New Treasure Seekers; Or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune
could have been the Princess, and I would have let him have her."
"Yes," said Dicky; "and we just gave rotten books. But it's no use
grizzling over it now. It's all over, and he won't get married again
while she's alive."
This was true, for we live in England which is a morganatic empire where
more than one wife at a time is not allowed. In the glorious East he
might have married again and again and we could have made it all right
about the wedding present.
"I wish he was a Turk for some things," said Oswald, and explained why.
"I don't think _she_ would like it," said Dora.
Oswald explained that if he was a Turk, she would be a Turquoise (I
think that is the feminine Turk), and so would be used to lots of wives
and be lonely without them.
And just then . . . You know what they say about talking of angels, and
hearing their wings? (There is another way of saying this, but it is not
polite, as the present author knows.)
Well, just then the postman came, and of course we rushed out, and among
Father's dull letters we found one addressed to "The Bastables Junior."
It had an Italian stamp--not at all a rare one, and it was a poor
specimen too, and the post-mark was _Roma_.
That is what the Italians have got into the habit of calling Rome. I
have been told that they put the "a" instead of the "e" because they
like to open their mouths as much as possible in that sunny and
agreeable climate.
The letter was jolly--it was just like hearing him talk (I mean reading,
not hearing, of course, but reading him talk is not grammar, and if you
can't be both sensible and grammarical, it is better to be senseless).
"Well, kiddies," it began, and it went on to tell us about things he had
seen, not dull pictures and beastly old buildings, but amusing incidents
of comic nature. The Italians must be extreme Jugginses for the kind of
things he described to be of such everyday occurring. Indeed, Oswald
could hardly believe about the soda-water label that the Italian
translated for the English traveller so that it said, "To distrust of
the Mineral Waters too fountain-like foaming. They spread the shape."
Near the end of the letter came this:--
"You remember the chapter of 'The Golden Gondola' that I wrote for the
_People's Pageant_ just before I had the honour to lead to the altar,
&c. I mean the one that ends in the subterranean passage, with
Geraldine's hair down, and her last hope gone, and the three villains
stealing upon her with Venetian subtlety in their hearts and Toledo
daggers (specially imported) in their garters? I didn't care much for it
myself, you remember. I think I must have been thinking of other things
when I wrote it. But you, I recollect, consoled me by refusing to regard
it as other than 'ripping.' 'Clinking' was, as I recall it, Oswald's
consolatory epithet. You'll weep with me, I feel confident, when you
hear that my Editor does not share your sentiments. He writes me that it
is not up to my usual form. He fears that the public, &c., and he trusts
that in the next chapter, &c. Let us hope that the public will, in this
matter, take your views, and not his. Oh! for a really discerning
public, just like you--you amiable critics! Albert's new aunt is
leaning over my shoulder. I can't break her of the distracting habit.
How on earth am I ever to write another line? Greetings to all from
"ALBERT'S UNCLE AND AUNT.
"PS.--She insists on having her name put to this, but of course she
didn't write it. I am trying to teach her to spell."
"PSS.--Italian spelling, of course."
"And now," cried Oswald, "I see it all!"
The others didn't. They often don't when Oswald does.
"Why, don't you see!" he patiently explained, for he knows that it is
vain to be angry with people because they are not so clever as--as other
people. "It's the direct aspiration of Fate. He wants it, does he? Well,
he shall have it!"
"What?" said everybody.
"We'll be it."
"_What?_" was the not very polite remark now repeated by all.
"Why, his discerning public."
And still they all remained quite blind to what was so clear to Oswald,
the astute and discernful.
"It will be much more useful than killing dragons," Oswald went on,
"especially as there aren't any; and it will be a really truly wedding
present--just what we were wishing we'd given him."
The five others now fell on Oswald and rolled him under the table and
sat on his head so that he had to speak loudly and plainly.
"All right! I'll tell you--in words of one syllable if you like. Let go,
I say!" And when he had rolled out with the others and the tablecloth
that caught on H.O.'s boots and the books and Dora's workbox, and the
glass of paint-water that came down with it, he said--
"We will _be_ the public. We will all write to the editor of the
_People's Pageant_ and tell him what we think about the Geraldine
chapter. Do mop up that water, Dora; it's running all under where I'm
sitting."
"Don't you think," said Dora, devoting her handkerchief and Alice's in
the obedient way she does not always use, "that six letters, all signed
'Bastable,' and all coming from the same house, would be
rather--rather----"
"A bit too thick? Yes," said Alice; "but of course we'd have all
different names and addresses."
"We might as well do it thoroughly," said Dicky, "and send three or four
different letters each."
"And have them posted in different parts of London. Right oh!" remarked
Oswald.
"_I_ shall write a piece of poetry for mine," said Noel.
"They ought all to be on different kinds of paper," said Oswald. "Let's
go out and get the paper directly after tea."
We did, but we could only get fifteen different kinds of paper and
envelopes, though we went to every shop in the village.
