The Wouldbegoods: Being the Further Adventures of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit (best books to read TXT) 📗

When we ran faster it ran faster; when we stopped it stopped and looked round at us, and nodded. (I daresay you won’t swallow this, but you may safely. It’s as true as true, and so’s all that about the goat. I give you my sacred word of honour.) I tell you the pig nodded as much as to say—

‘Oh, yes. You think you will, but you won’t!’ and then as soon as we moved again off it went. That pig led us on and on, o’er miles and miles of strange country. One thing, it did keep to the roads. When we met people, which wasn’t often, we called out to them to help us, but they only waved their arms and roared with laughter. One chap on a bicycle almost tumbled off his machine, and then he got off it and propped it against a gate and sat down in the hedge to laugh properly. You remember Alice was still dressed up as the gay equestrienne in the dressing-table pink and white, with rosy garlands, now very droopy, and she had no stockings on, only white sand-shoes, because she thought they would be easier than boots for balancing on the pig in the graceful bare-backed act.

Oswald was attired in red paint and flour and pyjamas, for a clown. It is really IMPOSSIBLE to run speedfully in another man’s pyjamas, so Oswald had taken them off, and wore his own brown knickerbockers belonging to his Norfolks. He had tied the pyjamas round his neck, to carry them easily. He was afraid to leave them in a ditch, as Alice suggested, because he did not know the roads, and for aught he recked they might have been infested with footpads. If it had been his own pyjamas it would have been different. (I’m going to ask for pyjamas next winter, they are so useful in many ways.)

Noel was a highwayman in brown-paper gaiters and bath towels and a cocked hat of newspaper. I don’t know how he kept it on. And the pig was encircled by the dauntless banner of our country. All the same, I think if I had seen a band of youthful travellers in bitter distress about a pig I should have tried to lend a helping hand and not sat roaring in the hedge, no matter how the travellers and the pig might have been dressed.

It was hotter than anyone would believe who has never had occasion to hunt the pig when dressed for quite another part. The flour got out of Oswald’s hair into his eyes and his mouth. His brow was wet with what the village blacksmith’s was wet with, and not his fair brow alone. It ran down his face and washed the red off in streaks, and when he rubbed his eyes he only made it worse. Alice had to run holding the equestrienne skirts on with both hands, and I think the brown-paper boots bothered Noel from the first. Dora had her skirt over her arm and carried the topper in her hand. It was no use to tell ourselves it was a wild boar hunt—we were long past that.

At last we met a man who took pity on us. He was a kind-hearted man. I think, perhaps, he had a pig of his own—or, perhaps, children. Honour to his name!

He stood in the middle of the road and waved his arms. The pig right-wheeled through a gate into a private garden and cantered up the drive. We followed. What else were we to do, I should like to know?

The Learned Black Pig seemed to know its way. It turned first to the right and then to the left, and emerged on a lawn.

‘Now, all together!’ cried Oswald, mustering his failing voice to give the word of command. ‘Surround him!—cut off his retreat!’

We almost surrounded him. He edged off towards the house.

‘Now we’ve got him!’ cried the crafty Oswald, as the pig got on to a bed of yellow pansies close against the red house wall.

All would even then have been well, but Denny, at the last, shrank from meeting the pig face to face in a manly way. He let the pig pass him, and the next moment, with a squeak that said ‘There now!’ as plain as words, the pig bolted into a French window. The pursuers halted not. This was no time for trivial ceremony. In another moment the pig was a captive. Alice and Oswald had their arms round him under the ruins of a table that had had teacups on it, and around the hunters and their prey stood the startled members of a parish society for making clothes for the poor heathen, that that pig had led us into the very midst of. They were reading a missionary report or something when we ran our quarry to earth under their table. Even as he crossed the threshold I heard something about ‘black brothers being already white to the harvest’. All the ladies had been sewing flannel things for the poor blacks while the curate read aloud to them. You think they screamed when they saw the Pig and Us? You are right.

On the whole, I cannot say that the missionary people behaved badly. Oswald explained that it was entirely the pig’s doing, and asked pardon quite properly for any alarm the ladies had felt; and Alice said how sorry we were but really it was NOT our fault this time. The curate looked a bit nasty, but the presence of ladies made him keep his hot blood to himself.

When we had explained, we said, ‘Might we go?’ The curate said, ‘The sooner the better.’ But the Lady of the House asked for our names and addresses, and said she should write to our Father. (She did, and we heard of it too.) They did not do anything to us, as Oswald at one time believed to be the curate’s idea. They let us go.

And we went, after we had asked for a piece of rope to lead the pig by.

‘In case it should come back into your nice room,’ Alice said. ‘And that would be such a pity, wouldn’t it?’

A little girl in a starched pinafore was sent for the rope. And as soon as the pig had agreed to let us tie it round his neck we came away. The scene in the drawing-room had not been long. The pig went slowly,

‘Like the meandering brook,’

Denny said. Just by the gate the shrubs rustled and opened, and the little girl came out. Her pinafore was full of cake.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘You must be hungry if you’ve come all that way.

I think they might have given you some tea after all the trouble you’ve had.’ We took the cake with correct thanks.

‘I wish I could play at circuses,’ she said. ‘Tell me about it.’

We told her while we ate the cake; and when we had done she said perhaps it was better to hear about than do, especially the goat’s part and Dicky’s.

‘But I do wish auntie had given you tea,’ she said.

We told her not to be too hard on her aunt, because you have to make allowances for grown-up people. When we parted she said she would never forget us, and Oswald gave her his pocket button-hook and corkscrew combined for a keepsake.

Dicky’s act with the goat (which is true, and no kid) was the only thing out of that day that was put in the Golden Deed book, and he put that in himself while we