed sand and river mud to improve the colour, and not remembered to
wash it off.
So the Council at once collected it all--and some rusty hinges and some
brass buttons and a file without a handle; and the girl Councillors
carried it all concealed in their pinafores, while the men members
carried digging tools. H. O. and Daisy were sent on ahead as scouts
to see if the coast was clear. We have learned the true usefulness of
scouts from reading about the Transvaal War. But all was still in the
hush of evening sunset on the Roman ruin.
We posted sentries, who were to lie on their stomachs on the walls and
give a long, low, signifying whistle if aught approached.
Then we dug a tunnel, like the one we once did after treasure, when we
happened to bury a boy. It took some time; but never shall it be said
that a Bastable grudged time or trouble when a lark was at stake. We put
the things in as naturally as we could, and shoved the dirt back, till
everything looked just as before. Then we went home, late for tea.
But it was in a good cause; and there was no hot toast, only
bread-and-butter, which does not get cold with waiting.
That night Alice whispered to Oswald on the stairs, as we went up to
bed--
‘Meet me outside your door when the others are asleep. Hist! Not a
word.’
Oswald said, ‘No kid?’ And she replied in the affirmation.
So he kept awake by biting his tongue and pulling his hair--for he
shrinks from no pain if it is needful and right.
And when the others all slept the sleep of innocent youth, he got up and
went out, and there was Alice dressed.
She said, ‘I’ve found some broken things that look ever so much more
Roman--they were on top of the cupboard in the library. If you’ll come
with me, we’ll bury them just to see how surprised the others will be.’
It was a wild and daring act, but Oswald did not mind.
He said--
‘Wait half a shake.’ And he put on his knickerbockers and jacket, and
slipped a few peppermints into his pocket in case of catching cold.
It is these thoughtful expedients which mark the born explorer and
adventurer.
It was a little cold; but the white moonlight was very fair to see, and
we decided we’d do some other daring moonlight act some other day. We
got out of the front door, which is never locked till Albert’s uncle
goes to bed at twelve or one, and we ran swiftly and silently across the
bridge and through the fields to the Roman ruin.
Alice told me afterwards she should have been afraid if it had been
dark. But the moonlight made it as bright as day is in your dreams.
Oswald had taken the spade and a sheet of newspaper.
We did not take all the pots Alice had found--but just the two that
weren’t broken--two crooked jugs, made of stuff like flower-pots are
made of. We made two long cuts with the spade and lifted the turf up and
scratched the earth under, and took it out very carefully in handfuls
on to the newspaper, till the hole was deepish. Then we put in the jugs,
and filled it up with earth and flattened the turf over. Turf stretches
like elastic. This we did a couple of yards from the place where the
mound was dug into by the men, and we had been so careful with the
newspaper that there was no loose earth about.
Then we went home in the wet moonlight--at least the grass was very
wet--chuckling through the peppermint, and got up to bed without anyone
knowing a single thing about it.
The next day the Antiquities came. It was a jolly hot day, and the
tables were spread under the trees on the lawn, like a large and very
grand Sunday-school treat. There were dozens of different kinds of cake,
and bread-and-butter, both white and brown, and gooseberries and
plums and jam sandwiches. And the girls decorated the tables with
flowers--blue larkspur and white Canterbury bells. And at about three
there was a noise of people walking in the road, and presently the
Antiquities began to come in at the front gate, and stood about on the
lawn by twos and threes and sixes and sevens, looking shy and uncomfy,
exactly like a Sunday-school treat. Presently some gentlemen came, who
looked like the teachers; they were not shy, and they came right up to
the door. So Albert’s uncle, who had not been too proud to be up in our
room with us watching the people on the lawn through the netting of our
short blinds, said--
‘I suppose that’s the Committee. Come on!’
So we all went down--we were in our Sunday things--and Albert’s uncle
received the Committee like a feudal system baron, and we were his
retainers.