At the first shop, when we said, "Please we want a penn'orth of paper
and envelopes of each of all the different kinds you keep," the lady of
the shop looked at us thinly over blue-rimmed spectacles and said, "What
for?"
And H.O. said, "To write unonymous letters."
"Anonymous letters are very wrong," the lady said, and she wouldn't sell
us any paper at all.
But at the other places we did not say what it was for, and they sold it
us. There were bluey and yellowy and grey and white kinds, and some was
violetish with violets on it, and some pink, with roses. The girls took
the florivorous ones, which Oswald thinks are unmanly for any but girls,
but you excuse their using it. It seems natural to them to mess about
like that.
We wrote the fifteen letters, disguising our handwritings as much as we
could. It was not easy. Oswald tried to write one of them with his left
hand, but the consequences were almost totally unreadable. Besides, if
any one could have read it, they would only have thought it was written
in an asylum for the insane, the writing was so delirious. So he chucked
it.
Noel was only allowed to write one poem. It began--
"Oh, Geraldine! Oh, Geraldine!
You are the loveliest heroine!
I never read about one before
That made me want to write more
Poetry. And your Venetian eyes,
They must have been an awful size;
And black and blue, and like your hair,
And your nose and chin were a perfect pair."
and so on for ages.
The other letters were all saying what a beautiful chapter "Beneath the
Doge's Home" was, and how we liked it better than the other chapters
before, and how we hoped the next would be like it. We found out when
all too late that H.O. had called it the "Dog's Home." But we hoped this
would pass unnoticed among all the others. We read the reviews of books
in the old _Spectators_ and _Athenaeums_, and put in the words they say
there about other people's books. We said we thought that chapter about
Geraldine and the garters was "subtle" and "masterly" and
"inevitable"--that it had an "old-world charm," and was "redolent of the
soil." We said, too, that we had "read it with breathless interest from
cover to cover," and that it had "poignant pathos and a convincing
realism," and the "fine flower of delicate sentiment," besides much
other rot that the author can't remember.
When all the letters were done we addressed them and stamped them and
licked them down, and then we got different people to post them. Our
under-gardener, who lives in Greenwich, and the other under-gardener,
who lives in Lewisham, and the servants on their evenings out, which
they spend in distant spots like Plaistow and Grove Park--each had a
letter to post. The piano-tuner was a great catch--he lived in Highgate;
and the electric-bell man was Lambeth. So we got rid of all the letters,
and watched the post for a reply. We watched for a week, but no answer
came.
You think, perhaps, that we were duffers to watch for a reply when we
had signed all the letters with fancy names like Daisy Dolman, Everard
St. Maur, and Sir Cholmondely Marjoribanks, and put fancy addresses on
them, like Chatsworth House, Loampit Vale, and The Bungalow, Eaton
Square. But we were not such idiots as you think, dear reader, and you
are not so extra clever as you think, either. We had written _one_
letter (it had the grandest _Spectator_ words in it) on our own
letter-paper, with the address on the top and the uncle's coat-of-arms
outside the envelope. Oswald's real own name was signed to this letter,
and this was the one we looked for the answer to. See?
But that answer did not come. And when three long days had passed away
we all felt most awfully stale about it. Knowing the great good we had
done for Albert's uncle made our interior feelings very little better,
if at all.
And on the fourth day Oswald spoke up and said what was in everybody's
inside heart. He said--
"This is futile rot. I vote we write and ask that editor why he doesn't
answer letters."
"He wouldn't answer that one any more than he did the other," said Noel.
"Why should he? He knows you can't do anything to him for not."
"Why shouldn't we go and ask him?" H.O. said. "He couldn't not answer us
if we was all there, staring him in the face."
"I don't suppose he'd see you," said Dora; "and it's 'were,' not 'was.'"
"The other editor did when I got the guinea for my beautiful poems,"
Noel reminded us.
"Yes," said the thoughtful Oswald; "but then it doesn't matter how young
you are when you're just a poetry-seller. But we're the discerning
public now, and he'd think we ought to be grown up. I say, Dora, suppose
you rigged yourself up in old Blakie's things. You'd look quite twenty
or thirty."
Dora looked frightened, and said she thought we'd better not.
But Alice said, "Well, I will, then. I don't care. I'm as tall as Dora.
But I won't go alone. Oswald, you'll have to dress up old and come too.
It's not much to do for Albert's uncle's sake."
"You know you'll enjoy it," said Dora, and she may have wished that she
did not so often think that we had better not. However, the dye was now
cast, and the remainder of this adventure was doomed to be coloured by
the dye we now prepared. (This is an allegory. It means we had burned
our boats. And that is another.)
We decided to do the deed next day, and during the evening Dicky and
Oswald went out and bought a grey beard and moustache, which was the
only thing we could think of to disguise the manly and youthful form of
the bold Oswald into the mature shape of a grown-up and discerning
public character.
Meanwhile, the girls made tiptoe and brigand-like excursions into Miss
Blake's room (she is the housekeeper) and got several things. Among
others, a sort of undecided thing like part of a wig, which Miss Blake
wears on Sundays. Jane, our housemaid, says it is called a