New Treasure Seekers; Or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune
At dinner some one said something about the coat-of-arms that is on the
silver tankards which once, when we were poor and honest, used to stay
at the shop having the dents slowly taken out of them for months and
months. But now they are always at home and are put at the four corners
of the table every day, and any grown-up who likes can drink beer out of
them.
After some talk of the sort you don't listen to, in which bends and
lioncels and gules and things played a promising part, Albert's uncle
said that Mr. Turnbull had told him something about that coat-of-arms
being carved on a bridge somewhere in Cambridgeshire, and again the
conversation wandered into things like Albert's uncle had talked about
to the Maidstone Antiquarian Society the day they came over to see his
old house in the country and we arranged the time-honoured Roman remains
for them to dig up. So, hearing the words king-post and mullion and
moulding and underpin, Oswald said might we go; and we went, and took
our dessert with us and had it in our own common-room, where you can
roast chestnuts with a free heart and never mind what your fingers get
like.
When first we knew Daisy we used to call her the White Mouse, and her
brother had all the appearance of being one too, but you know how
untruthful appearances are, or else it was that we taught him happier
things, for he certainly turned out quite different in the end; and she
was not a bad sort of kid, though we never could quite cure her of
wanting to be "ladylike"--that is the beastliest word there is, I think,
and Albert's uncle says so, too. He says if a girl can't be a lady it's
not worth while to be only like one--she'd better let it alone and be a
free and happy bounder.
But all this is not what I was going to say, only the author does think
of so many things besides the story, and sometimes he puts them in. This
is the case with Thackeray and the Religious Tract Society and other
authors, as well as Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Only I don't suppose you have
ever heard of her, though she writes books that some people like very
much. But perhaps they are her friends. I did not like the one I read
about the Baronet. It was on a wet Sunday at the seaside, and nothing
else in the house but Bradshaw and "Elsie; or like a----" or I shouldn't
have. But what really happened to us before Christmas is strictly the
following narrative.
"I say," remarked Denny, when he had burned his fingers with a chestnut
that turned out a bad one after all--and such is life--and he had
finished sucking his fingers and getting rid of the chestnut, "about
these antiquaries?"
"Well, what about them?" said Oswald. He always tries to be gentle and
kind to Denny, because he knows he helped to make a man of the young
Mouse.
"I shouldn't think," said Denny, "that it was so very difficult to be
one."
"I don't know," said Dicky. "You have to read very dull books and an
awful lot of them, and remember what you read, what's more."
"I don't think so," said Alice. "That girl who came with the
antiquities--the one Albert's uncle said was upholstered in red plush
like furniture--_she_ hadn't read anything, you bet."
Dora said, "You ought not to bet, especially on Sunday," and Alice
altered it to "You may be sure."
"Well, but what then?" Oswald asked Denny. "Out with it," for he saw
that his youthful friend had got an idea and couldn't get it out. You
should always listen patiently to the ideas of others, no matter how
silly you expect them to be.
"I do wish you wouldn't hurry me so," said Denny, snapping his fingers
anxiously. And we tried to be patient.
"Why shouldn't we _be_ them?" Denny said at last.
"He means antiquaries," said Oswald to the bewildered others. "But
there's nowhere to go and nothing to do when we get there."
The Dentist (so-called for short, his real name being Denis) got red and
white, and drew Oswald aside to the window for a secret discussion.
Oswald listened as carefully as he could, but Denny always buzzes so
when he whispers.
"Right oh," he remarked, when the confidings of the Dentist had got so
that you could understand what he was driving at. "Though you're being
shy with us now, after all we went through together in the summer, is
simply skittles."
Then he turned to the polite and attentive others and said--
"You remember that day we went to Bexley Heath with Albert's uncle?
Well, there was a house, and Albert's uncle said a clever writer lived
there, and in more ancient years that chap in history--Sir Thomas What's
his name; and Denny thinks he might let us be antiquaries there. It
looks a ripping place from the railway."
It really does. It's a fine big house, and splendid gardens, and a lawn
with a sundial, and the tallest trees anywhere about here.
"But what could we _do_?" said Dicky. "I don't suppose _he'd_ give _us_
tea," though such, indeed, had been our hospitable conduct to the
antiquaries who came to see Albert's uncle.
"Oh, I don't know," said Alice. "We might dress up for it, and wear
spectacles, and we could all read papers. It would be lovely--something
to fill up the Christmas holidays--the part before the wedding, I mean.
Do let's."
"All right, I don't mind. I suppose it would be improving," said Dora.
"We should have to read a lot of history. You can settle it. I'm going
to show Daisy our bridesmaids' dresses."
It was, alas! too true. Albert's uncle was to be married but shortly
after, and it was partly our faults, though that does not come into this
story.
So the two D.'s went to look at the clothes--girls like this--but Alice,
who wishes she had never consented to be born a girl, stayed with us,
and we had a long and earnest council about it.
"One thing," said Oswald, "it can't possibly be wrong--so perhaps it
won't be amusing."
