The Greatest Works of E. Nesbit (220+ Titles in One Illustrated Edition). Эдит Несбит
"Why, isn't she?" said H.O.
"Isn't she what?" said Mrs. Bax.
"What you said why about," said H.O.
She put her hands to her head. Her short hair was still damp and rumpled from contact with the foaming billows of ocean.
"Let's have a fresh deal and start fair," she said; "why do you think my sister is poor?"
"I forgot she was your sister," said H.O., "or I wouldn't have said it—honour bright I wouldn't."
"Don't mention it," said Mrs. Bax, and began throwing stones at a groin in amiable silence.
We were furious with H.O., first because it is such bad manners to throw people's poverty in their faces, or even in their sisters' faces, like H.O. had just done, and second because it seemed to have put out of Mrs. Bax's head what she was beginning to say about what would we like to do.
So Oswald presently remarked, when he had aimed at the stump she was aiming at, and hit it before she did, for though a fair shot for a lady, she takes a long time to get her eye in.
"Mrs. Bax, we should like to do whatever you like to do." This was real politeness and true too, as it happened, because by this time we could quite trust her not to want to do anything deeply duffing.
"That's very nice of you," she replied, "but don't let me interfere with any plans of yours. My own idea was to pluck a waggonette from the nearest bush. I suppose they grow freely in these parts?"
"There's one at the 'Ship,'" said Alice; "it costs seven-and-six to pluck it, just for going to the station."
"Well, then! And to stuff our waggonette with lunch and drive over to Lynwood Castle, and eat it there."
"A picnic!" fell in accents of joy from the lips of one and all.
"We'll also boil the billy in the castle courtyard, and eat buns in the shadow of the keep."
"Tea as well?" said H.O., "with buns? You can't be poor and needy any way, whatever your——"
We hastily hushed him, stifling his murmurs with sand.
"I always think," said Mrs. Bax dreamily, "that 'the more the merrier,' is peculiarly true of picnics. So I have arranged—always subject to your approval, of course—to meet your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Red House, there, and——"
We drowned her conclusive remarks with a cheer. And Oswald, always willing to be of use, offered to go to the 'Ship' and see about the waggonette. I like horses and stable-yards, and the smell of hay and straw, and talking to ostlers and people like that.
There turned out to be two horses belonging to the best waggonette, or you could have a one-horse one, much smaller, with the blue cloth of the cushions rather frayed, and mended here and there, and green in patches from age and exposition to the weather.
Oswald told Mrs. Bax this, not concealing about how shabby the little one was, and she gloriously said—
"The pair by all means! We don't kill a pig every day!"
"No, indeed," said Dora, but if "killing a pig" means having a lark, Mrs. Bax is as good a pig-killer as any I ever knew.
It was splendid to drive (Oswald, on the box beside the driver, who had his best coat with the bright buttons) along the same roads that we had trodden as muddy pedestrinators, or travelled along behind Bates's donkey.
It was a perfect day, as I said before. We were all clean and had our second-best things on. I think second-bests are much more comfy than first-bests. You feel equivalent to meeting any one, and have "a heart for any fate," as it says in the poetry-book, and yet you are not starched and booted and stiffened and tightened out of all human feelings.
Lynwood Castle is in a hollow in the hills. It has a moat all round it with water-lily leaves on it. I suppose there are lilies when in season. There is a bridge over the moat—not the draw kind of bridge. And the castle has eight towers—four round and four square ones, and a courtyard in the middle, all green grass, and heaps of stones—stray bits of castle, I suppose they are—and a great white may-tree in the middle that Mrs. Bax said was hundreds of years old.
Mrs. Red House was sitting under the may-tree when we got there, nursing her baby, in a blue dress and looking exactly like a picture on the top of a chocolate-box.
The girls instantly wanted to nurse the baby so we let them. And we explored the castle. We had never happened to explore one thoroughly before. We did not find the deepest dungeon below the castle moat, though we looked everywhere for it, but we found everything else you can think of belonging to castles—even the holes they used to pour boiling lead through into the eyes of besiegers when they tried to squint up to see how strong the garrison was in the keep—and the little slits they shot arrows through, and the mouldering remains of the portcullis. We went up the eight towers, every single one of them, and some parts were jolly dangerous, I can tell you. Dicky and I would not let H.O. and Noël come up the dangerous parts. There was no lasting ill-feeling about this. By the time we had had a thorough good explore lunch was ready.
It was a glorious lunch—not too many meaty things, but all sorts of cakes and sweets, and grapes and figs and nuts.
We gazed at the feast, and Mrs. Bax said—
"There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread you've got."
"They had currant wine," said Noël, who has only just read the book by Mr. Charles Dickens.
"Well, so have you," said Mrs. Bax. And we had. Two bottles of it.
"I never knew any one like you," said Noël to Mrs. Red House, dreamily with his mouth full, "for knowing the things people really like to eat, not the things that are good for them, but what they like, and Mrs. Bax is just the same."
"It was one of the things they taught at our school," said Mrs. Bax. "Do you remember the Saturday night feasts, Chloe, and how good the cocoanut ice tasted after extra strong peppermints?"
"Fancy you knowing that!" said H.O. "I thought it was us found that out."
"I really know much more about things to eat than she does," said Mrs. Bax. "I was quite an old girl when she was a little thing in pinafores. She was such a nice little girl."
"I shouldn't wonder if she was always nice," said Noël, "even when she was a baby!"
Everybody laughed at this, except the existing baby, and it was asleep on the waggonette cushions, under the white may-tree, and perhaps if it had been awake it wouldn't have laughed, for Oswald himself, though possessing a keen sense of humour, did not see anything to laugh at.
Mr. Red House made a speech after dinner, and said drink to the health of everybody, one after the other, in currant wine, which was done, beginning with Mrs. Bax and ending with H.O.
Then he said—
"Somnus, avaunt! What shall we play at?" and nobody, as so often happens, had any idea ready. Then suddenly Mrs. Red House said—
"Good gracious, look there!" and we looked there, and where we were to look was the lowest piece of the castle wall, just beside the keep that the bridge led over to, and what we were to look at was a strange blobbiness of knobbly bumps along the top, that looked exactly like human heads.
It turned out, when we had talked about cannibals and New Guinea, that human heads were just exactly what they were. Not loose heads, stuck on pikes or things like that, such as there often must have been while the castle stayed in the olden times it was built in and belonged to, but real live heads with their bodies still in attendance on them.
They were, in fact, the village children.
"Poor little Lazaruses!" said Mr. Red House.
"There's not such a bad slice of Dives' feast left," said Mrs. Bax. "Shall we——?"
So Mr. Red House went out by the keep and called the heads in (with the bodies they were connected