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

it was a sort of furzy-common place, and three roads branching out. The men were lying about, with some of their belts undone, smoking pipes and cigarettes.

‘It’s not British soldiers,’ Alice said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, I’m afraid it’s more enemy. You didn’t sow the army-seed anywhere else, did you, H. O. dear?’

H. O. was positive he hadn’t. ‘But perhaps lots more came up where we did sow them,’ he said; ‘they’re all over England by now very likely. I don’t know how many men can grow out of one dragon’s tooth.’

Then Noel said, ‘It was my doing anyhow, and I’m not afraid,’ and he walked straight up to the nearest soldier, who was cleaning his pipe with a piece of grass, and said—

‘Please, are you the enemy?’ The man said—

‘No, young Commander-in-Chief, we’re the English.’

Then Oswald took command. ‘Where is the General?’ he said.

‘We’re out of generals just now, Field-Marshal,’ the man said, and his voice was a gentleman’s voice. ‘Not a single one in stock. We might suit you in majors now—and captains are quite cheap. Competent corporals going for a song. And we have a very nice colonel, too quiet to ride or drive.’

Oswald does not mind chaff at proper times. But this was not one.

‘You seem to be taking it very easy,’ he said with disdainful expression.

‘This IS an easy,’ said the grey soldier, sucking at his pipe to see if it would draw.

‘I suppose YOU don’t care if the enemy gets into Maidstone or not!’ exclaimed Oswald bitterly. ‘If I were a soldier I’d rather die than be beaten.’

The soldier saluted. ‘Good old patriotic sentiment’ he said, smiling at the heart-felt boy.

But Oswald could bear no more. ‘Which is the Colonel?’ he asked.

‘Over there—near the grey horse.’

‘The one lighting a cigarette?’ H. O. asked.

‘Yes—but I say, kiddie, he won’t stand any jaw. There’s not an ounce of vice about him, but he’s peppery. He might kick out. You’d better bunk.’

‘Better what?’ asked H. O.

‘Bunk, bottle, scoot, skip, vanish, exit,’ said the soldier.

‘That’s what you’d do when the fighting begins,’ said H. O. He is often rude like that—but it was what we all thought, all the same.

The soldier only laughed.

A spirited but hasty altercation among ourselves in whispers ended in our allowing Alice to be the one to speak to the Colonel. It was she who wanted to. ‘However peppery he is he won’t kick a girl,’ she said, and perhaps this was true.

But of course we all went with her. So there were six of us to stand in front of the Colonel. And as we went along we agreed that we would salute him on the word three. So when we got near, Dick said, ‘One, two, three’, and we all saluted very well—except H. O., who chose that minute to trip over a rifle a soldier had left lying about, and was only saved from falling by a man in a cocked hat who caught him deftly by the back of his jacket and stood him on his legs.

‘Let go, can’t you,’ said H. O. ‘Are you the General?’

Before the Cocked Hat had time to frame a reply, Alice spoke to the Colonel. I knew what she meant to say, because she had told me as we threaded our way among the resting soldiery. What she really said was—

‘Oh, how CAN you!’

‘How can I WHAT?’ said the Colonel, rather crossly.

‘Why, SMOKE?’ said Alice.

‘My good children, if you’re an infant Band of Hope, let me recommend you to play in some other backyard,’ said the Cock-Hatted Man.

H. O. said, ‘Band of Hope yourself’—but no one noticed it.

‘We’re NOT a Band of Hope,’ said Noel. ‘We’re British, and the man over there told us you are. And Maidstone’s in danger, and the enemy not a mile off, and you stand SMOKING.’ Noel was standing crying, himself, or something very like it.

‘It’s quite true,’ Alice said.

The Colonel said, ‘Fiddle-de-dee.’

But the Cocked-Hatted Man said, ‘What was the enemy like?’ We told him exactly. And even the Colonel then owned there might be something in it.

‘Can you show me the place where they are on the map?’ he asked.

‘Not on the map, we can’t,’ said Dicky—‘at least, I don’t think so, but on the ground we could. We could take you there in a quarter of an hour.’

The Cocked-Hatted One looked at the Colonel, who returned his scrutiny, then he shrugged his shoulders.

‘Well, we’ve got to do something,’ he said, as if to himself. ‘Lead on, Macduff.’

The Colonel roused his soldiery from their stupor of pipes by words of command which the present author is sorry he can’t remember.

Then he bade us boys lead the way. I tell you it felt fine, marching at the head of a regiment. Alice got a lift on the Cocked-Hatted One’s horse. It was a red-roan steed of might, exactly as if it had been in a ballad. They call a grey-roan a ‘blue’ in South Africa, the Cocked-Hatted One said.

We led the British Army by unfrequented lanes till we got to the gate of Sugden’s Waste Wake pasture. Then the Colonel called a whispered halt, and choosing two of us to guide him, the dauntless and discerning commander went on, on foot, with an orderly. He chose Dicky and Oswald as guides. So we led him to the ambush, and we went through it as quietly as we could. But twigs do crackle and snap so when you are reconnoitring, or anxious to escape detection for whatever reason.

Our Colonel’s orderly crackled most. If you’re not near enough to tell a colonel by the crown and stars on his shoulder-strap, you can tell him by the orderly behind him, like ‘follow my leader’.

‘Look out!’ said Oswald in a low but commanding whisper, ‘the camp’s down in that field. You can see if you take a squint through this gap.’

The speaker took a squint himself as he spoke, and drew back, baffled beyond the power of speech. While he was struggling with his baffledness the British Colonel had his squint. He also drew back, and said a word that he must have known was not right—at least when he was a boy.

‘I don’t care,’ said Oswald, ‘they were there this morning. White tents like mushrooms, and an enemy cleaning a cauldron.’

‘With sand,’ said Dicky.

‘That’s most convincing,’ said the Colonel, and I did not like the way he said