He talked about dates, and king posts and gables, and mullions, and
foundations, and records, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, and poetry, and Julius
Caesar, and Roman remains, and lych gates and churches, and dog’s-tooth
moulding till the brain of Oswald reeled. I suppose that Albert’s uncle
remarked that all our mouths were open, which is a sign of reels in the
brain, for he whispered--
‘Go hence, and mingle unsuspected with the crowd!’
So we went out on to the lawn, which was now crowded with men and women
and one child. This was a girl; she was fat, and we tried to talk to
her, though we did not like her. (She was covered in red velvet like
an arm-chair.) But she wouldn’t. We thought at first she was from a
deaf-and-dumb asylum, where her kind teachers had only managed to teach
the afflicted to say ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. But afterwards we knew better, for
Noel heard her say to her mother, ‘I wish you hadn’t brought me, mamma.
I didn’t have a pretty teacup, and I haven’t enjoyed my tea one bit.’
And she had had five pieces of cake, besides little cakes and nearly
a whole plate of plums, and there were only twelve pretty teacups
altogether.
Several grown-ups talked to us in a most uninterested way, and then
the President read a paper about the Moat House, which we couldn’t
understand, and other people made speeches we couldn’t understand
either, except the part about kind hospitality, which made us not know
where to look.
Then Dora and Alice and Daisy and Mrs Pettigrew poured out the tea, and
we handed cups and plates.
Albert’s uncle took me behind a bush to see him tear what was left
of his hair when he found there were one hundred and twenty-three
Antiquities present, and I heard the President say to the Secretary that
‘tea always fetched them’.
Then it was time for the Roman ruin, and our hearts beat high as we took
our hats--it was exactly like Sunday--and joined the crowded procession
of eager Antiquities. Many of them had umbrellas and overcoats, though
the weather was fiery and without a cloud. That is the sort of people
they were. The ladies all wore stiff bonnets, and no one took their
gloves off, though, of course, it was quite in the country, and it is
not wrong to take your gloves off there.
We had planned to be quite close when the digging went on; but Albert’s
uncle made us a mystic sign and drew us apart.
Then he said: ‘The stalls and dress circle are for the guests. The hosts
and hostesses retire to the gallery, whence, I am credibly informed, an
excellent view may be obtained.’
So we all went up on the Roman walls, and thus missed the cream of the
lark; for we could not exactly see what was happening. But we saw that
things were being taken from the ground as the men dug, and passed
round for the Antiquities to look at. And we knew they must be our Roman
remains; but the Antiquities did not seem to care for them much, though
we heard sounds of pleased laughter. And at last Alice and I exchanged
meaning glances when the spot was reached where we had put in the
extras. Then the crowd closed up thick, and we heard excited talk and we
knew we really HAD sold the Antiquities this time.
Presently the bonnets and coats began to spread out and trickle towards
the house and we were aware that all would soon be over. So we cut home
the back way, just in time to hear the President saying to Albert’s
uncle--
‘A genuine find--most interesting. Oh, really, you ought to have ONE.
Well, if you insist--’
And so, by slow and dull degrees, the thick sprinkling of Antiquities
melted off the lawn; the party was over, and only the dirty teacups and
plates, and the trampled grass and the pleasures of memory were left.
We had a very beautiful supper--out of doors, too--with jam sandwiches
and cakes and things that were over; and as we watched the setting
monarch of the skies--I mean the sun--Alice said--
‘Let’s tell.’
We let the Dentist tell, because it was he who hatched the lark, but we
helped him a little in the narrating of the fell plot, because he has
yet to learn how to tell a story straight from the beginning.
When he had done, and we had done, Albert’s uncle said, ‘Well, it
amused you; and you’ll be glad to learn that it amused your friends the
Antiquities.’
‘Didn’t they think they were Roman?’ Daisy said; ‘they did in The Daisy
Chain.’
‘Not in the least,’ said Albert’s uncle; ‘but the Treasurer and
Secretary were charmed by your ingenious preparations for their
reception.’
‘We didn’t want them to be disappointed,’ said Dora.
