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

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СКАЧАТЬ now, at the eleventh hour, turn to account these wasted lives of ours, and seek some occupation at once improving and agreeable?'

      "'I do not quite follow your meaning, dear sister,' replied the cleverest of her brothers, on whose brow—"

      It's no use. I can't write like these books. I wonder how the books' authors can keep it up.

      What really happened was that we were all eating black currants in the orchard, out of a cabbage leaf, and Alice said:

      "I say, look here, let's do something. It's simply silly to waste a day like this. It's just on eleven. Come on!"

      And Oswald said, "Where to?"

      This was the beginning of it.

      The moat that is all round our house is fed by streams. One of them is a sort of open overflow pipe from a good-sized stream that flows at the other side of the orchard.

      It was this stream that Alice meant when she said:

      "Why not go and discover the source of the Nile?"

      Of course Oswald knows quite well that the source of the real live Egyptian Nile is no longer buried in that mysteriousness where it lurked undisturbed for such a long time. But he was not going to say so. It is a great thing to know when not to say things.

      "Why not have it an arctic expedition?" said Dicky; "then we could take an ice-axe and live on blubber and things. Besides, it sounds cooler."

      "Vote! vote!" cried Oswald. So we did.

      Oswald, Alice, Noël, and Denny voted for the river of the ibis and the crocodile. Dicky, H. O., and the other girls for the region of perennial winter and rich blubber.

      So Alice said, "We can decide as we go. Let's start, anyway."

      The question of supplies had now to be gone into. Everybody wanted to take something different, and nobody thought the other people's things would be the slightest use. It is sometimes thus even with grown-up expeditions. So then Oswald, who is equal to the hardest emergency that ever emerged yet, said:

      "Let's each get what we like. The secret storehouse can be the shed in the corner of the stable-yard where we got the door for the raft. Then the captain can decide who's to take what."

      This was done. You may think it but the work of a moment to fit out an expedition, but this is not so, especially when you know not whether your exploring party is speeding to Central Africa or merely to the world of icebergs and the polar bear.

      Dicky wished to take the wood-axe, the coal hammer, a blanket, and a mackintosh.

      H. O. brought a large faggot in case we had to light fires, and a pair of old skates he had happened to notice in the box-room, in case the expedition turned out icy.

      Noël had nicked a dozen boxes of matches, a spade, and a trowel, and had also obtained—I know not by what means—a jar of pickled onions.

      Denny had a walking-stick—we can't break him of walking with it—a book to read in case he got tired of being a discoverer, a butterfly net and a box with cork in it, a tennis-ball, if we happened to want to play rounders in the pauses of exploring, two towels and an umbrella in the event of camping or if the river got big enough to bathe in or to be fallen into.

      Alice had a comforter for Noël in case we got late, a pair of scissors and needle and cotton, two whole candles in case of caves. And she had thoughtfully brought the table-cloth off the small table in the dining-room, so that we could make all the things up into one bundle and take it in turns to carry it.

      Oswald had fastened his master mind entirely on grub. Nor had the others neglected this.

      All the stores for the expedition were put down on the table-cloth and the corners tied up. Then it was more than even Oswald's muscley arms could raise from the ground, so we decided not to take it, but only the best-selected grub. The rest we hid in the straw loft, for there are many ups and downs in life, and grub is grub at any time, and so are stores of all kinds. The pickled onions we had to leave, but not forever.

      Then Dora and Daisy came along with their arms round each other's necks as usual, like a picture on a grocer's almanac, and said they weren't coming.

      It was, as I have said, a blazing hot day, and there were differences of opinion among the explorers about what eatables we ought to have taken, and H. O. had lost one of his garters and wouldn't let Alice tie it up with her handkerchief, which the gentle sister was quite willing to do. So it was a rather gloomy expedition that set off that bright sunny day to seek the source of the river where Cleopatra sailed in Shakespeare (or the frozen plains Mr. Nansen wrote that big book about).

      But the balmy calm of peaceful nature soon made the others less cross—Oswald had not been cross exactly, but only disinclined to do anything the others wanted—and by the time we had followed the stream a little way, and had seen a water-rat and shied a stone or two at him, harmony was restored. We did not hit the rat.

      You will understand that we were not the sort of people to have lived so long near a stream without plumbing its depths. Indeed, it was the same stream the sheep took its daring jump into the day we had the circus. And of course we had often paddled in it—in the shallower parts. But now our hearts were set on exploring. At least they ought to have been, but when we got to the place where the stream goes under a wooden sheep-bridge, Dicky cried, "A camp! a camp!" and we were all glad to sit down at once. Not at all like real explorers, who know no rest, day or night, till they have got there (whether it's the north pole, or the central point of the part marked "Desert of Sahara" on old-fashioned maps).

      The food supplies obtained by various members were good, and plenty of it. Cake, hard eggs, sausage-rolls, currants, lemon cheese-cakes, raisins, and cold apple dumplings. It was all very decent, but Oswald could not help feeling that the source of the Nile (or north pole) was a long way off, and perhaps nothing much when you got there.

      So he was not wholly displeased when Denny said, as he lay kicking into the bank when the things to eat were all gone:

      "I believe this is clay: did you ever make huge platters and bowls out of clay and dry them in the sun? Some people did in a book called Foul Play, and I believe they baked turtles, or oysters, or something, at the same time."

      He took up a bit of clay and began to mess it about, like you do putty when you get hold of a bit. And at once the heavy gloom that had hung over the explorers became expelled, and we all got under the shadow of the bridge and messed about with clay.

      "It will be jolly!" Alice said, "and we can give the huge platters to poor cottagers who are short of the usual sorts of crockery. That would really be a very golden deed."

      It is harder than you would think when you read about it, to make huge platters with clay. It flops about as soon as you get it any size, unless you keep it much too thick, and then when you turn up the edges they crack. Yet we did not mind the trouble. And we had all got our shoes and stockings off. It is impossible to go on being cross when your feet are in cold water; and there is something in the smooth messiness of clay, and not minding how dirty you get, that would soothe the savagest breast that ever beat.

      After a bit, though, we gave up the idea of the huge platter and tried little things. We made some platters—they were like flower-pot saucers; and Alice made a bowl by doubling up her fists and getting Noël to slab the clay on outside. Then they smoothed the thing inside and СКАЧАТЬ