Edith Nesbit: Children's Books Collection (Illustrated Edition). Эдит Несбит

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СКАЧАТЬ antiquaries there. It looks a ripping place from the railway."

      It really does. It's a fine big house, and splendid gardens, and a lawn with a sundial, and the tallest trees anywhere about here.

      "But what could we do?" said Dicky. "I don't suppose he'd give us tea," though such, indeed, had been our hospitable conduct to the antiquaries who came to see Albert's uncle.

      "Oh, I don't know," said Alice. "We might dress up for it, and wear spectacles, and we could all read papers. It would be lovely—something to fill up the Christmas holidays—the part before the wedding, I mean. Do let's."

      "All right, I don't mind. I suppose it would be improving," said Dora. "We should have to read a lot of history. You can settle it. I'm going to show Daisy our bridesmaids' dresses."

      It was, alas! too true. Albert's uncle was to be married but shortly after, and it was partly our faults, though that does not come into this story.

      So the two D.'s went to look at the clothes—girls like this—but Alice, who wishes she had never consented to be born a girl, stayed with us, and we had a long and earnest council about it.

      "One thing," said Oswald, "it can't possibly be wrong—so perhaps it won't be amusing."

      "Oh, Oswald!" said Alice, and she spoke rather like Dora.

      "I don't mean what you mean," said Oswald in lofty scorn. "What I mean to say is that when a thing is quite sure to be right, it's not so—well—I mean to say there it is, don't you know; and if it might be wrong, and isn't, it's a score to you; and if it might be wrong, and is—as so often happens—well, you know yourself, adventures sometimes turn out wrong that you didn't think were going to, but seldom, or never, the uninteresting kind, and——"

      Dicky told Oswald to dry up—which, of course, no one stands from a younger brother, but though Oswald explained this at the time, he felt in his heart that he has sometimes said what he meant with more clearness. When Oswald and Dicky had finished, we went on and arranged everything.

      Every one was to write a paper—and read it.

      "If the papers are too long to read while we're there," said Noël, "we can read them in the long winter evenings when we are grouped along the household hearthrug. I shall do my paper in poetry—about Agincourt."

      Some of us thought Agincourt wasn't fair, because no one could be sure about any knight who took part in that well-known conflict having lived in the Red House; but Alice got us to agree, because she said it would be precious dull if we all wrote about nothing but Sir Thomas Whatdoyoucallhim—whose real name in history Oswald said he would find out, and then write his paper on that world-renowned person, who is a household word in all families. Denny said he would write about Charles the First, because they were just doing that part at his school.

      "I shall write about what happened in 1066," said H.O. "I know that."

      Alice said, "If I write a paper it will be about Mary Queen of Scots."

      Dora and Daisy came in just as she said this, and it transpired that this ill-fated but good-looking lady was the only one they either of them wanted to write about. So Alice gave it up to them and settled to do Magna Charta, and they could settle something between themselves for the one who would have to give up Mary Queen of Scots in the end. We all agreed that the story of that lamented wearer of pearls and black velvet would not make enough for two papers.

      Everything was beautifully arranged, when suddenly H.O. said—

      "Supposing he doesn't let us?"

      "Who doesn't let us what?"

      "The Red House man—read papers at his Red House."

      This was, indeed, what nobody had thought of—and even now we did not think any one could be so lost to proper hospitableness as to say no. Yet none of us liked to write and ask. So we tossed up for it, only Dora had feelings about tossing up on Sunday, so we did it with a hymn-book instead of a penny.

      We all won except Noël, who lost, so he said he would do it on Albert's uncle's typewriter, which was on a visit to us at the time, waiting for Mr. Remington to fetch it away to mend the "M." We think it was broken through Albert's uncle writing "Margaret" so often, because it is the name of the lady he was doomed to be married by.

      The girls had got the letter the Maidstone Antiquarian Society and Field Clubs Secretary had sent to Albert's uncle—H.O. said they kept it for a momentum of the day—and we altered the dates and names in blue chalk and put in a piece about might we skate on the moat, and gave it to Noël, who had already begun to make up his poetry about Agincourt, and so had to be shaken before he would attend. And that evening, when Father and our Indian uncle and Albert's uncle were seeing the others on the way to Forest Hill, Noël's poetry and pencil were taken away from him and he was shut up in Father's room with the Remington typewriter, which we had never been forbidden to touch. And I don't think he hurt it much, except quite at the beginning, when he jammed the "S" and the "J" and the thing that means per cent. so that they stuck—and Dicky soon put that right with a screwdriver.

      He did not get on very well, but kept on writing MOR7E HOAS5 or MORD6M HOVCE on new pieces of paper and then beginning again, till the floor was strewn with his remains; so we left him at it, and went and played Celebrated Painters—a game even Dora cannot say anything about on Sunday, considering the Bible kind of pictures most of them painted. And much later, the library door having banged once and the front door twice, Noël came in and said he had posted it, and already he was deep in poetry again, and had to be roused when requisite for bed.

      It was not till next day that he owned that the typewriter had been a fiend in disguise, and that the letter had come out so odd that he could hardly read it himself.

      "The hateful engine of destruction wouldn't answer to the bit in the least," he said, "and I'd used nearly a wastepaper basket of Father's best paper, and I thought he might come in and say something, so I just finished it as well as I could, and I corrected it with the blue chalk—because you'd bagged that B.B. of mine—and I didn't notice what name I'd signed till after I'd licked the stamp."

      The hearts of his kind brothers and sisters sank low. But they kept them up as well as they could, and said—

       IT WAS NOT TILL NEXT DAY THAT HE OWNED THAT THE TYPEWRITER HAD BEEN A FIEND IN DISGUISE.

      "What name did you sign?"

      And Noël said, "Why, Edward Turnbull, of course—like at the end of the real letter. You never crossed it out like you did his address."

      "No," said Oswald witheringly. "You see, I did think, whatever else you didn't know, I did think you knew your own silly name."

      Then Alice said Oswald was unkind, though you see he was not, and she kissed Noël and said she and he would take turns to watch for the postman, so as to get the answer (which of course would be subscribed on the envelope with the name of Turnbull instead of Bastable) before the servant could tell the postman that the name was a stranger to her.

      And next evening it came, and it was very polite and grown-up—and said we should be welcome, and that we might read our papers and skate on the moat. The Red House has a moat, like the Moat House in the country, but not so wild and dangerous. Only we never skated on it because the frost gave out the minute we had got leave to. Such is life, as СКАЧАТЬ