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

Of course B. Munn, grocer, was not such a nincompoop (I like that word, it means so many people I know) as to say right off. He said—

‘I was paid all right, young gentleman. Don’t you terrify yourself.’

People in Kent say terrify when they mean worry. So Dora shoved in a gentle oar. She said—

‘We want to know the kind lady’s name and address, so that we can write and thank her for being so jolly that day.’

B. Munn, grocer, muttered something about the lady’s address being goods he was often asked for. Alice said, ‘But do tell us. We forgot to ask her. She’s a relation of a second-hand uncle of ours, and I do so want to thank her properly. And if you’ve got any extra-strong peppermints at a penny an ounce, we should like a quarter of a pound.’

This was a master-stroke. While he was weighing out the peppermints his heart got soft, and just as he was twisting up the corner of the paper bag, Dora said, ‘What lovely fat peppermints! Do tell us.’

And B. Munn’s heart was now quite melted, he said—

‘It’s Miss Ashleigh, and she lives at The Cedars—about a mile down the Maidstone Road.’

We thanked him, and Alice paid for the peppermints. Oswald was a little anxious when she ordered such a lot, but she and Noel had got the money all right, and when we were outside on Hazelbridge Green (a good deal of it is gravel, really), we stood and looked at each other. Then Dora said—

‘Let’s go home and write a beautiful letter and all sign it.’

Oswald looked at the others. Writing is all very well, but it’s such a beastly long time to wait for anything to happen afterwards.

The intelligent Alice divined his thoughts, and the Dentist divined hers—he is not clever enough yet to divine Oswald’s—and the two said together—

‘Why not go and see her?’

‘She did say she would like to see us again some day,’ Dora replied. So after we had argued a little about it we went.

And before we had gone a hundred yards down the dusty road Martha began to make us wish with all our hearts we had not let her come. She began to limp, just as a pilgrim, who I will not name, did when he had the split peas in his silly palmering shoes.

So we called a halt and looked at her feet. One of them was quite swollen and red. Bulldogs almost always have something the matter with their feet, and it always comes on when least required. They are not the right breed for emergencies.

There was nothing for it but to take it in turns to carry her. She is very stout, and you have no idea how heavy she is. A half-hearted unadventurous person (I name no names, but Oswald, Alice, Noel, H. O., Dicky, Daisy, and Denny will understand me) said, why not go straight home and come another day without Martha? But the rest agreed with Oswald when he said it was only a mile, and perhaps we might get a lift home with the poor invalid. Martha was very grateful to us for our kindness. She put her fat white arms round the person’s neck who happened to be carrying her. She is very affectionate, but by holding her very close to you you can keep her from kissing your face all the time. As Alice said, ‘Bulldogs do give you such large, wet, pink kisses.’

A mile is a good way when you have to take your turn at carrying Martha.

At last we came to a hedge with a ditch in front of it, and chains swinging from posts to keep people off the grass and out of the ditch, and a gate with ‘The Cedars’ on it in gold letters. All very neat and tidy, and showing plainly that more than one gardener was kept. There we stopped. Alice put Martha down, grunting with exhaustedness, and said—

‘Look here, Dora and Daisy, I don’t believe a bit that it’s his grandmother. I’m sure Dora was right, and it’s only his horrid sweetheart. I feel it in my bones. Now, don’t you really think we’d better chuck it; we’re sure to catch it for interfering. We always do.’

‘The cross of true love never did come smooth,’ said the Dentist. ‘We ought to help him to bear his cross.’

‘But if we find her for him, and she’s not his grandmother, he’ll MARRY her,’ Dicky said in tones of gloominess and despair.

Oswald felt the same, but he said, ‘Never mind. We should all hate it, but perhaps Albert’s uncle MIGHT like it. You can never tell. If you want to do a really unselfish action and no kid, now’s your time, my late Wouldbegoods.’

No one had the face to say right out that they didn’t want to be unselfish.

But it was with sad hearts that the unselfish seekers opened the long gate and went up the gravel drive between the rhododendrons and other shrubberies towards the house.

I think I have explained to you before that the eldest son of anybody is called the representative of the family if his father isn’t there. This was why Oswald now took the lead. When we got to the last turn of the drive it was settled that the others were to noiselessly ambush in the rhododendrons, and Oswald was to go on alone and ask at the house for the grandmother from India—I mean Miss Ashleigh.

So he did, but when he got to the front of the house and saw how neat the flower-beds were with red geraniums, and the windows all bright and speckless with muslin blinds and brass rods, and a green parrot in a cage in the porch, and the doorstep newly whited, lying clean and untrodden in the sunshine, he stood still and thought of his boots and how dusty the roads were, and wished he had not gone into the farmyard after eggs before starting that morning. As he stood there in anxious uncertainness he heard a low voice among the bushes. It said, ‘Hist! Oswald here!’ and it was the voice of Alice.

So he went back to the others among the shrubs and they all crowded round their leader full of importable news.

‘She’s not in the house; she’s HERE,’ Alice said in a low whisper that seemed nearly all S’s. ‘Close by—she went by just this minute with a gentleman.’

‘And they’re sitting on a seat under a tree on a little lawn, and she’s got her head on his shoulder, and he’s holding her hand. I never saw anyone look so silly in all my born,’ Dicky said.

‘It’s sickening,’ Denny said, trying to look very manly with his legs wide apart.

‘I don’t know,’ Oswald whispered. ‘I suppose it wasn’t Albert’s uncle?’

‘Not much,’ Dicky briefly replied.

‘Then don’t you see it’s all right. If she’s going on like that with this fellow she’ll want to marry him, and Albert’s uncle is safe. And we’ve really done an unselfish action without having to suffer for it afterwards.’