New Treasure Seekers; Or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune
"With you and Dora for members."
"And Noel--poets aren't boys exactly," said H.O.
"If you don't shut up you shan't be in it at all," said Alice, putting
her arm round Noel. "No; I meant us all to be in it--only you boys are
not to keep saying we're only girls, and let us do everything the same
as you boys do."
"I don't want to be a boy, thank you," said Dora, "not when I see how
they behave. H.O., _do_ stop sniffing and use your handkerchief. Well,
take mine, then."
It was now Noel's turn to disclose his idea, which proved most awful.
"Let's be Would-be-Poets," he said, "and solemnly vow and convenient to
write one piece of poetry a day as long as we live."
Most of us were dumb at the dreadful thought. But Alice said--
"That would never do, Noel dear, because you're the only one of us who's
clever enough to do it."
So Noel's detestable and degrading idea was shelved without Oswald
having to say anything that would have made the youthful poet weep.
"I suppose you don't mean me to say what I thought of," said H.O., "but
I shall. I think you ought all to be in a Would-be-Kind Society, and vow
solemn convents and things not to be down on your younger brother."
We explained to him at once that _he_ couldn't be in that, because he
hadn't got a younger brother.
"And you may think yourself lucky you haven't," Dicky added.
The ingenious and felicitous Oswald was just going to begin about the
council all over again, when the portable form of our Indian uncle came
stoutly stumping down the garden path under the cedars.
"Hi, brigands!" he cried in his cheerful unclish manner. "Who's on for
the Hippodrome this bright day?"
And instantly we all were. Even Oswald--because after all you can have
a council any day, but Hippodromes are not like that.
We got ready like the whirlwind of the desert for quickness, and started
off with our kind uncle, who has lived so long in India that he is much
more warm-hearted than you would think to look at him.
Half-way to the station Dicky remembered his patent screw for working
ships with. He had been messing with it in the bath while he was waiting
for Oswald to have done plunging cleanly in the basin. And in the
desert-whirlwinding he had forgotten to take it out. So now he ran back,
because he knew how its cardboardiness would turn to pulp if it was
left.
"I'll catch you up," he cried.
The uncle took the tickets and the train came in and still Dicky had not
caught us up.
"Tiresome boy!" said the uncle; "you don't want to miss the
beginning--eh, what? Ah, here he comes!" The uncle got in, and so did
we, but Dicky did not see the uncle's newspaper which Oswald waved, and
he went running up and down the train looking for us instead of just
getting in anywhere sensibly, as Oswald would have done. When the train
began to move he did try to open a carriage door but it stuck, and the
train went faster, and just as he got it open a large heavy porter
caught him by the collar and pulled him off the train, saying--
"Now, young shaver, no susansides on this ere line, if _you_ please."
Dicky hit the porter, but his fury was vain. Next moment the train had
passed away, and us in it. Dicky had no money, and the uncle had all the
tickets in the pocket of his fur coat.
* * * * *
I am not going to tell you anything about the Hippodrome because the
author feels that it was a trifle beastly of us to have enjoyed it as
much as we did considering Dicky. We tried not to talk about it before
him when we got home, but it was very difficult--especially the
elephants.
* * * * *
I suppose he spent an afternoon of bitter thoughts after he had told
that porter what he thought of him, which took some time, and the
station-master interfered in the end.
When we got home he was all right with us. He had had time to see it was
not our faults, whatever he thought at the time.
He refused to talk about it. Only he said--
"I'm going to take it out of that porter. You leave me alone. I shall
think of something presently."
"Revenge is very wrong," said Dora; but even Alice asked her kindly to
dry up. We all felt that it was simply piffle to talk copy-book to one
so disappointed as our unfortunate brother.
"It _is_ wrong, though," said Dora.
"Wrong be blowed!" said Dicky, snorting; "who began it I should like to
know! The station's a beastly awkward place to take it out of any one
in. I wish I knew where he lived."
"_I_ know _that_," said Noel. "I've known it a long time--before
Christmas, when we were going to the Moat House."
"Well, what is it, then?" asked Dicky savagely.
"Don't bite his head off," remarked Alice. "Tell us about it, Noel. How
do you know?"
"It was when you were weighing yourselves on the weighing machine. I
didn't because my weight isn't worth being weighed for. And there was a
heap of hampers and turkeys and hares and things, and there was a label
on a turkey and brown-paper parcel; and that porter that you hate so
said to the other porter----"
"Oh, hurry up, do!" said Dicky.
"I won't tell you at all if you bully me," said Noel, and Alice had to
coax him before he would go on.
"Well, he looked at the label and said, 'Little mistake here,
Bill--wrong address; ought to be 3, Abel Place, eh?'
"And the other one looked, and he said, 'Yes; it's got your name right
enough. Fine turkey, too, and his chains in the parcel. Pity they ain't
more careful about addressing things, eh?' So when they had done
laughing about it I looked at the label and it said, 'James Johnson, 8,
Granville Park.' So I knew it was 3, Abel Place, he lived at, and his
name was James Johnson."
"Good old Sherlock Holmes!" said Oswald.
"You won't really _hurt_ him," said Noel, "will you? Not Corsican
revenge with knives, or poisoned bowls? I wouldn't do more than a good
booby-trap, if I was you."
