The Wouldbegoods. Nesbit Edith
girls had the splendid honor and pleasure of giving a pipe and four whole ounces of tobacco to each soldier.
Then we shook hands with the captain and the sergeant and the corporals, and the girls kissed the captain – I can't think why girls will kiss everybody – and we all cheered for the Queen.
It was grand. And I wish my father had been there to see how much you can do with £12 if you order the things from the Stores.
We have never seen those brave soldiers again.
I have told you all this to show you how we got so keen about soldiers, and why we sought to aid and abet the poor widow at the white cottage in her desolate and oppressedness.
Her name was Simpkins, and her cottage was just beyond the church-yard, on the other side from our house. On the different military occasions which I have remarked upon this widow woman stood at her garden gate and looked on. And after the cheering she rubbed her eyes with her apron. Alice noticed this slight but signifying action.
We feel quite sure Mrs. Simpkins liked soldiers, and so we felt friendly to her. But when we tried to talk to her she would not. She told us to go along with us, do, and not bother her. And Oswald, with his usual delicacy and good breeding, made the others do as she said.
But we were not to be thus repulsed with impunity. We made complete but cautious inquiries, and found out that the reason she cried when she saw soldiers was that she had only one son, a boy. He was twenty-two, and he had gone to the war last April. So that she thought of him when she saw the soldiers, and that was why she cried. Because when your son is at the wars you always think he is being killed. I don't know why. A great many of them are not. If I had a son at the wars I should never think he was dead till I heard he was, and perhaps not then, considering everything.
After we had found this out we held a council.
Dora said, "We must do something for the soldier's widowed mother."
We all agreed, but added, "What?"
Alice said, "The gift of money might be deemed an insult by that proud, patriotic spirit. Besides, we haven't more than eighteenpence among us."
We had put what we had to father's £12 to buy the baccy and pipes.
The Mouse then said, "Couldn't we make her a flannel petticoat and leave it without a word upon her doorstep?"
But every one said, "Flannel petticoats in this weather?" so that was no go.
Noël said he would write her a poem, but Oswald had a deep, inward feeling that Mrs. Simpkins would not understand poetry. Many people do not.
H. O. said, "Why not sing 'Rule Britannia' under her window after she had gone to bed, like waits," but no one else thought so.
Denny thought we might get up a subscription for her among the wealthy and affluent, but we said again that we knew money would be no balm to the haughty mother of a brave British soldier.
"What we want," Alice said, "is something that will be a good deal of trouble to us and some good to her."
"A little help is worth a deal of poetry," said Denny. I should not have said that myself. Noël did look sick.
"What does she do that we can help in?" Dora asked. "Besides, she won't let us help."
H. O. said, "She does nothing but work in the garden. At least if she does anything inside you can't see it, because she keeps the door shut."
Then at once we saw. And we agreed to get up the very next day, ere yet the rosy dawn had flushed the east, and have a go at Mrs. Simpkins's garden.
We got up. We really did. But too often when you mean to, over night, it seems so silly to do it when you come to waking in the dewy morn. We crept down-stairs with our boots in our hands. Denny is rather unlucky, though a most careful boy. It was he who dropped his boot, and it went blundering down the stairs, echoing like thunder-bolts, and waking up Albert's uncle. But when we explained to him that we were going to do some gardening he let us, and went back to bed.
Everything is very pretty and different in the early morning, before people are up. I have been told this is because the shadows go a different way from what they do in the awake part of the day. But I don't know. Noël says the fairies have just finished tidying up then. Anyhow it all feels quite otherwise.
We put on our boots in the porch, and we got our gardening tools and we went down to the white cottage. It is a nice cottage, with a thatched roof, like in the drawing-copies you get at girls' schools, and you do the thatch – if you can – with a B.B. pencil. If you cannot, you just leave it. It looks just as well, somehow, when it is mounted and framed.
We looked at the garden. It was very neat. Only one patch was coming up thick with weeds. I could see groundsell and chickweed, and others that I did not know. We set to work with a will. We used all our tools – spades, forks, hoes, and rakes – and Dora worked with the trowel, sitting down, because her foot was hurt. We cleared the weedy patch beautifully, scraping off all the nasty weeds and leaving the nice clean brown dirt. We worked as hard as ever we could. And we were happy, because it was unselfish toil, and no one thought then of putting it in the Book of Golden Deeds, where we had agreed to write down our virtuous actions and the good doings of each other, when we happen to notice them.
We had just done, and we were looking at the beautiful production of our honest labor, when the cottage door burst open, and the soldier's widowed mother came out like a wild tornado, and her eyes looked like upas-trees – death to the beholder.
"You wicked, meddlesome, nasty children!" she said, "ain't you got enough of your own good ground to runch up and spoil but you must come into my little lot?"
Some of us were deeply alarmed, but we stood firm.
"We have only been weeding your garden," Dora said; "we wanted to do something to help you."
"Dratted little busybodies," she said. It was indeed hard, but every one in Kent says "dratted" when they are cross. "It's my turnips," she went on, "you've hoed up, and my cabbages. My turnips that my boy sowed afore he went. There, get along with you, do, afore I come at you with my broom-handle."
She did come at us with her broom-handle as she spoke, and even the boldest turned and fled. Oswald was even the boldest.
"They looked like weeds right enough," he said.
And Dicky said, "It all comes of trying to do golden deeds."
This was when we were out in the road.
As we went along, in a silence full of gloomy remorse, we met the postman. He said:
"Here's the letters for the Moat," and passed on hastily. He was a bit late.
When we came to look through the letters, which were nearly all for Albert's uncle, we found there was a post-card that had got stuck in a magazine wrapper. Alice pulled it out. It was addressed to Mrs. Simpkins. We honorably only looked at the address, although it is allowed by the rules of honorableness to read post-cards that come to your house if you like, even if they are not for you.
After a heated discussion, Alice and Oswald said they were not afraid, whoever was, and they retraced their steps, Alice holding the post-card right way up, so that we should not look at the lettery part of it, but only the address.
With quickly beating heart, but outwardly unmoved, they walked up to the white cottage door.
It opened with a bang when we knocked.
"Well?" Mrs. Simpkins said, and I think she said it what people in books call "sourly."
Oswald said, "We are very, very sorry we spoiled your turnips, and we will ask my father to try and make it up to you some other way."
She muttered something about not wanting to be beholden to anybody.
"We came back," Oswald went on, with his always unruffled politeness, "because the postman gave us a post-card in mistake with our letters, and it is addressed to you."
"We haven't read it," Alice said, quickly. I think she needn't have said that. Of course we hadn't. But perhaps girls know better than we do what women are likely to think you capable of.
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