"Oh, Oswald!" said Alice, and she spoke rather like Dora.
"I don't mean what you mean," said Oswald in lofty scorn. "What I mean
to say is that when a thing is quite sure to be right, it's not
so--well--I mean to say there it is, don't you know; and if it might be
wrong, and isn't, it's a score to you; and if it might be wrong, and
is--as so often happens--well, you know yourself, adventures sometimes
turn out wrong that you didn't think were going to, but seldom, or
never, the uninteresting kind, and----"
Dicky told Oswald to dry up--which, of course, no one stands from a
younger brother, but though Oswald explained this at the time, he felt
in his heart that he has sometimes said what he meant with more
clearness. When Oswald and Dicky had finished, we went on and arranged
everything.
Every one was to write a paper--and read it.
"If the papers are too long to read while we're there," said Noel, "we
can read them in the long winter evenings when we are grouped along the
household hearthrug. I shall do my paper in poetry--about Agincourt."
Some of us thought Agincourt wasn't fair, because no one could be sure
about any knight who took part in that well-known conflict having lived
in the Red House; but Alice got us to agree, because she said it would
be precious dull if we all wrote about nothing but Sir Thomas
Whatdoyoucallhim--whose real name in history Oswald said he would find
out, and then write his paper on that world-renowned person, who is a
household word in all families. Denny said he would write about Charles
the First, because they were just doing that part at his school.
"I shall write about what happened in 1066," said H.O. "I know that."
Alice said, "If I write a paper it will be about Mary Queen of Scots."
Dora and Daisy came in just as she said this, and it transpired that
this ill-fated but good-looking lady was the only one they either of
them wanted to write about. So Alice gave it up to them and settled to
do Magna Charta, and they could settle something between themselves for
the one who would have to give up Mary Queen of Scots in the end. We all
agreed that the story of that lamented wearer of pearls and black velvet
would not make enough for two papers.
Everything was beautifully arranged, when suddenly H.O. said--
"Supposing he doesn't let us?"
"Who doesn't let us what?"
"The Red House man--read papers at his Red House."
This was, indeed, what nobody had thought of--and even now we did not
think any one could be so lost to proper hospitableness as to say no.
Yet none of us liked to write and ask. So we tossed up for it, only Dora
had feelings about tossing up on Sunday, so we did it with a hymn-book
instead of a penny.
We all won except Noel, who lost, so he said he would do it on Albert's
uncle's typewriter, which was on a visit to us at the time, waiting for
Mr. Remington to fetch it away to mend the "M." We think it was broken
through Albert's uncle writing "Margaret" so often, because it is the
name of the lady he was doomed to be married by.
The girls had got the letter the Maidstone Antiquarian Society and Field
Clubs Secretary had sent to Albert's uncle--H.O. said they kept it for a
momentum of the day--and we altered the dates and names in blue chalk
and put in a piece about might we skate on the moat, and gave it to
Noel, who had already begun to make up his poetry about Agincourt, and
so had to be shaken before he would attend. And that evening, when
Father and our Indian uncle and Albert's uncle were seeing the others on
the way to Forest Hill, Noel's poetry and pencil were taken away from
him and he was shut up in Father's room with the Remington typewriter,
which we had never been forbidden to touch. And I don't think he hurt
it much, except quite at the beginning, when he jammed the "S" and the
"J" and the thing that means per cent. so that they stuck--and Dicky
soon put that right with a screwdriver.
He did not get on very well, but kept on writing MOR7E HOAS5 or MORD6M
HOVCE on new pieces of paper and then beginning again, till the floor
was strewn with his remains; so we left him at it, and went and played
Celebrated Painters--a game even Dora cannot say anything about on
Sunday, considering the Bible kind of pictures most of them painted. And
much later, the library door having banged once and the front door
twice, Noel came in and said he had posted it, and already he was deep
in poetry again, and had to be roused when requisite for bed.
It was not till next day that he owned that the typewriter had been a
fiend in disguise, and that the letter had come out so odd that he could
hardly read it himself.
"The hateful engine of destruction wouldn't answer to the bit in the
least," he said, "and I'd used nearly a wastepaper basket of Father's
best paper, and I thought he might come in and say something, so I just
finished it as well as I could, and I corrected it with the blue
chalk--because you'd bagged that B.B. of mine--and I didn't notice what
name I'd signed till after I'd licked the stamp."
The hearts of his kind brothers and sisters sank low. But they kept
them up as well as they could, and said--
"What name _did_ you sign?"
And Noel said, "Why, Edward Turnbull, of course--like at the end of the
real letter. You never crossed it out like you did his address."
"No," said Oswald witheringly. "You see, I did think, whatever else you
didn't know, I did think you knew your own silly name."
Then Alice said Oswald was unkind, though you see he was not, and she
kissed Noel and said she and he would take turns to watch for the
postman, so as to get the answer (which of course would be subscribed on
the envelope with the name of Turnbull instead of Bastable) before the