‘They weren’t,’ said Albert’s uncle. ‘Steady on with those plums, H.O. A
little way beyond the treasure you had prepared for them they found two
specimens of REAL Roman pottery which sent every man-jack of them home
thanking his stars he had been born a happy little Antiquary child.’
‘Those were our jugs,’ said Alice, ‘and we really HAVE sold the
Antiquities. She unfolded the tale about our getting the jugs and
burying them in the moonlight, and the mound; and the others listened
with deeply respectful interest. ‘We really have done it this time,
haven’t we?’ she added in tones of well-deserved triumph.
But Oswald had noticed a queer look about Albert’s uncle from almost the
beginning of Alice’s recital; and he now had the sensation of something
being up, which has on other occasions frozen his noble blood. The
silence of Albert’s uncle now froze it yet more Arcticly.
‘Haven’t we?’ repeated Alice, unconscious of what her sensitive
brother’s delicate feelings had already got hold of. ‘We have done it
this time, haven’t we?’
‘Since you ask me thus pointedly,’ answered Albert’s uncle at last, ‘I
cannot but confess that I think you have indeed done it. Those pots on
the top of the library cupboard ARE Roman pottery. The amphorae
which you hid in the mound are probably--I can’t say for certain,
mind--priceless. They are the property of the owner of this house. You
have taken them out and buried them. The President of the Maidstone
Antiquarian Society has taken them away in his bag. Now what are you
going to do?’
Alice and I did not know what to say, or where to look. The others added
to our pained position by some ungenerous murmurs about our not being so
jolly clever as we thought ourselves.
There was a very far from pleasing silence. Then Oswald got up. He
said--
‘Alice, come here a sec; I want to speak to you.’
As Albert’s uncle had offered no advice, Oswald disdained to ask him for
any.
Alice got up too, and she and Oswald went into the garden, and sat down
on the bench under the quince tree, and wished they had never tried to
have a private lark of their very own with the Antiquities--‘A Private
Sale’, Albert’s uncle called it afterwards. But regrets, as nearly
always happens, were vain. Something had to be done.
But what?
Oswald and Alice sat in silent desperateness, and the voices of the
gay and careless others came to them from the lawn, where, heartless
in their youngness, they were playing tag. I don’t know how they could.
Oswald would not like to play tag when his brother and sister were in a
hole, but Oswald is an exception to some boys.
But Dicky told me afterwards he thought it was only a joke of Albert’s
uncle’s.
The dusk grew dusker, till you could hardly tell the quinces from the
leaves, and Alice and Oswald still sat exhausted with hard thinking, but
they could not think of anything. And it grew so dark that the moonlight
began to show.
Then Alice jumped up--just as Oswald was opening his mouth to say
the same thing--and said, ‘Of course--how silly! I know. Come on in,
Oswald.’ And they went on in.
Oswald was still far too proud to consult anyone else. But he just asked
carelessly if Alice and he might go into Maidstone the next day to
buy some wire-netting for a rabbit-hutch, and to see after one or two
things.
Albert’s uncle said certainly. And they went by train with the bailiff
from the farm, who was going in about some sheep-dip and to buy pigs.
At any other time Oswald would not have been able to bear to leave the
bailiff without seeing the pigs bought. But now it was different. For he
and Alice had the weight on their bosoms of being thieves without having
meant it--and nothing, not even pigs, had power to charm the young but
honourable Oswald till that stain had been wiped away.
So he took Alice to the Secretary of the Maidstone Antiquities’ house,
and Mr Turnbull was out, but the maid-servant kindly told us where the
President lived, and ere long the trembling feet of the unfortunate
brother and sister vibrated on the spotless gravel of Camperdown Villa.
When they asked, they were told that Mr Longchamps was at home. Then
they waited, paralysed with undescribed emotions, in a large room with
books and swords and glass bookcases with rotten-looking odds and ends
in them. Mr Longchamps was a collector. That means he stuck to anything,
no matter how ugly and silly, if only it was old.
