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H.O. is wanted at the council, it isn't anything amusing; you go and enjoy yourself by the sea, and catch the nice little crabs, H.O. dear."
H.O. said: "You always want me to be out of everything. I can be councils as well as anybody else."
"Oh, H.O.!" said Alice, in pleading tones, "not if I give you a halfpenny to go and buy bulls-eyes with?"
So then he went, and Dora said—
"I can't think how I could do it when you'd all trusted me so. And yet I couldn't help it. I remember Dicky saying when you decided to give it me to take care of—about me being the most trustworthy of all of us. I'm not fit for any one to speak to. But it did seem the really right thing at the time, it really and truly did. And now it all looks different."
"What has she done?" Dicky asked this, but Oswald almost knew.
"Tell them," said Dora, turning over on her front and hiding her face partly in her hands, and partly in the sand.
"She's given all Miss Sandal's money to that little boy that the father of was in prison," said Alice.
"It was one pound thirteen and sevenpence halfpenny," sobbed Dora.
"You ought to have consulted us, I do think, really," said Dicky. "Of course, I see you're sorry now, but I do think that."
"How could I consult you?" said Dora; "you were all playing Cat and Mouse, and he wanted to get home. I only wish you'd heard what he told me—that's all—about his mother being ill, and nobody letting her do any work because of where his father is, and his baby brother ill, poor little darling, and not enough to eat, and everything as awful as you can possibly think. I'll save up and pay it all back out of my own money. Only do forgive me, all of you, and say you don't despise me for a forger and embezzlementer. I couldn't help it."
"I'm glad you couldn't," said the sudden voice of H.O., who had sneaked up on his young stomach unobserved by the council. "You shall have all my money too, Dora, and here's the bulls-eye halfpenny to begin with." He crammed it into her hand. "Listen? I should jolly well think I did listen," H.O. went on. "I've just as much right as anybody else to be in at a council, and I think Dora was quite right, and the rest of you are beasts not to say so, too, when you see how she's blubbing. Suppose it had been your darling baby-brother ill, and nobody hadn't given you nothing when they'd got pounds and pounds in their silly pockets?"
He now hugged Dora, who responded.
"It wasn't her own money," said Dicky.
"If you think you're our darling baby-brother——" said Oswald.
But Alice and Noël began hugging Dora and H.O., and Dicky and I felt it was no go. Girls have no right and honourable feelings about business, and little boys are the same.
"All right," said Oswald rather bitterly, "if a majority of the council backs Dora up, we'll give in. But we must all save up and repay the money, that's all. We shall all be beastly short for ages."
"Oh," said Dora, and now her sobs were beginning to turn into sniffs, "you don't know how I felt! And I've felt most awful ever since, but those poor, poor people——"
At this moment Mrs. Bax came down on to the beach by the wooden steps that lead from the sea-wall where the grass grows between the stones.
"Hullo!" she said, "hurt yourself, my Dora-dove?"
Dora was rather a favourite of hers.
"It's all right now," said Dora.
"That's all right," said Mrs. Bax, who has learnt in anti-what's-its-name climes the great art of not asking too many questions. "Mrs. Red House has come to lunch. She went this morning to see that boy's mother—you know, the boy the others wouldn't play with?"
We said "Yes."
"Well, Mrs. Red House has arranged to get the woman some work—like the dear she is—the woman told her that the little lady—and that's you, Dora—had given the little boy one pound thirteen and sevenpence."
Mrs. Bax looked straight out to sea through her gold-rimmed spectacles, and went on—
"That must have been about all you had among the lot of you. I don't want to jaw, but I think you're a set of little bricks, and I must say so or expire on the sandy spot."
There was a painful silence.
H.O. looked, "There, what did I tell you?" at the rest of us.
Then Alice said, "We others had nothing to do with it. It was Dora's doing." I suppose she said this because we did not mean to tell Mrs. Bax anything about it, and if there was any brickiness in the act we wished Dora to have the consolement of getting the credit of it.
But of course Dora couldn't stand that. She said—
"Oh, Mrs. Bax, it was very wrong of me. It wasn't my own money, and I'd no business to, but I was so sorry for the little boy and his mother and his darling baby-brother. The money belonged to some one else."
"Who?" Mrs. Bax asked ere she had time to remember the excellent Australian rule about not asking questions.
And H.O. blurted out, "It was Miss Sandal's money—every penny," before we could stop him.
Once again in our career concealment was at an end. The rule about questions was again unregarded, and the whole thing came out.
It was a long story, and Mrs. Red House came out in the middle, but nobody could mind her hearing things.
When she knew all, from the plain living to the pedlar who hadn't a license, Mrs. Bax spoke up like a man, and said several kind things that I won't write down.
She then went on to say that her sister was not poor and needy at all, but that she lived plain and thought high just because she liked it!
We were very disappointed as soon as we had got over our hardly believing any one could—like it, I mean—and then Mrs. Red House said—
"Sir James gave me five pounds for the poor woman, and she sent back thirty of your shillings. She had spent three and sevenpence, and they had a lovely supper of boiled pork and greens last night. So now you've only got that to make up, and you can buy a most splendid present for Miss Sandal."
It is difficult to choose presents for people who live plain and think high because they like it. But at last we decided to get books. They were written by a person called Emerson, and of a dull character, but the backs were very beautiful, and Miss Sandal was most awfully pleased with them when she came down to her cottage with her partially repaired brother, who had fallen off the scaffold when treating a bricklayer to tracts.
This is the end of the things we did when we were at Lymchurch in Miss Sandal's house.
It is the last story that the present author means ever to be the author of. So goodbye, if you have got as far as this.
Your affectionate author,
Oswald Bastable.
The Psammead Trilogy
FIVE CHILDREN AND IT