Five Children and It
and so had the green imitation crocodile-skin purse at nine-pence which
had been bought at the same time. They tried several more shops, the
kinds where you buy toys and perfume and silk handkerchiefs and books,
and fancy boxes of stationery, and photographs of objects of interest in
the vicinity. But nobody cared to change a guinea that day in Rochester,
and as they went from shop to shop they got dirtier and dirtier, and
their hair got more and more untidy, and Jane slipped and fell down on a
part of the road where a water cart had just gone by. Also they got very
hungry, but they found no one would give them anything to eat for their
guineas.
After trying two baker shops in vain, they became so hungry, perhaps
from the smell of the cake in the shops, as Cyril suggested, that they
formed a plan of campaign in whispers and carried it out in desperation.
They marched into a third baker shop,--Beale was his name,--and before
the people behind the counter could interfere each child had seized
three new penny buns, clapped the three together between its dirty
hands, and taken a big bite out of the triple sandwich. Then they stood
at bay, with the twelve buns in their hands and their mouths very full
indeed. The shocked baker's man bounded round the corner.
"Here," said Cyril, speaking as distinctly as he could, and holding out
the guinea he got ready before entering the shops, "pay yourself out of
that."
Mr. Beale snatched the coin, bit it, and put it in his pocket.
"Off you go," he said, brief and stern like the man in the song.
"But the change?" said Anthea, who had a saving mind.
"Change!" said the man, "I'll change you! Hout you goes; and you may
think yourselves lucky I don't send for the police to find out where you
got it!"
In the Gardens of the Castle the millionaires finished the buns, and
though the curranty softness of these were delicious, and acted like a
charm in raising the spirits of the party, yet even the stoutest heart
quailed at the thought of venturing to sound Mr. Billy Peasemarsh at the
Saracen's Head on the subject of a horse and carriage. The boys would
have given up the idea, but Jane was always a hopeful child, and Anthea
generally an obstinate one, and their earnestness prevailed.
The whole party, by this time indescribably dirty, therefore betook
itself to the Saracen's Head. The yard-method of attack having been
successful at The Chequers, was tried again here. Mr. Peasemarsh was in
the yard, and Robert opened the business in these terms--
"They tell me you have a lot of horses and carriages to sell." It had
been agreed that Robert should be spokesman, because in books it is
always gentlemen who buy horses, and not ladies, and Cyril had had his
go at the Blue Boar.
"They tell you true, young man," said Mr. Peasemarsh. He was a long lean
man, with very blue eyes and a tight mouth and narrow lips.
"We should like to buy some, please," said Robert politely.
"I daresay you would."
"Will you show us a few, please? To choose from."
"Who are you a-kiddin of?" inquired Mr. Billy Peasemarsh. "Was you sent
here of a message?"
"I tell you," said Robert, "we want to buy some horses and carriages,
and a man told us you were straight and civil spoken, but I shouldn't
wonder if he was mistaken"--
"Upon my sacred!" said Mr. Peasemarsh. "Shall I trot the whole stable
out for your Honor's worship to see? Or shall I send round to the
Bishop's to see if he's a nag or two to dispose of?"
"Please do," said Robert, "if it's not too much trouble. It would be
very kind of you."
Mr. Peasemarsh put his hands in his pockets and laughed, and they did
not like the way he did it. Then he shouted "Willum!"
A stooping ostler appeared in a stable door.
"Here, Willum, come and look at this 'ere young dook! Wants to buy the
whole stud, lock, stock, and bar'l. And ain't got tuppence in his
pocket to bless hisself with, I'll go bail!"
Willum's eyes followed his master's pointing thumb with contemptuous
interest.
"Do 'e, for sure?" he said.
But Robert spoke, though both the girls were now pulling at his jacket
and begging him to "come along." He spoke, and he was very angry; he
said--
"I'm not a young duke, and I never pretended to be. And as for
tuppence--what do you call this?" And before the others could stop him
he had pulled out two fat handfuls of shining guineas, and held them out
for Mr. Peasemarsh to look at. He did look. He snatched one up in his
finger and thumb. He bit it, and Jane expected him to say, "The best
horse in my stables is at your service." But the others knew better.
Still it was a blow, even to the most desponding, when he said shortly--
"Willum, shut the yard doors;" and Willum grinned and went to shut them.
"Good-afternoon," said Robert hastily; "we shan't buy any horses now,
whatever you say, and I hope it'll be a lesson to you." He had seen a
little side gate open, and was moving towards it as he spoke. But Billy
Peasemarsh put himself in the way.
"Not so fast, you young off-scouring!" he said. "Willum, fetch the
pleece."
Willum went. The children stood huddled together like frightened sheep,
and Mr. Peasemarsh spoke to them till the pleece arrived. He said many
things. Among other things he said--
"Nice lot you are, aren't you, coming tempting honest men with your
guineas!"
"They _are_ our guineas," said Cyril boldly.
"Oh, of course we don't know all about that, no more we don't--oh
no--course not! And dragging little gells into it, too. 'Ere--I'll let
the gells go if you'll come along to the pleece quiet."
"We won't be let go," said Jane heroically; "not without the boys. It's
our money just as much as theirs, you wicked old man."
