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were very pleased. It really seemed that our business was establishing itself root and branch.
When it came to its being dinner-time, which was first noticed through H.O. beginning to cry and say he did not want to play any more, it was found that we had forgotten to bring any dinner. So we had to eat some of our stock—the jam, the biscuits, and the cucumber.
"I feel a new man," said Alice, draining the last of the ginger-beer bottles. "At that homely village on the brow of yonder hill we shall sell all that remains of the stock, and go home with money in both pockets."
But our luck had changed. As so often happens, our hearts beat high with hopeful thoughts, and we felt jollier than we had done all day. Merry laughter and snatches of musical song re-echoed from our cart, and from round it as we went up the hill. All Nature was smiling and gay. There was nothing sinister in the look of the trees or the road—or anything.
Dogs are said to have inside instincts that warn them of intending perils, but Pincher was not a bit instinctive that day somehow. He sported gaily up and down the hedge-banks after pretending rats, and once he was so excited that I believe he was playing at weasels and stoats. But of course there was really no trace of these savage denizens of the jungle. It was just Pincher's varied imagination.
We got to the village, and with joyful expectations we knocked at the first door we came to.
Alice had spread out a few choice treasures—needles, pins, tape, a photograph-frame, and the butter, rather soft by now, and the last of the tin-openers—on a basket-lid, like the fish-man does with herrings and whitings and plums and apples (you cannot sell fish in the country unless you sell fruit too. The author does not know why this is).
The sun was shining, the sky was blue. There was no sign at all of the intending thunderbolt, not even when the door was opened. This was done by a woman.
She just looked at our basket-lid of things any one might have been proud to buy, and smiled. I saw her do it. Then she turned her traitorous head and called "Jim!" into the cottage.
A sleepy grunt rewarded her.
"Jim, I say!" she repeated. "Come here directly minute."
Next moment Jim appeared. He was Jim to her because she was his wife, I suppose, but to us he was the Police, with his hair ruffled—from his hateful sofa-cushions, no doubt—and his tunic unbuttoned.
"What's up?" he said in a husky voice, as if he had been dreaming that he had a cold. "Can't a chap have a minute to himself to read the paper in?"
"You told me to," said the woman. "You said if any folks come to the door with things I was to call you, whether or no."
Even now we were blind to the disaster that was entangling us in the meshes of its trap. Alice said—
"We've sold a good deal, but we've some things left—very nice things. These crochet needles——"
But the Police, who had buttoned up his tunic in a hurry, said quite fiercely—
"Let's have a look at your license."
"We didn't bring any," said Noël, "but if you will give us an order we'll bring you some to-morrow." He thought a lisen was a thing to sell that we ought to have thought of.
"None of your lip," was the unexpected reply of the now plainly brutal constable. "Where's your license, I say?"
"We have a license for our dog, but Father's got it," said Oswald, always quick-witted, but not, this time, quite quick enough.
"Your 'awker's license is what I want, as well you knows, you young limb. Your pedlar's license—your license to sell things. You ain't half so half-witted as you want to make out."
"We haven't got a pedlar's license," said Oswald. If we had been in a book the Police would have been touched to tears by Oswald's simple honesty. He would have said "Noble boy!" and then gone on to say he had only asked the question to test our honour. But life is not really at all the same as books. I have noticed lots of differences. Instead of behaving like the book-Police, this thick-headed constable said—
"Blowed if I wasn't certain of it! Well, my young blokes, you'll just come along o' me to Sir James. I've got orders to bring up the next case afore him."
"Case!" said Dora. "Oh, don't! We didn't know we oughtn't to. We only wanted——"
"Ho, yes," said the constable, "you can tell all that to the magistrate; and anything you say will be used against you."
"I'm sure it will," said Oswald. "Dora, don't lower yourself to speak to him. Come, we'll go home."
The Police was combing its hair with a half-toothless piece of comb, and we turned to go. But it was vain.
Ere any of our young and eager legs could climb into the cart the Police had seized the donkey's bridle. We could not desert our noble steed—and besides, it wasn't really ours, but Bates's, and this made any hope of flight quite a forlorn one. For better, for worse, we had to go with the donkey.
"Don't cry, for goodness' sake!" said Oswald in stern undertones. "Bite your lips. Take long breaths. Don't let him see we mind. This beast's only the village police. Sir James will be a gentleman. He'll understand. Don't disgrace the house of Bastable. Look here! Fall into line—no, Indian file will be best, there are so few of us. Alice, if you snivel I'll never say you ought to have been a boy again. H.O., shut your mouth; no one's going to hurt you—you're too young."
"I am trying," said Alice, gasping.
"Noël," Oswald went on—now, as so often, showing the brilliant qualities of the born leader and general—"don't you be in a funk. Remember how Byron fought for the Greeks at Missy-what's-its-name. He didn't grouse, and he was a poet, like you! Now look here, let's be game. Dora, you're the eldest. Strike up—any tune. We'll march up, and show this sneak we Bastables aren't afraid, whoever else is."
You will perhaps find it difficult to believe, but we did strike up. We sang "The British Grenadiers," and when the Police told us to stow it we did not. And Noël said—
"Singing isn't dogs or pedlaring. You don't want a license for that."
"I'll soon show you!" said the Police.
But he had to jolly well put up with our melodious song, because he knew that there isn't really any law to prevent you singing if you want to.
We went on singing. It soon got easier than at first, and we followed Bates's donkey and cart through some lodge gates and up a drive with big trees, and we came out in front of a big white house, and there was a lawn. We stopped singing when we came in sight of the house, and got ready to be polite to Sir James. There were some ladies on the lawn in pretty blue and green dresses. This cheered us. Ladies are seldom quite heartless, especially when young.
The Police drew up Bates's donkey opposite the big front door with pillars, and rang the bell. Our hearts were beating desperately. We cast glances of despair at the ladies. Then, quite suddenly, Alice gave a yell that wild Indian war-whoops are simply nothing to, and tore across the lawn and threw her arms round the green waist of one of the ladies.
"Oh, I'm so glad!" she cried; "oh, save us! We haven't done anything wrong, really and truly we haven't."
And then we all saw that the lady was our own Mrs. Red House, that we liked so much. So we all rushed to her, and before that Police had got the door answered we had told her our tale. The other ladies had turned away when we approached her, and gone politely away into a shrubbery.
"There, there," she said, patting Alice and Noël and as much of the others as she could get hold of. "Don't you worry, dears, don't. I'll make it all right with Sir James. Let's all sit down in a comfy heap, and get our breaths again. I am so glad to see you all. My husband met your father at lunch the other day. I meant to come over and see you to-morrow."
You cannot imagine the feelings of joy and safeness that we felt now we had found someone who knew we were Bastables, and not vagrant outcasts like the Police thought.