The Wouldbegoods. Nesbit Edith
to throw the enemy off the scent when they got into a tight place.
They said, "Yes, please," and "No, thank you"; and they ate very neatly, and always wiped their mouths before they drank, as well as after, and never spoke with them full.
And after dinner it got worse and worse.
We got out all our books, and they said, "Thank you," and didn't look at them properly. And we got out all our toys, and they said, "Thank you, it's very nice," to everything. And it got less and less pleasant, and towards tea-time it came to nobody saying anything except Noël and H. O. – and they talked to each other about cricket.
After tea father came in, and he played "Letters" with them and the girls, and it was a little better; but while late dinner was going on – I shall never forget it. Oswald felt like the hero of a book – "almost at the end of his resources." I don't think I was ever glad of bedtime before, but that time I was.
When they had gone to bed (Daisy had to have all her strings and buttons undone for her, Dora told me, though she is nearly ten, and Denny said he couldn't sleep without the gas being left a little bit on) we held a council in the girls' room. We all sat on the bed – it is a mahogany four-poster with green curtains very good for tents, only the housekeeper doesn't allow it, and Oswald said:
"This is jolly nice, isn't it?"
"They'll be better to-morrow," Alice said; "they're only shy."
Dicky said shy was all very well, but you needn't behave like a perfect idiot.
"They're frightened. You see, we're all strange to them," Dora said.
"We're not wild beasts or Indians; we sha'n't eat them. What have they got to be frightened of?" Dicky said this.
Noël told us he thought they were an enchanted prince and princess who'd been turned into white rabbits, and their bodies had got changed back, but not their insides.
But Oswald told him to dry up.
"It's no use making things up about them," he said. "The thing is: what are we going to do? We can't have our holidays spoiled by these snivelling kids."
"No," Alice said, "but they can't possibly go on snivelling forever. Perhaps they've got into the habit of it with that Murdstone aunt. She's enough to make any one snivel."
"All the same," said Oswald, "we jolly well aren't going to have another day like to-day. We must do something to rouse them from their snivelling leth – what's its name? – something sudden and – what is it? – decisive."
"A booby trap," said H. O., "the first thing when they get up, and an apple-pie bed at night."
But Dora would not hear of it, and I own she was right.
"Suppose," she said, "we could get up a good play – like we did when we were Treasure Seekers."
We said, "Well, what?" But she did not say.
"It ought to be a good long thing – to last all day," Dicky said; "and if they like they can play, and if they don't – "
"If they don't, I'll read to them," Alice said.
But we all said: "No, you don't; if you begin that way you'll have to go on."
And Dicky added: "I wasn't going to say that at all. I was going to say if they didn't like it they could jolly well do the other thing."
We all agreed that we must think of something, but we none of us could, and at last the council broke up in confusion because Mrs. Blake – she is the housekeeper – came up and turned off the gas.
But next morning when we were having breakfast, and the two strangers were sitting there so pink and clean, Oswald suddenly said:
"I know; we'll have a jungle in the garden."
And the others agreed, and we talked about it till brek was over. The little strangers only said "I don't know" whenever we said anything to them.
After brekker Oswald beckoned his brothers and sisters mysteriously apart and said:
"Do you agree to let me be captain to-day, because I thought of it?"
And they said they would.
Then he said: "We'll play jungle-book, and I shall be Mowgli. The rest of you can be what you like – Mowgli's father and mother, or any of the beasts."
"I don't suppose they know the book," said Noël. "They don't look as if they read anything, except at lesson times."
"Then they can go on being beasts all the time," Oswald said. "Any one can be a beast."
So it was settled.
And now Oswald – Albert's uncle has sometimes said he is clever at arranging things – began to lay his plans for the jungle. The day was indeed well chosen. Our Indian uncle was away; father was away; Mrs. Blake was going away, and the housemaid had an afternoon off. Oswald's first conscious act was to get rid of the white mice – I mean the little good visitors. He explained to them that there would be a play in the afternoon, and they could be what they liked, and gave them the jungle-book to read the stories he told them to – all the ones about Mowgli. He led the strangers to a secluded spot among the sea-kale pots in the kitchen garden and left them. Then he went back to the others, and we had a jolly morning under the cedar talking about what we would do when Blakie was gone. She went just after our dinner.
When we asked Denny what he would like to be in the play, it turned out he had not read the stories Oswald told him at all, but only the "White Seal" and "Rikki Tikki."
We then agreed to make the jungle first and dress up for our parts afterwards. Oswald was a little uncomfortable about leaving the strangers alone all the morning, so he said Denny should be his aide-de-camp, and he was really quite useful. He is rather handy with his fingers, and things that he does up do not come untied. Daisy might have come too, but she wanted to go on reading, so we let her, which is the truest manners to a visitor. Of course the shrubbery was to be the jungle, and the lawn under the cedar a forest glade, and then we began to collect the things. The cedar lawn is just nicely out of the way of the windows. It was a jolly hot day – the kind of day when the sunshine is white and the shadows are dark gray, not black like they are in the evening.
We all thought of different things. Of course first we dressed up pillows in the skins of beasts and set them about on the grass to look as natural as we could. And then we got Pincher, and rubbed him all over with powdered slate-pencil, to make him the right color for Gray Brother. But he shook it all off, and it had taken an awful time to do. Then Alice said:
"Oh, I know!" and she ran off to father's dressing-room, and came back with the tube of crème d'amande pour la barbe et les mains, and we squeezed it on Pincher and rubbed it in, and then the slate-pencil stuff stuck all right, and he rolled in the dust-bin of his own accord, which made him just the right color. He is a very clever dog, but soon after he went off and we did not find him till quite late in the afternoon. Denny helped with Pincher, and with the wild-beast skins, and when Pincher was finished he said:
"Please, may I make some paper birds to put in the trees? I know how."
And of course we said "Yes," and he only had red ink and newspapers, and quickly he made quite a lot of large paper birds with red tails. They didn't look half bad on the edge of the shrubbery.
While he was doing this he suddenly said, or rather screamed, "Oh!"
And we looked, and it was a creature with great horns and a fur rug – something like a bull and something like a minotaur – and I don't wonder Denny was frightened. It was Alice, and it was first-class.
Up to now all was not yet lost beyond recall. It was the stuffed fox that did the mischief – and I am sorry to own it was Oswald who thought of it. He is not ashamed of having thought of it. That was rather clever of him. But he knows now that it is better not to take other people's foxes and things without asking, even if you live in the same house with them.
It was Oswald who undid the back of the glass case in the hall and got out the fox with the green and gray duck in its mouth, and when the others saw how awfully like life they looked on the lawn, they all rushed off to