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

We went first to the church. Oswald, whose quick brain was easily aroused to suspicions, was afraid the lady might begin talking in the church, but she did not. The church door was open. I remember mother telling us once it was right and good for churches to be left open all day, so that tired people could go in and be quiet, and say their prayers, if they wanted to. But it does not seem respectful to talk out loud in church. (See Note A.)

When we got outside the lady said, ‘You can imagine how on the chancel steps began the mad struggle in which Becket, after hurling one of his assailants, armour and all, to the ground—’

‘It would have been much cleverer,’ H. O. interrupted, ‘to hurl him without his armour, and leave that standing up.’

‘Go on,’ said Alice and Oswald, when they had given H. O. a withering glance. And the lady did go on. She told us all about Becket, and then about St Alphege, who had bones thrown at him till he died, because he wouldn’t tax his poor people to please the beastly rotten Danes.

And Denny recited a piece of poetry he knows called ‘The Ballad of Canterbury’.

It begins about Danish warships snake-shaped, and ends about doing as you’d be done by. It is long, but it has all the beef-bones in it, and all about St Alphege.

Then the lady showed us the Danejohn, and it was like an oast-house. And Canterbury walls that Alphege defied the Danes from looked down on a quite common farmyard. The hospital was like a barn, and other things were like other things, but we went all about and enjoyed it very much. The lady was quite amusing, besides sometimes talking like a real cathedral guide I met afterwards. (See Note B.) When at last we said we thought Canterbury was very small considering, the lady said—

‘Well, it seemed a pity to come so far and not at least hear something about Canterbury.’

And then at once we knew the worst, and Alice said—

‘What a horrid sell!’ But Oswald, with immediate courteousness, said—

‘I don’t care. You did it awfully well.’ And he did not say, though he owns he thought of it—

‘I knew it all the time,’ though it was a great temptation. Because really it was more than half true. He had felt from the first that this was too small for Canterbury. (See Note C.)

The real name of the place was Hazelbridge, and not Canterbury at all. We went to Canterbury another time. (See Note D.) We were not angry with the lady for selling us about it being Canterbury, because she had really kept it up first-rate. And she asked us if we minded, very handsomely, and we said we liked it. But now we did not care how soon we got home. The lady saw this, and said—

‘Come, our chariots are ready, and our horses caparisoned.’

That is a first-rate word out of a book. It cheered Oswald up, and he liked her for using it, though he wondered why she said chariots. When we got back to the inn I saw her dogcart was there, and a grocer’s cart too, with B. Munn, grocer, Hazelbridge, on it. She took the girls in her cart, and the boys went with the grocer. His horse was a very good one to go, only you had to hit it with the wrong end of the whip. But the cart was very bumpety.

The evening dews were falling—at least, I suppose so, but you do not feel dew in a grocer’s cart—when we reached home. We all thanked the lady very much, and said we hoped we should see her again some day. She said she hoped so.

The grocer drove off, and when we had all shaken hands with the lady and kissed her, according as we were boys or girls, or little boys, she touched up her horse and drove away.

She turned at the corner to wave to us, and just as we had done waving, and were turning into the house, Albert’s uncle came into our midst like a whirling wind. He was in flannels, and his shirt had no stud in at the neck, and his hair was all rumpled up and his hands were inky, and we knew he had left off in the middle of a chapter by the wildness of his eye.

‘Who was that lady?’ he said. ‘Where did you meet her?’

Mindful, as ever, of what he was told, Oswald began to tell the story from the beginning.

‘The other day, protector of the poor,’ he began; ‘Dora and I were reading about the Canterbury pilgrims...’

Oswald thought Albert’s uncle would be pleased to find his instructions about beginning at the beginning had borne fruit, but instead he interrupted.

‘Stow it, you young duffer! Where did you meet her?’

Oswald answered briefly, in wounded accents, ‘Hazelbridge.’

Then Albert’s uncle rushed upstairs three at a time, and as he went he called out to Oswald—

‘Get out my bike, old man, and blow up the back tyre.’

I am sure Oswald was as quick as anyone could have been, but long ere the tyre was thoroughly blowed Albert’s uncle appeared, with a collar-stud and tie and blazer, and his hair tidy, and wrenching the unoffending machine from Oswald’s surprised fingers.

Albert’s uncle finished pumping up the tyre, and then flinging himself into the saddle he set off, scorching down the road at a pace not surpassed by any highwayman, however black and high-mettled his steed. We were left looking at each other. ‘He must have recognized her,’ Dicky said.

‘Perhaps,’ Noel said, ‘she is the old nurse who alone knows the dark secret of his highborn birth.’

‘Not old enough, by chalks,’ Oswald said.

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Alice, ‘if she holds the secret of the will that will make him rolling in long-lost wealth.’

‘I wonder if he’ll catch her,’ Noel said. ‘I’m quite certain all his future depends on it. Perhaps she’s his long-lost sister, and the estate was left to them equally, only she couldn’t be found, so it couldn’t be shared up.’

‘Perhaps he’s only in love with her,’ Dora said, ‘parted by cruel Fate at an early age, he has ranged the wide world ever since trying to find her.’

‘I hope to goodness he hasn’t—anyway, he’s not ranged since we knew him—never further than Hastings,’ Oswald said. ‘We don’t want any of that rot.’

‘What rot?’ Daisy asked. And Oswald said—

‘Getting married, and all that sort of rubbish.’

And Daisy and Dora were the only ones that didn’t agree with him. Even Alice owned that being bridesmaids must be fairly good fun. It’s no good. You may treat girls as well as you like, and give them every comfort