"Where'd you get it, then?" said the man, softening slightly, which was
not at all what the boys expected when Jane began to call names.
Jane cast a silent glance of agony at the others.
"Lost your tongue, eh? Got it fast enough when it's for calling names
with. Come, speak up! Where'd you get it?"
"Out of the gravel-pit," said truthful Jane.
"Next article," said the man.
"I tell you we did," Jane said. "There's a fairy there--all over brown
fur--with ears like a bat's and eyes like a snail's, and he gives you a
wish a day, and they all come true."
"Touched in the head, eh?" said the man in a low voice; "all the more
shame to you boys dragging the poor afflicted child into your sinful
burglaries."
"She's not mad; it's true," said Anthea; "there _is_ a fairy. If I ever
see him again I'll wish for something for you; at least I would if
vengeance wasn't wicked--so there!"
"Lor' lumme," said Billy Peasemarsh, "if there ain't another on 'em!"
And now Willum came back, with a spiteful grin on his face, and at his
back a policeman, with whom Mr. Peasemarsh spoke long in a hoarse
earnest whisper.
"I daresay you're right," said the policeman at last. "Anyway, I'll take
'em up on a charge of unlawful possession, pending inquiries. And the
magistrate will deal with the case. Send the afflicted ones to a home,
as likely as not, and the boys to a reformatory. Now then, come along,
youngsters! No use making a fuss. You bring the gells along, Mr.
Peasemarsh, sir, and I'll shepherd the boys."
Speechless with rage and horror, the four children were driven along the
streets of Rochester. Tears of anger and shame blinded them, so that
when Robert ran right into a passer-by he did not recognise her till a
well-known voice said, "Well, if ever I did! Oh, Master Robert, whatever
have you been a-doing of now?" And another voice, quite as well known,
said, "Panty; want go own Panty!"
They had run into Martha and the Baby!
Martha behaved admirably. She refused to believe a word of the
policeman's story, or of Mr. Peasemarsh's either, even when they made
Robert turn out his pockets in an archway and show the guineas.
"I don't see nothing," she said. "You've gone out of your senses, you
two! There ain't any gold there--only the poor child's hands, all over
dirt, and like the very chimbley. Oh that I should ever see the day!"
And the children thought this very noble of Martha, even if rather
wicked, till they remembered how the Fairy had promised that the
servants should never notice any of the fairy gifts. So of course Martha
couldn't see the gold, and so was only speaking the truth, and that was
quite right, of course, but not extra noble.
It was getting dusk when they reached the police-station. The policeman
told his tale to an inspector, who sat in a large bare room with a thing
like a clumsy nursery-fender at one end to put prisoners in. Robert
wondered whether it was a cell or a dock.
"Produce the coins, officer," said the inspector.
"Turn out your pockets," said the constable.
Cyril desperately plunged his hands in his pockets, stood still a
moment, and then began to laugh--an odd sort of laugh that hurt, and
that felt much more like crying. His pockets were empty. So were the
pockets of the others. For of course at sunset all the fairy gold had
vanished away.
"Turn out your pockets, and stop that noise," said the inspector.
Cyril turned out his pockets, every one of the nine which enriched his
suit. And every pocket was empty.
"Well!" said the inspector.
"I don't know how they done it--artful little beggars! They walked in
front of me the 'ole way, so as for me to keep my eye on them and not to
attract a crowd and obstruct the traffic."
"It's very remarkable," said the inspector, frowning.
"If you've done a-browbeating of the innocent children," said Martha,
"I'll hire a private carriage and we'll drive home to their papa's
mansion. You'll hear about this again, young man!--I told you they
hadn't got any gold, when you were pretending to see it in their poor
helpless hands. It's early in the day for a constable on duty not to be
able to trust his own eyes. As to the other one, the less said the
better; he keeps the Saracen's Head, and he knows best what his liquor's
like."
"Take them away, for goodness' sake," said the inspector crossly. But as
they left the police-station he said, "Now then!" to the policeman and
Mr. Peasemarsh, and he said it twenty times as crossly as he had spoken
to Martha.
* * * * *
Martha was as good as her word. She took them home in a very grand
carriage, because the carrier's cart was gone, and, though she had stood
by them so nobly with the police, she was so angry with them as soon as
they were alone for "trapesing into Rochester by themselves," that none
of them dared to mention the old man with the pony-cart from the
village who was waiting for them in Rochester. And so, after one day of
boundless wealth, the children found themselves sent to bed in deep
disgrace, and only enriched by two pairs of cotton gloves, dirty inside
because of the state of the hands they had been put on to cover, an
imitation crocodile-skin purse, and twelve penny buns, long since
digested.
The thing that troubled them most was the fear that the old gentleman's
guinea might have disappeared at sunset with all the rest, so they went
down to the village next day to apologise for not meeting him in
Rochester, and to _see_. They found him very friendly. The guinea had
not disappeared, and he had bored a hole in it and hung it on his
watch-chain. As for the guinea the baker took, the children felt they
_could_ not care whether it had vanished or not, which was not perhaps
very honest, but on the other hand was not wholly unnatural. But