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      The Poor and Needy

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      "What shall we do to-day, kiddies?" said Mrs. Bax. We had discovered her true nature but three days ago, and already she had taken us out in a sailing-boat and in a motor car, had given us sweets every day, and taught us eleven new games that we had not known before; and only four of the new games were rotters. How seldom can as much be said for the games of a grown-up, however gifted!

      The day was one of cloudless blue perfectness, and we were all basking on the beach. We had all bathed. Mrs. Bax said we might. There are points about having a grown-up with you, if it is the right kind. You can then easily get it to say "Yes" to what you want, and after that, if anything goes wrong it is their fault, and you are pure from blame. But nothing had gone wrong with the bathe, and, so far, we were all alive, and not cold at all, except our fingers and feet.

      "What would you like to do?" asked Mrs. Bax. We were far away from human sight along the beach, and Mrs. Bax was smoking cigarettes as usual.

      "I don't know," we all said politely. But H.O. said—

      "What about poor Miss Sandal?"

      "Why poor?" asked Mrs. Bax.

      "Because she is," said H.O.

      "But how? What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Bax.

      "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 СКАЧАТЬ