The E. Nesbit MEGAPACK ®: 26 Classic Novels and Stories. E. Nesbit
like waking up. There, away across the green park beyond the sunk fence, were people coming.
“So every one hasn’t vanished,” he said, caught up the tray and took it in. He hid it under the pantry shelf. He didn’t know who the people were who were coming and you can’t be too careful. Then he went out and made himself small in the shadow of a red buttress, heard their voices coming nearer and nearer. They were all talking at once, in that quick interested way that makes you certain something unusual has happened.
He could not hear exactly what they were saying, but he caught the words: “No.”
“Of course I’ve asked.”
“Police.”
“Telegram.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Better make quite sure.”
Then every one began speaking all at once, and you could not hear anything that anybody said. Philip was too busy keeping behind the buttress to see who they were who were talking. He was glad something had happened.
“Now I shall have something to think about besides the nurse and my beautiful city that she has pulled down.”
But what was it that had happened? He hoped nobody was hurt—or had done anything wrong. The word police had always made him uncomfortable ever since he had seen a boy no bigger than himself pulled along the road by a very large policeman. The boy had stolen a loaf, Philip was told. Philip could never forget that boy’s face; he always thought of it in church when it said “prisoners and captives,” and still more when it said “desolate and oppressed.”
“I do hope it’s not that,” he said.
And slowly he got himself to leave the shelter of the red-brick buttress and to follow to the house those voices and those footsteps that had gone by him.
He followed the sound of them to the kitchen. The cook was there in tears and a Windsor arm-chair. The kitchen-maid, her cap all on one side, was crying down most dirty cheeks. The coachman was there, very red in the face, and the groom, without his gaiters. The nurse was there, neat as ever she seemed at first, but Philip was delighted when a more careful inspection showed him that there was mud on her large shoes and on the bottom of her skirt, and that her dress had a large three-cornered tear in it.
“I wouldn’t have had it happen for a twenty-pun note,” the coachman was saying.
“George,” said the nurse to the groom, “you go and get a horse ready. I’ll write the telegram.”
“You’d best take Peppermint,” said the coachman. “She’s the fastest.”
The groom went out, saying under his breath, “Teach your grandmother,” which Philip thought rude and unmeaning.
Philip was standing unnoticed by the door. He felt that thrill—if it isn’t pleasure it is more like it than anything else—which we all feel when something real has happened.
But what had happened. What?
“I wish I’d never come back,” said the nurse. “Then nobody could pretend it was my fault.”
“It don’t matter what they pretend,” the cook stopped crying to say. “The thing is what’s happened. Oh, my goodness. I’d rather have been turned away without a character than have had this happen.”
“And I’d rather anything,” said the nurse. “Oh, my goodness me. I wish I’d never been born.”
And then and there, before the astonished eyes of Philip, she began to behave as any nice person might—she began to cry.
“It wouldn’t have happened,” said the cook, “if the master hadn’t been away. He’s a Justice of the Peace, he is, and a terror to gypsies. It wouldn’t never have happened if—”
Philip could not bear it any longer.
“What wouldn’t have happened if?” he asked, startling everybody to a quick jump of surprise.
The nurse stopped crying and turned to look at him.
“Oh, you!” she said slowly. “I forgot you. You want your breakfast, I suppose, no matter what’s happened?”
“No, I don’t,” said Philip, with extreme truth. “I want to know what has happened?”
“Miss Lucy’s lost,” said the cook heavily, “that’s what’s happened. So now you know. You run along and play, like a good little boy, and don’t make extry trouble for us in the trouble we’re in.”
“Lost?” repeated Philip.
“Yes, lost. I expect you’re glad,” said the nurse, “the way you treated her. You hold your tongue and don’t let me so much as hear you breathe the next twenty-four hours. I’ll go and write that telegram.”
Philip thought it best not to let any one hear him breathe. By this means he heard the telegram when nurse read it aloud to the cook.
Peter Graham, Esq.,
Hotel Wagram,
Brussels.
Miss Lucy lost. Please come home immediately.
Philkins.
That’s all right, isn’t it?”
“I don’t see why you sign it Philkins. You’re only the nurse—I’m the head of the house when the family’s away, and my name’s Bobson,” the cook said.
There was a sound of torn paper.
“There—the paper’s tore. I’d just as soon your name went to it,” said the nurse. “I don’t want to be the one to tell such news.”
“Oh, my good gracious, what a thing to happen,” sighed the cook. “Poor little darling!”
Then somebody wrote the telegram again, and the nurse took it out to the stable-yard, where Peppermint was already saddled.
“I thought,” said Philip, bold in the nurse’s absence, “I thought Lucy was with her aunt.”
“She came back yesterday,” said the cook. “Yes, after you’d gone to bed. And this morning that nurse went into the night nursery and she wasn’t there. Her bed all empty and cold, and her clothes gone. Though how the gypsies could have got in without waking that nurse is a mystery to me and ever will be. She must sleep like a pig.”
“Or the seven sleepers,” said the coachman.
“But what would gypsies want her for?” Philip asked.
“What do they ever want anybody for?” retorted the cook. “Look at the heirs that’s been stolen. I don’t suppose there’s a titled family in England but what’s had its heir stolen, one time and another.”
“I suppose you’ve looked all over the house,” said Philip.
“I suppose we ain’t deaf and dumb and blind and silly,” said the cook. “Here’s that nurse. You be off, Mr. Philip, without you want a flea in your ear.”
And Philip, at the word, was off. He went into the long drawing-room, and shut the door. Then he got the ivory chessmen out of the Buhl cabinet, and set them out on that delightful chess-table whose chequers are of mother-of-pearl and ivory, and tried to play a game, right hand against left. But right hand, who was white, and so moved first, always won. He gave up after awhile, and put the chessmen away in their proper places. Then he got out the big book of photographs of pictures, but they did not seem interesting, so he tried the ivory spellicans. But his hand shook, and you know spellicans is a game you can’t play when your hand shakes. And all the time, behind the chess and the pictures and the spellicans, he was trying not to think about his dream, about how he had climbed that ladder stair, which was really the yard-stick, and gone into the cities that he had built on the tables. Somehow he did not want to remember it. The very idea of remembering made