Five Children and It - E. Nesbit (best sales books of all time .txt) 📗

take care of us. Oh, deceitful beast that I am!” she added to herself.

“Look here,” said Cyril, “if you’re our elder brother, why not behave as such and take us over to Maidstone and give us a jolly good blowout, and we’ll go on the river afterwards?”

“I’m infinitely obliged to you,” said the Lamb courteously, “but I should prefer solitude. Go home to your lunch⁠—I mean your dinner. Perhaps I may look in about teatime⁠—or I may not be home till after you are in your beds.”

Their beds! Speaking glances flashed between the wretched four. Much bed there would be for them if they went home without the Lamb.

“We promised mother not to lose sight of you if we took you out,” Jane said before the others could stop her.

“Look here, Jane,” said the grown-up Lamb, putting his hands in his pockets and looking down at her, “little girls should be seen and not heard. You kids must learn not to make yourselves a nuisance. Run along home now⁠—and perhaps, if you’re good, I’ll give you each a penny tomorrow.”

“Look here,” said Cyril, in the best “man to man” tone at his command, “where are you going, old man? You might let Bobs and me come with you⁠—even if you don’t want the girls.”

This was really rather noble of Cyril, for he never did care much about being seen in public with the Lamb, who of course after sunset would be a baby again.

The “man to man” tone succeeded.

“I shall just run over to Maidstone on my bike,” said the new Lamb airily, fingering the little black moustache. “I can lunch at The Crown⁠—and perhaps I’ll have a pull on the river; but I can’t take you all on the machine⁠—now, can I? Run along home, like good children.”

The position was desperate. Robert exchanged a despairing look with Cyril. Anthea detached a pin from her waistband, a pin whose withdrawal left a gaping chasm between skirt and bodice, and handed it furtively to Robert⁠—with a grimace of the darkest and deepest meaning. Robert slipped away to the road. There, sure enough, stood a bicycle⁠—a beautiful new freewheel. Of course Robert understood at once that if the Lamb was grown up he must have a bicycle. This had always been one of Robert’s own reasons for wishing to be grown up. He hastily began to use the pin⁠—eleven punctures in the back tyre, seven in the front. He would have made the total twenty-two but for the rustling of the yellow hazel-leaves, which warned him of the approach of the others. He hastily leaned a hand on each wheel, and was rewarded by the “whish” of what was left of air escaping from eighteen neat pinholes.

“Your bike’s run down,” said Robert, wondering how he could so soon have learned to deceive.

“So it is,” said Cyril.

“It’s a puncture,” said Anthea, stooping down, and standing up again with a thorn which she had got ready for the purpose. “Look here.”

The grown-up Lamb (or Hilary, as I suppose one must now call him) fixed his pump and blew up the tyre. The punctured state of it was soon evident.

“I suppose there’s a cottage somewhere near⁠—where one could get a pail of water?” said the Lamb.

There was; and when the number of punctures had been made manifest, it was felt to be a special blessing that the cottage provided “teas for cyclists.” It provided an odd sort of tea-and-hammy meal for the Lamb and his brothers. This was paid for out of the fifteen shillings which had been earned by Robert when he was a giant⁠—for the Lamb, it appeared, had unfortunately no money about him. This was a great disappointment for the others; but it is a thing that will happen, even to the most grown-up of us. However, Robert had enough to eat, and that was something. Quietly but persistently the miserable four took it in turns to try and persuade the Lamb (or St. Maur) to spend the rest of the day in the woods. There was not very much of the day left by the time he had mended the eighteenth puncture. He looked up from the completed work with a sigh of relief, and suddenly put his tie straight.

“There’s a lady coming,” he said briskly⁠—“for goodness’ sake, get out of the way. Go home⁠—hide⁠—vanish somehow! I can’t be seen with a pack of dirty kids.” His brothers and sisters were indeed rather dirty, because, earlier in the day, the Lamb, in his infant state, had sprinkled a good deal of garden soil over them. The grown-up Lamb’s voice was so tyrant-like, as Jane said afterwards, that they actually retreated to the back garden, and left him with his little moustache and his flannel suit to meet alone the young lady, who now came up the front garden wheeling a bicycle.

The woman of the house came out, and the young lady spoke to her⁠—the Lamb raised his hat as she passed him⁠—and the children could not hear what she said, though they were craning round the corner by the pig-pail and listening with all their ears. They felt it to be “perfectly fair,” as Robert said, “with that wretched Lamb in that condition.”

When the Lamb spoke, in a languid voice heavy with politeness, they heard well enough.

“A puncture?” he was saying. “Can I not be of any assistance? If you could allow me⁠—?”

There was a stifled explosion of laughter behind the pig-pail⁠—the grown-up Lamb (otherwise Devereux) turned the tail of an angry eye in its direction.

“You’re very kind,” said the lady, looking at the Lamb. She looked rather shy, but, as the boys put it, there didn’t seem to be any nonsense about her.

“But oh,” whispered Cyril behind the pig-pail, “I should have thought he’d had enough bicycle-mending for one day⁠—and if she only knew that really and truly he’s only a whiny-piny, silly little baby!”

“He’s not,” Anthea murmured angrily. “He’s a dear⁠—if people only let him alone. It’s our own precious