He came in rubbing his hands, and very kind. He remembered us very well,
he said, and asked what he could do for us.
Oswald for once was dumb. He could not find words in which to own
himself the ass he had been. But Alice was less delicately moulded. She
said--
‘Oh, if you please, we are most awfully sorry, and we hope you’ll
forgive us, but we thought it would be such a pity for you and all the
other poor dear Antiquities to come all that way and then find nothing
Roman--so we put some pots and things in the barrow for you to find.’
‘So I perceived,’ said the President, stroking his white beard and
smiling most agreeably at us; ‘a harmless joke, my dear! Youth’s the
season for jesting. There’s no harm done--pray think no more about it.
It’s very honourable of you to come and apologize, I’m sure.’
His brow began to wear the furrowed, anxious look of one who would
fain be rid of his guests and get back to what he was doing before they
interrupted him.
Alice said, ‘We didn’t come for that. It’s MUCH worse. Those were two
REAL true Roman jugs you took away; we put them there; they aren’t
ours. We didn’t know they were real Roman. We wanted to sell the
Antiquities--I mean Antiquaries--and we were sold ourselves.’
‘This is serious,’ said the gentleman. ‘I suppose you’d know the--the
“jugs” if you saw them again?’
‘Anywhere,’ said Oswald, with the confidential rashness of one who does
not know what he is talking about.
Mr Longchamps opened the door of a little room leading out of the one we
were in, and beckoned us to follow. We found ourselves amid shelves and
shelves of pottery of all sorts; and two whole shelves--small ones--were
filled with the sort of jug we wanted.
‘Well,’ said the President, with a veiled menacing sort of smile, like a
wicked cardinal, ‘which is it?’
Oswald said, ‘I don’t know.’
Alice said, ‘I should know if I had it in my hand.’
The President patiently took the jugs down one after another, and Alice
tried to look inside them. And one after another she shook her head and
gave them back. At last she said, ‘You didn’t WASH them?’
Mr Longchamps shuddered and said ‘No’.
‘Then,’ said Alice, ‘there is something written with lead-pencil inside
both the jugs. I wish I hadn’t. I would rather you didn’t read it. I
didn’t know it would be a nice old gentleman like you would find it.
I thought it would be the younger gentleman with the thin legs and the
narrow smile.’
‘Mr Turnbull.’ The President seemed to recognize the description
unerringly. ‘Well, well--boys will be boys--girls, I mean. I won’t be
angry. Look at all the “jugs” and see if you can find yours.’
Alice did--and the next one she looked at she said, ‘This is one’--and
two jugs further on she said, ‘This is the other.’
‘Well,’ the President said, ‘these are certainly the specimens which I
obtained yesterday. If your uncle will call on me I will return them
to him. But it’s a disappointment. Yes, I think you must let me look
inside.’
He did. And at the first one he said nothing. At the second he laughed.
‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘we can’t expect old heads on young shoulders.
You’re not the first who went forth to shear and returned shorn. Nor, it
appears, am I. Next time you have a Sale of Antiquities, take care that
you yourself are not “sold”. Good-day to you, my dear. Don’t let the
incident prey on your mind,’ he said to Alice. ‘Bless your heart, I was
a boy once myself, unlikely as you may think it. Good-bye.’
We were in time to see the pigs bought after all.
I asked Alice what on earth it was she’d scribbled inside the beastly
jugs, and she owned that just to make the lark complete she had written
‘Sucks’ in one of the jugs, and ‘Sold again, silly’, in the other.
But we know well enough who it was that was sold. And if ever we have
any Antiquities to tea again, they shan’t find so much as a Greek
waistcoat button if we can help it.
Unless it’s the President, for he did not behave at all badly. For a
man of his age I think he behaved exceedingly well. Oswald can picture
a very different scene having been enacted over those rotten pots if the
President had been an otherwise sort of man.
But that picture is not pleasing, so Oswald will not distress you by
drawing it for you. You can most likely do it easily for yourself.