The Greatest Works of E. Nesbit (220+ Titles in One Illustrated Edition). Эдит Несбит
can we possibly prevent their getting to Maidstone?" Dicky said. "Did you notice the red cuffs on their uniforms? Taken from the bodies of dead English soldiers, I shouldn't wonder."
"If they're the old Greek kind of dragon's-teeth soldiers they ought to fight each other to death," Noël said; "at least, if we had a helmet to throw among them."
But none of us had, and it was decided that it would be no use for H. O. to go back and throw his straw hat at them, though he wanted to.
Denny said, suddenly:
"Couldn't we alter the sign-posts, so that they wouldn't know the way to Maidstone?"
Oswald saw that this was the time for true generalship to be shown. He said:
"Fetch all the tools out of your chest—Dicky go too, there's a good chap, and don't let him cut his legs with the saw." He did once, tumbling over it. "Meet us at the cross-roads, you know, where we had the Benevolent Bar. Courage and despatch, and look sharp about it."
When they had gone we hastened to the cross-roads, and there a great idea occurred to Oswald. He used the forces at his command so ably that in a very short time the board in the field which says "No thoroughfare. Trespassers will be prosecuted" was set up in the middle of the road to Maidstone. We put stones, from a heap by the road, behind it to make it stand up.
Then Dicky and Denny came back, and Dicky shinned up the sign-post and sawed off the two arms, and we nailed them up wrong, so that it said "To Maidstone" on the Dover Road, and "To Dover" on the road to Maidstone. We decided to leave the Trespassers board on the real Maidstone road, as an extra guard.
Then we settled to start at once to warn Maidstone.
Some of us did not want the girls to go, but it would have been unkind to say so. However, there was at least one breast that felt a pang of joy when Dora and Daisy gave out that they would rather stay where they were and tell anybody who came by which was the real road.
"Because it would be so dreadful if some one was going to buy pigs or fetch a doctor or anything in a hurry and then found they had got to Dover instead of where they wanted to go to," Dora said. But when it came to dinner-time they went home, so that they were entirely out of it. This often happens to them by some strange fatalism.
We left Martha to take care of the two girls, and Lady and Pincher went with us. It was getting late in the day, but I am bound to remember no one said anything about their dinners, whatever they may have thought. We cannot always help our thoughts. We happened to know it was roast rabbits and currant jelly that day.
We walked two and two, and sang the "British Grenadiers" and "Soldiers of the Queen" so as to be as much part of the British army as possible. The Cauldron-Man had said the English were the other side of the hill. But we could not see any scarlet anywhere, though we looked for it as carefully as if we had been fierce bulls.
But suddenly we went round a turn in the road and came plump into a lot of soldiers. Only they were not red-coats. They were dressed in gray and silver. And it was a sort of furzy-common place, and three roads branching out. The men were lying about, with some of their belts undone, smoking pipes and cigarettes.
"It's not British soldiers," Alice said. "Oh, dear, oh, dear, I'm afraid it's more enemy. You didn't sow the army-seed anywhere else, did you, H. O., dear?"
H. O. was positive he hadn't. "But perhaps lots more came up where we did sow them," he said; "they're all over England by now, very likely. I don't know how many men can grow out of one dragon's tooth."
Then Noël said, "It was my doing, anyhow, and I'm not afraid," and he walked straight up to the nearest soldier, who was cleaning his pipe with a piece of grass, and said:
"Please, are you the enemy?" The man said:
"No, young commander-in-chief, we're the English."
Then Oswald took command.
"Where is the general?" he said.
"We're out of generals just now, field-marshal," the man said, and his voice was a gentleman's voice. "Not a single one in stock. We might suit you in majors now—and captains are quite cheap. Competent corporals going for a song. And we have a very nice colonel, too—quiet to ride or drive."
Oswald does not mind chaff at proper times. But this was not one.
"You seem to be taking it very easy," he said, with disdainful expression.
"This is an easy," said the gray soldier, sucking at his pipe to see if it would draw.
"I suppose you don't care if the enemy gets into Maidstone or not!" exclaimed Oswald, bitterly. "If I were a soldier I'd rather die than be beaten."
The soldier saluted. "Good old patriotic sentiment," he said, smiling at the heartfelt boy. But Oswald could bear no more.
"Which is the colonel?" he asked.
"Over there—near the gray horse."
"The one lighting a cigarette?" H. O. asked.
"Yes—but I say, kiddie, he won't stand any jaw. There's not an ounce of vice about him, but he's peppery. He might kick out. You'd better bunk."
"Better what?" asked H. O.
"Bunk, bottle, scoot, skip, vanish, exit," said the soldier.
"That's what you'd do when the fighting begins," said H. O. He is often rude like that—but it was what we all thought, all the same. The soldier only laughed.
A spirited but hasty altercation among ourselves in whispers ended in our allowing Alice to be the one to speak to the colonel. It was she who wanted to. "However peppery he is he won't kick a girl," she said, and perhaps this was true.
But of course we all went with her. So there were six of us to stand in front of the colonel. And as we went along we agreed that we would salute him on the word three. So when we got near, Dick said, "One, two, three," and we all saluted very well—except H. O., who chose that minute to trip over a rifle a soldier had left lying about, and was only saved from falling by a man in a cocked hat who caught him deftly by the back of his jacket and stood him up on his legs.
"Let go, can't you," said H. O. "Are you the general?"
Before the Cocked Hat had time to frame a reply, Alice spoke to the colonel. I knew what she meant to say, because she had told me as we threaded our way among the resting soldiery. What she really said was:
"Oh, how can you!"
"How can I what?" said the colonel, rather crossly.
"Why, smoke?" said Alice.
"My good children, if you're an infant Band of Hope, let me recommend you to play in some other back yard," said the Cocked-Hatted Man.
H. O. said, "Band of Hope yourself"—but no one noticed it.
"We're not a Band of Hope," said Noël. "We're British, and the man over there told us you are. And Maidstone's in danger, and the enemy not a mile off, and you stand smoking." Noël was standing crying, himself, or something very like it.
"It's quite true," Alice said.
The colonel said, "Fiddle de dee."
But the Cocked-Hatted Man said, "What was the enemy like?"
We told him exactly. And even the colonel then owned there might be something in it.
"Can you show me the place where they are on the map?" he asked.
"Not on the map, we can't," said Dicky; "at least, I don't think so, but on the ground we could. We could take you there in a quarter of an hour."
The Cocked-Hatted One looked at the colonel, who returned his scrutiny; then he shrugged his shoulders.
"Well,