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

But no one heard him except Oswald, because Alice and Dora and Daisy were all jumping about with the jumps of unrestrained anguish, and saying, ‘Oh, call them off! Do! do!—oh, don’t, don’t! Don’t let them dig.’

Alas! Oswald was, as usual, right. The ground of the grave had not been trampled down hard enough, and he had said so plainly at the time, but his prudent counsels had been overruled. Now these busy-bodying, meddling, mischief-making fox-terriers (how different from Pincher, who minds his own business unless told otherwise) had scratched away the earth and laid bare the reddish tip of the poor corpse’s tail.

We all turned to go without a word, it seemed to be no use staying any longer.

But in a moment the gentleman with the whiskers had got Noel and Dicky each by an ear—they were nearest him. H. O. hid in the hedge. Oswald, to whose noble breast sneakishness is, I am thankful to say, a stranger, would have scorned to escape, but he ordered his sisters to bunk in a tone of command which made refusal impossible.

‘And bunk sharp, too’ he added sternly. ‘Cut along home.’

So they cut. The white-whiskered gentleman now encouraged his angry fox-terriers, by every means at his command, to continue their vile and degrading occupation; holding on all the time to the ears of Dicky and Noel, who scorned to ask for mercy. Dicky got purple and Noel got white. It was Oswald who said—

‘Don’t hang on to them, sir. We won’t cut. I give you my word of honour.’

‘YOUR word of honour,’ said the gentleman, in tones for which, in happier days, when people drew their bright blades and fought duels, I would have had his heart’s dearest blood. But now Oswald remained calm and polite as ever.

‘Yes, on my honour,’ he said, and the gentleman dropped the ears of Oswald’s brothers at the sound of his firm, unswerving tones. He dropped the ears and pulled out the body of the fox and held it up.

The dogs jumped up and yelled.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘you talk very big about words of honour. Can you speak the truth?’

Dickie said, ‘If you think we shot it, you’re wrong. We know better than that.’

The white-whiskered one turned suddenly to H. O. and pulled him out of the hedge.

‘And what does that mean?’ he said, and he was pink with fury to the ends of his large ears, as he pointed to the card on H. O.‘s breast, which said, ‘Moat House Fox-Hunters’.

Then Oswald said, ‘We WERE playing at fox-hunting, but we couldn’t find anything but a rabbit that hid, so my brother was being the fox; and then we found the fox shot dead, and I don’t know who did it; and we were sorry for it and we buried it—and that’s all.’

‘Not quite,’ said the riding-breeches gentleman, with what I think you call a bitter smile, ‘not quite. This is my land and I’ll have you up for trespass and damage. Come along now, no nonsense! I’m a magistrate and I’m Master of the Hounds. A vixen, too! What did you shoot her with? You’re too young to have a gun. Sneaked your Father’s revolver, I suppose?’

Oswald thought it was better to be goldenly silent. But it was vain. The Master of the Hounds made him empty his pockets, and there was the pistol and the cartridges.

The magistrate laughed a harsh laugh of successful disagreeableness.

‘All right,’ said he, ‘where’s your licence? You come with me. A week or two in prison.’

I don’t believe now he could have done it, but we all thought then he could and would, what’s more.

So H. O. began to cry, but Noel spoke up. His teeth were chattering yet he spoke up like a man.

He said, ‘You don’t know us. You’ve no right not to believe us till you’ve found us out in a lie. We don’t tell lies. You ask Albert’s uncle if we do.’

‘Hold your tongue,’ said the White-Whiskered. But Noel’s blood was up.

‘If you do put us in prison without being sure,’ he said, trembling more and more, ‘you are a horrible tyrant like Caligula, and Herod, or Nero, and the Spanish Inquisition, and I will write a poem about it in prison, and people will curse you for ever.’

‘Upon my word,’ said White Whiskers. ‘We’ll see about that,’ and he turned up the lane with the fox hanging from one hand and Noel’s ear once more reposing in the other.

I thought Noel would cry or faint. But he bore up nobly—exactly like an early Christian martyr.

The rest of us came along too. I carried the spade and Dicky had the fork. H. O. had the card, and Noel had the magistrate. At the end of the lane there was Alice. She had bunked home, obeying the orders of her thoughtful brother, but she had bottled back again like a shot, so as not to be out of the scrape. She is almost worthy to be a boy for some things.

She spoke to Mr Magistrate and said—

‘Where are you taking him?’

The outraged majesty of the magistrate said, ‘To prison, you naughty little girl.’

Alice said, ‘Noel will faint. Somebody once tried to take him to prison before—about a dog. Do please come to our house and see our uncle—at least he’s not—but it’s the same thing. We didn’t kill the fox, if that’s what you think—indeed we didn’t. Oh, dear, I do wish you’d think of your own little boys and girls if you’ve got any, or else about when you were little. You wouldn’t be so horrid if you did.’

I don’t know which, if either, of these objects the fox-hound master thought of, but he said—

‘Well, lead on,’ and he let go Noel’s ear and Alice snuggled up to Noel and put her arm round him.

It was a frightened procession, whose cheeks were pale with alarm—except those between white whiskers, and they were red—that wound in at our gate and into the hall among the old oak furniture, and black and white marble floor and things.

Dora and Daisy were at the door. The pink petticoat lay on the table, all stained with the gore of the departed. Dora looked at us all, and she saw that it was serious. She pulled out the big oak chair and said, ‘Won’t you sit down?’ very kindly to the white-whiskered magistrate.

He grunted, but did as she said.

Then he looked about him in a silence that was not comforting, and so did we. At last he said—

‘Come, you didn’t try to bolt. Speak the truth, and I’ll say no more.’

We said we had.