The E. Nesbit MEGAPACK ®: 26 Classic Novels and Stories. E. Nesbit
that had been collected for Perks were packed into the perambulator, and at half-past three Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis wheeled it down to the little yellow house where Perks lived.
The house was very tidy. On the window ledge was a jug of wild-flowers, big daisies, and red sorrel, and feathery, flowery grasses.
There was a sound of splashing from the wash-house, and a partly washed boy put his head round the door.
“Mother’s a-changing of herself,” he said.
“Down in a minute,” a voice sounded down the narrow, freshly scrubbed stairs.
The children waited. Next moment the stairs creaked and Mrs. Perks came down, buttoning her bodice. Her hair was brushed very smooth and tight, and her face shone with soap and water.
“I’m a bit late changing, Miss,” she said to Bobbie, “owing to me having had a extry clean-up today, along o’ Perks happening to name its being his birthday. I don’t know what put it into his head to think of such a thing. We keeps the children’s birthdays, of course; but him and me—we’re too old for such like, as a general rule.”
“We knew it was his birthday,” said Peter, “and we’ve got some presents for him outside in the perambulator.”
As the presents were being unpacked, Mrs. Perks gasped. When they were all unpacked, she surprised and horrified the children by sitting suddenly down on a wooden chair and bursting into tears.
“Oh, don’t!” said everybody; “oh, please don’t!” And Peter added, perhaps a little impatiently: “What on earth is the matter? You don’t mean to say you don’t like it?”
Mrs. Perks only sobbed. The Perks children, now as shiny-faced as anyone could wish, stood at the wash-house door, and scowled at the intruders. There was a silence, an awkward silence.
“Don’t you like it?” said Peter, again, while his sisters patted Mrs. Perks on the back.
She stopped crying as suddenly as she had begun.
“There, there, don’t you mind me. I’M all right!” she said. “Like it? Why, it’s a birthday such as Perks never ’ad, not even when ’e was a boy and stayed with his uncle, who was a corn chandler in his own account. He failed afterwards. Like it? Oh—” and then she went on and said all sorts of things that I won’t write down, because I am sure that Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis would not like me to. Their ears got hotter and hotter, and their faces redder and redder, at the kind things Mrs. Perks said. They felt they had done nothing to deserve all this praise.
At last Peter said: “Look here, we’re glad you’re pleased. But if you go on saying things like that, we must go home. And we did want to stay and see if Mr. Perks is pleased, too. But we can’t stand this.”
“I won’t say another single word,” said Mrs. Perks, with a beaming face, “but that needn’t stop me thinking, need it? For if ever—”
“Can we have a plate for the buns?” Bobbie asked abruptly. And then Mrs. Perks hastily laid the table for tea, and the buns and the honey and the gooseberries were displayed on plates, and the roses were put in two glass jam jars, and the tea-table looked, as Mrs. Perks said, “fit for a Prince.”
“To think!” she said, “me getting the place tidy early, and the little ’uns getting the wild-flowers and all—when never did I think there’d be anything more for him except the ounce of his pet particular that I got o’ Saturday and been saving up for ’im ever since. Bless us! ’e is early!”
Perks had indeed unlatched the latch of the little front gate.
“Oh,” whispered Bobbie, “let’s hide in the back kitchen, and you tell him about it. But give him the tobacco first, because you got it for him. And when you’ve told him, we’ll all come in and shout, ‘Many happy returns!’”
It was a very nice plan, but it did not quite come off. To begin with, there was only just time for Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis to rush into the wash-house, pushing the young and open-mouthed Perks children in front of them. There was not time to shut the door, so that, without at all meaning it, they had to listen to what went on in the kitchen. The wash-house was a tight fit for the Perks children and the Three Chimneys children, as well as all the wash-house’s proper furniture, including the mangle and the copper.
“Hullo, old woman!” they heard Mr. Perks’s voice say; “here’s a pretty set-out!”
“It’s your birthday tea, Bert,” said Mrs. Perks, “and here’s a ounce of your extry particular. I got it o’ Saturday along o’ your happening to remember it was your birthday today.”
“Good old girl!” said Mr. Perks, and there was a sound of a kiss.
“But what’s that pram doing here? And what’s all these bundles? And where did you get the sweetstuff, and—”
The children did not hear what Mrs. Perks replied, because just then Bobbie gave a start, put her hand in her pocket, and all her body grew stiff with horror.
“Oh!” she whispered to the others, “whatever shall we do? I forgot to put the labels on any of the things! He won’t know what’s from who. He’ll think it’s all us, and that we’re trying to be grand or charitable or something horrid.”
“Hush!” said Peter.
And then they heard the voice of Mr. Perks, loud and rather angry.
“I don’t care,” he said; “I won’t stand it, and so I tell you straight.”
“But,” said Mrs. Perks, “it’s them children you make such a fuss about—the children from the Three Chimneys.”
“I don’t care,” said Perks, firmly, “not if it was a angel from Heaven. We’ve got on all right all these years and no favours asked. I’m not going to begin these sort of charity goings-on at my time of life, so don’t you think it, Nell.”
“Oh, hush!” said poor Mrs Perks; “Bert, shut your silly tongue, for goodness’ sake. The all three of ’ems in the wash-house a-listening to every word you speaks.”
“Then I’ll give them something to listen to,” said the angry Perks; “I’ve spoke my mind to them afore now, and I’ll do it again,” he added, and he took two strides to the wash-house door, and flung it wide open—as wide, that is, as it would go, with the tightly packed children behind it.
“Come out,” said Perks, “come out and tell me what you mean by it. ‘Ave I ever complained to you of being short, as you comes this charity lay over me?”
“Oh!” said Phyllis, “I thought you’d be so pleased; I’ll never try to be kind to anyone else as long as I live. No, I won’t, not never.”
She burst into tears.
“We didn’t mean any harm,” said Peter.
“It ain’t what you means so much as what you does,” said Perks.
“Oh, don’t!” cried Bobbie, trying hard to be braver than Phyllis, and to find more words than Peter had done for explaining in. “We thought you’d love it. We always have things on our birthdays.”
“Oh, yes,” said Perks, “your own relations; that’s different.”
“Oh, no,” Bobbie answered. “Not our own relations. All the servants always gave us things at home, and us to them when it was their birthdays. And when it was mine, and Mother gave me the brooch like a buttercup, Mrs. Viney gave me two lovely glass pots, and nobody thought she was coming the charity lay over us.”
“If it had been glass pots here,” said Perks, “I wouldn’t ha’ said so much. It’s there being all this heaps and heaps of things I can’t stand. No—nor won’t, neither.”
“But they’re not all from us—” said Peter, “only we forgot to put the labels on. They’re