When Noel said the word "booby-trap," we all saw a strange, happy look
come over Dicky's face. It is called a far-away look, I believe, and you
can see it in the picture of a woman cuddling a photograph-album with
her hair down, that is in all the shops, and they call it "The Soul's
Awakening."
Directly Dicky's soul had finished waking up he shut his teeth together
with a click. Then he said, "I've got it."
Of course we all knew that.
"Any one who thinks revenge is wrong is asked to leave _now_."
Dora said he was very unkind, and did he really want to turn her out?
"There's a jolly good fire in Father's study," he said. "No, I'm not
waxy with you, but I'm going to have my revenge, and I don't want you to
do anything you thought wrong. You'd only make no end of a fuss
afterwards."
"Well, it _is_ wrong, so I'll go," said Dora. "Don't say I didn't warn
you, that's all!"
And she went.
Then Dicky said, "Now, any more conscious objectors?"
And when no one replied he went on: "It was you saying 'Booby-trap' gave
me the idea. His name's James Johnson, is it? And he said the things
were addressed wrong, did he? Well, _I'll_ send him a Turkey-and-chains."
"A Turk in chains," said Noel, growing owley-eyed at the thought--"a
_live_ Turk--or--no, not a dead one, Dicky?"
"The Turk I'm going to send won't be a live one nor yet a dead one."
"How horrible! _Half_ dead. That's worse than anything," and Noel became
so green in the face that Alice told Dicky to stop playing the goat, and
tell us what his idea really was.
"Don't you see _yet_?" he cried; "_I_ saw it directly."
"I daresay," said Oswald; "it's easy to see your own idea. Drive ahead."
"Well, I'm going to get a hamper and pack it full of parcels and put a
list of them on the top--beginning Turk-and-chains, and send it to
Mister James Johnson, and when he opens the parcels there'll be nothing
inside."
"There must be something, you know," said H.O., "or the parcels won't be
any shape except flatness."
"Oh, there'll be _something_ right enough," was the bitter reply of the
one who had not been to the Hippodrome, "but it won't be the sort of
something he'll expect it to be. Let's do it now. I'll get a hamper."
He got a big one out of the cellar and four empty bottles with their
straw cases. We filled the bottles with black ink and water, and red
ink and water, and soapy water, and water plain. And we put them down on
the list--
1 bottle of port wine.
1 bottle of sherry wine.
1 bottle of sparkling champagne.
1 bottle of rum.
The rest of the things we put on the list were--
1 turkey-and-chains.
2 pounds of chains.
1 plum-pudding.
4 pounds of mince-pies.
2 pounds of almonds and raisins.
1 box of figs.
1 bottle of French plums.
1 large cake.
And we made up parcels to look outside as if their inside was full of
the delicious attributes described in the list. It was rather difficult
to get anything the shape of a turkey but with coals and crushed
newspapers and firewood we did it, and when it was done up with lots of
string and the paper artfully squeezed tight to the firewood to look
like the Turk's legs it really was almost lifelike in its deceivingness.
The chains, or sausages, we did with dusters--and not clean ones--rolled
tight, and the paper moulded gently to their forms. The plum-pudding was
a newspaper ball. The mince-pies were newspapers too, and so were the
almonds and raisins. The box of figs was a real fig-box with cinders
and ashes in it damped to keep them from rattling about. The French-plum
bottle was real too. It had newspaper soaked in ink in it, and the cake
was half a muff-box of Dora's done up very carefully and put at the
bottom of the hamper. Inside the muff-box we put a paper with--
"Revenge is not wrong when the other people begin. It was you began, and
now you are jolly well served out."
We packed all the bottles and parcels into the hamper, and put the list
on the very top, pinned to the paper that covered the false breast of
the imitation Turk.
Dicky wanted to write--"From an unknown friend," but we did not think
that was fair, considering how Dicky felt.
So at last we put--"From one who does not wish to sign his name."
And that was true, at any rate.
Dicky and Oswald lugged the hamper down to the shop that has Carter
Paterson's board outside.
"I vote we don't pay the carriage," said Dicky, but that was perhaps
because he was still so very angry about being pulled off the train.
Oswald had not had it done to him, so he said that we ought to pay the
carriage. And he was jolly glad afterwards that this honourable feeling
had arisen in his young bosom, and that he had jolly well made Dicky let
it rise in his.
We paid the carriage. It was one-and-five-pence, but Dicky said it was
cheap for a high-class revenge like this, and after all it was his money
the carriage was paid with.
So then we went home and had another go in of grub--because tea had been
rather upset by Dicky's revenge.
The people where we left the hamper told us that it would be delivered
next day. So next morning we gloated over the thought of the sell that
porter was in for, and Dicky was more deeply gloating than any one.
"I expect it's got there by now," he said at dinner-time; "it's a first
class booby-trap; what a sell for him! He'll read the list and then
he'll take out one parcel after another till he comes to the cake. It
_was_ a ripping idea! I'm glad I thought of it!"
"I'm not," said Noel suddenly. "I wish you hadn't--I wish we hadn't. I
know just exactly what he feels like now. He feels as if he'd like to