The Complete Bastable Family Series (Illustrated Edition). Ðдит ÐеÑбит
the dolls’ clothes and we made up our minds to take him round with an organ as soon as we had taught him to dance, we were stopped at once by Dicky’s remembering how he had once heard that an organ cost seven hundred pounds. Of course this was the big church kind, but even the ones on three legs can’t be got for one-and-sevenpence, which was all we had when we first thought of it. So we gave that up too.
It was a wet day, I remember, and mutton hash for dinner — very tough with pale gravy with lumps in it. I think the others would have left a good deal on the sides of their plates, although they know better, only Oswald said it was a savoury stew made of the red deer that Edward shot. So then we were the Children of the New Forest, and the mutton tasted much better. No one in the New Forest minds venison being tough and the gravy pale.
Then after dinner we let the girls have a dolls’ tea-party, on condition they didn’t expect us boys to wash up; and it was when we were drinking the last of the liquorice water out of the little cups that Dicky said —
‘This reminds me.’
So we said, ‘What of?’
Dicky answered us at once, though his mouth was full of bread with liquorice stuck in it to look like cake. You should not speak with your mouth full, even to your own relations, and you shouldn’t wipe your mouth on the back of your hand, but on your handkerchief, if you have one. Dicky did not do this. He said —
‘Why, you remember when we first began about treasure-seeking, I said I had thought of something, only I could not tell you because I hadn’t finished thinking about it.’
We said ‘Yes.’
‘Well, this liquorice water —’
‘Tea,’ said Alice softly.
‘Well, tea then — made me think.’ He was going on to say what it made him think, but Noel interrupted and cried out, ‘I say; let’s finish off this old tea-party and have a council of war.’
So we got out the flags and the wooden sword and the drum, and Oswald beat it while the girls washed up, till Eliza came up to say she had the jumping toothache, and the noise went through her like a knife. So of course Oswald left off at once. When you are polite to Oswald he never refuses to grant your requests.
When we were all dressed up we sat down round the camp fire, and Dicky began again.
‘Every one in the world wants money. Some people get it. The people who get it are the ones who see things. I have seen one thing.’
Dicky stopped and smoked the pipe of peace. It is the pipe we did bubbles with in the summer, and somehow it has not got broken yet. We put tea-leaves in it for the pipe of peace, but the girls are not allowed to have any. It is not right to let girls smoke. They get to think too much of themselves if you let them do everything the same as men. Oswald said, ‘Out with it.’
‘I see that glass bottles only cost a penny. H. O., if you dare to snigger I’ll send you round selling old bottles, and you shan’t have any sweets except out of the money you get for them. And the same with you, Noel.’
‘Noel wasn’t sniggering,’ said Alice in a hurry; ‘it is only his taking so much interest in what you were saying makes him look like that. Be quiet, H. O., and don’t you make faces, either. Do go on, Dicky dear.’
So Dicky went on.
‘There must be hundreds of millions of bottles of medicines sold every year. Because all the different medicines say, “Thousands of cures daily,” and if you only take that as two thousand, which it must be, at least, it mounts up. And the people who sell them must make a great deal of money by them because they are nearly always two-and-ninepence the bottle, and three-and-six for one nearly double the size. Now the bottles, as I was saying, don’t cost anything like that.’
‘It’s the medicine costs the money,’ said Dora; ‘look how expensive jujubes are at the chemist’s, and peppermints too.’
‘That’s only because they’re nice,’ Dicky explained; ‘nasty things are not so dear. Look what a lot of brimstone you get for a penny, and the same with alum. We would not put the nice kinds of chemist’s things in our medicine.’
Then he went on to tell us that when we had invented our medicine we would write and tell the editor about it, and he would put it in the paper, and then people would send their two-and-ninepence and three-and-six for the bottle nearly double the size, and then when the medicine had cured them they would write to the paper and their letters would be printed, saying how they had been suffering for years, and never thought to get about again, but thanks to the blessing of our ointment —’
Dora interrupted and said, ‘Not ointment — it’s so messy.’ And Alice thought so too. And Dicky said he did not mean it, he was quite decided to let it be in bottles. So now it was all settled, and we did not see at the time that this would be a sort of going into business, but afterwards when Albert’s uncle showed us we saw it, and we were sorry. We only had to invent the medicine. You might think that was easy, because of the number of them you see every day in the paper, but it is much harder than you think. First we had to decide what sort of illness we should like to cure, and a ‘heated discussion ensued’, like in Parliament.
Dora wanted it to be something to make the complexion of dazzling fairness, but we remembered how her face came all red and rough when she used the Rosabella soap that was advertised to make the darkest complexion fair as the lily, and she agreed that perhaps it was better not. Noel wanted to make the medicine first and then find out what it would cure, but Dicky thought not, because there are so many more medicines than there are things the matter with us, so it would be easier to choose the disease first. Oswald would have liked wounds. I still think it was a good idea, but Dicky said, ‘Who has wounds, especially now there aren’t any wars? We shouldn’t sell a bottle a day!’ So Oswald gave in because he knows what manners are, and it was Dicky’s idea. H. O. wanted a cure for the uncomfortable feeling that they give you powders for, but we explained to him that grown-up people do not have this feeling, however much they eat, and he agreed. Dicky said he did not care a straw what the loathsome disease was, as long as we hurried up and settled on something. Then Alice said —
‘It ought to be something very common, and only one thing. Not the pains in the back and all the hundreds of things the people have in somebody’s syrup. What’s the commonest thing of all?’
And at once we said, ‘Colds.’
So that was settled.
Then we wrote a label to go on the bottle. When it was written it would not go on the vinegar bottle that we had got, but we knew it would go small when it was printed. It was like this:
BASTABLE’S
CERTAIN CURE FOR COLDS
Coughs, Asthma, Shortness of Breath, and all infections of the Chest
One dose gives immediate relief
It will cure your cold in one bottle
Especially the larger size at 3s. 6d.
Order at once of the Makers
To prevent disappointment
Makers:
D., O., R., A., N., and H. O. BASTABLE
150, Lewisham Road, S.E.
(A halfpenny for all bottles returned)
Of course the next thing was for one of us to catch a cold and try what cured it; we all wanted to be the one, but it was Dicky’s idea, and he said he was not going to be done out of it, so we let him. It was only fair. He left off his undershirt that very day, and next morning he stood in a draught in his nightgown for quite a long time. And we damped his day-shirt with the nail-brush before he put it on. But all was vain. They always tell you that these things will give you cold, but we found it was not so.
So