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

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СКАЧАТЬ The turban was fastened with a sparkling brooch with pink stones in it. He looked like a Moorish toreador. Dicky had the scarlet and gold coat, which was the right length when Dora had run a tuck in it.

      Alice had a blue skirt with embroidery of peacock's feathers on it, and a gold and black jacket very short with no sleeves, and a yellow silk handkerchief on her head like Italian peasants, and another handkie round her neck. Dora's skirt was green and her handkerchiefs purple and pink.

      Noël insisted on having his two scarves, one green and one yellow, twisted on his legs like putties, and a red scarf wound round his middle-part, and he stuck a long ostrich feather in his own bicycle cap and said he was a troubadour bard.

      H.O. was able to wear a lady's blouse of mouse-coloured silk, embroidered with poppies. It came down to his knees and a jewelled belt kept it in place.

      We made up our costumes into bundles, and Alice thoughtfully bought a pennyworth of pins. Of course it was idle to suppose that we could go through the village in our gipsy clothes without exciting some remark.

      The more we thought of it the more it seemed as if it would be a good thing to get some way from our village before we began our gipsy career.

      The woman at the sweet shop where Alice got the pins has a donkey and cart, and for two shillings she consented to lend us this, so that some of us could walk while some of us would always be resting in the cart.

      And next morning the weather was bright and blue as ever, and we started. We were beautifully clean, but all our hairs had been arranged with the brush solely, because at the last moment nobody could find it's comb. Mrs. Beale had packed up a jolly sandwichy and apply lunch for us. We told her we were going to gather bluebells in the woods, and of course we meant to do that too.

      The donkey-cart drew up at the door and we started. It was found impossible to get every one into the cart at once, so we agreed to cast lots for who should run behind, and to take it in turns, mile and mile. The lot fell on Dora and H.O., but there was precious little running about it. Anything slower than that donkey Oswald has never known, and when it came to passing its own front door the donkey simply would not. It ended in Oswald getting down and going to the animal's head, and having it out with him, man to man. The donkey was small, but of enormous strength. He set all his four feet firm and leant back—and Oswald set his two feet firm and leant back—so that Oswald and the front part of the donkey formed an angry and contentious letter V. And Oswald gazed in the donkey's eyes in a dauntless manner, and the donkey looked at Oswald as though it thought he was hay or thistles.

      Alice beat the donkey from the cart with a stick that had been given us for the purpose. The rest shouted. But all was in vain. And four people in a motor car stopped it to see the heroic struggle, and laughed till I thought they would have upset their hateful motor. However, it was all for the best, though Oswald did not see it at the time. When they had had enough of laughing they started their machine again, and the noise it made penetrated the donkey's dull intelligence, and he started off without a word—I mean without any warning, and Oswald has only just time to throw himself clear of the wheels before he fell on the ground and rolled over, biting the dust.

      The motor car people behaved as you would expect. But accidents happen even to motor cars, when people laugh too long and too unfeelingly. The driver turned round to laugh, and the motor instantly took the bit between its teeth and bolted into the stone wall of the churchyard. No one was hurt except the motor, but that had to spend the day at the blacksmith's, we heard afterwards. Thus was the outraged Oswald avenged by Fate.

       ALICE BEAT THE DONKEY FROM THE CART. THE REST SHOUTED.

      He was not hurt either—though much the motor people would have cared if he had been—and he caught up with the others at the end of the village, for the donkey's pace had been too good to last, and the triumphal progress was resumed.

      It was some time before we found a wood sufficiently lurking-looking for our secret purposes. There are no woods close to the village. But at last, up by Bonnington, we found one, and tying our noble steed to the sign-post that says how many miles it is to Ashford, we cast a hasty glance round, and finding no one in sight disappeared in the wood with our bundles.

      We went in just ordinary creatures. We came out gipsies of the deepest dye, for we had got a pennorth of walnut stain from Mr. Jameson the builder, and mixed with water—the water we had brought in a medicine-bottle—it was a prime disguise. And we knew it would wash off, unlike the Condy's fluid we once stained ourselves with during a never-to-be-forgotten game of Jungle-Book.

      We had put on all the glorious things we had bagged from Miss Sandal's attic treasures, but still Alice had a small bundle unopened.

      "What's that?" Dora asked.

      "I meant to keep it as a reserve force in case the fortune-telling didn't turn out all our fancy painted it," said Alice; "but I don't mind telling you now."

      She opened the bundle, and there was a tambourine, some black lace, a packet of cigarette papers, and our missing combs.

      "What ever on earth——" Dicky was beginning, but Oswald saw it all. He has a wonderfully keen nose. And he said—

      "Bully for you, Alice. I wish I'd thought it myself."

      Alice was much pleased by this handsome speech.

      "Yes," she said; "perhaps really it would be best to begin with it. It would attract the public's attention, and then we could tell the fortunes. You see," she kindly explained to Dicky and H.O. and Dora, who had not seen it yet—though Noël had, almost as soon as I did—"you see, we'll all play on the combs with the veils over our faces, so that no one can see what our instruments are. Why, they might be mouth-organs for anything any one will know, or some costly instruments from the far-off East, like they play to sultans in zenanas. Let's just try a tune or two before we go on, to be sure that all the combs work right. Dora's has such big teeth, I shouldn't wonder if it wouldn't act at all."

      So we all papered our combs and did "Heroes," but that sounded awful. "The Girl I Left Behind Me" went better, and so did "Bonnie Dundee." But we thought "See the Conquering" or "The Death of Nelson" would be the best to begin with.

      It was beastly hot doing it under the veils, but when Oswald had done one tune without the veil to see how the others looked he could not help owning that the veils did give a hidden mystery that was a stranger to simple combs.

      We were all a bit puffed when we had played for awhile, so we decided that as the donkey seemed calm and was eating grass and resting, we might as well follow his example.

      "We ought not to be too proud to take pattern by the brute creation," said Dora.

      So we had our lunch in the wood. We lighted a little fire of sticks and fir-cones, so as to be as gipsyish as we could, and we sat round the fire. We made a charming picture in our bright clothes, among what would have been our native surroundings if we had been real gipsies, and we knew how nice we looked, and stayed there though the smoke got in our eyes, and everything we ate tasted of it.

      The woods were a little damp, and that was why the fire smoked so. There were the jackets we had cast off when we dressed up, to sit on, and there was a horse-cloth in the cart intended for the donkey's wear, but we decided that our need was greater than its, so we took the blanket to recline on.

      It was as jolly a lunch as ever I remember, and we lingered over that and looking romantic till we could not bear the smoke any more.

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