The Story of the Treasure Seekers<br />Being the Adventures of the Bastable Children in Search of a, E. Nesbit [top ten books to read txt] 📗

supposed to be in the sideboard drawer in the dining-room—and when he got back the others had read most of the printed papers.

‘I don’t think it’s much good, and I don’t think it’s quite nice to sell wine,’ Dora said ‘and besides, it’s not easy to suddenly begin to sell things when you aren’t used to it.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Alice; ‘I believe I could.’ They all looked rather down in the mouth, though, and Oswald asked how you were to make your two pounds a week.

‘Why, you’ve got to get people to taste that stuff in the bottle. It’s sherry—Castilian Amoroso its name is—and then you get them to buy it, and then you write to the people and tell them the other people want the wine, and then for every dozen you sell you get two shillings from the wine people, so if you sell twenty dozen a week you get your two pounds. I don’t think we shall sell as much as that,’ said Dicky.

‘We might not the first week,’ Alice said, ‘but when people found out how nice it was, they would want more and more. And if we only got ten shillings a week it would be something to begin with, wouldn’t it?’

Oswald said he should jolly well think it would, and then Dicky took the cork out with the corkscrew. The cork broke a good deal, and some of the bits went into the bottle. Dora got the medicine glass that has the teaspoons and tablespoons marked on it, and we agreed to have a teaspoonful each, to see what it was like.

‘No one must have more than that,’ Dora said, ‘however nice it is.’

Dora behaved rather as if it were her bottle. I suppose it was, because she had lent the money for it.

Then she measured out the teaspoonful, and she had first go, because of being the eldest. We asked at once what it was like, but Dora could not speak just then.

Then she said, ‘It’s like the tonic Noel had in the spring; but perhaps sherry ought to be like that.’

Then it was Oswald’s turn. He thought it was very burny; but he said nothing. He wanted to see first what the others would say.

Dicky said his was simply beastly, and Alice said Noel could taste next if he liked.

Noel said it was the golden wine of the gods, but he had to put his handkerchief up to his mouth all the same, and I saw the face he made.

Then H. O. had his, and he spat it out in the fire, which was very rude and nasty, and we told him so.

Then it was Alice’s turn. She said, ‘Only half a teaspoonful for me, Dora. We mustn’t use it all up.’ And she tasted it and said nothing.

Then Dicky said: ‘Look here, I chuck this. I’m not going to hawk round such beastly stuff. Any one who likes can have the bottle. Quis?’

And Alice got out ‘Ego’ before the rest of us. Then she said, ‘I know what’s the matter with it. It wants sugar.’

And at once we all saw that that was all there was the matter with the stuff. So we got two lumps of sugar and crushed it on the floor with one of the big wooden bricks till it was powdery, and mixed it with some of the wine up to the tablespoon mark, and it was quite different, and not nearly so nasty.

‘You see it’s all right when you get used to it,’ Dicky said. I think he was sorry he had said ‘Quis?’ in such a hurry.

‘Of course,’ Alice said, ‘it’s rather dusty. We must crush the sugar carefully in clean paper before we put it in the bottle.’

Dora said she was afraid it would be cheating to make one bottle nicer than what people would get when they ordered a dozen bottles, but Alice said Dora always made a fuss about everything, and really it would be quite honest.

‘You see,’ she said, ‘I shall just tell them, quite truthfully, what we have done to it, and when their dozens come they can do it for themselves.’

So then we crushed eight more lumps, very cleanly and carefully between newspapers, and shook it up well in the bottle, and corked it up with a screw of paper, brown and not news, for fear of the poisonous printing ink getting wet and dripping down into the wine and killing people. We made Pincher have a taste, and he sneezed for ever so long, and after that he used to go under the sofa whenever we showed him the bottle.

Then we asked Alice who she would try and sell it to. She said: ‘I shall ask everybody who comes to the house. And while we are doing that, we can be thinking of outside people to take it to. We must be careful: there’s not much more than half of it left, even counting the sugar.’

We did not wish to tell Eliza—I don’t know why. And she opened the door very quickly that day, so that the Taxes and a man who came to our house by mistake for next door got away before Alice had a chance to try them with the Castilian Amoroso. But about five Eliza slipped out for half an hour to see a friend who was making her a hat for Sunday, and while she was gone there was a knock. Alice went, and we looked over the banisters. When she opened the door, she said at once, ‘Will you walk in, please?’ The person at the door said, ‘I called to see your Pa, miss. Is he at home?’

Alice said again, ‘Will you walk in, please?’

Then the person—it sounded like a man—said, ‘He is in, then?’

But Alice only kept on saying, ‘Will you walk in, please?’ so at last the man did, rubbing his boots very loudly on the mat.

Then Alice shut the front door, and we saw that it was the butcher, with an envelope in his hand. He was not dressed in blue, like when he is cutting up the sheep and things in the shop, and he wore knickerbockers. Alice says he came on a bicycle. She led the way into the dining-room, where the Castilian Amoroso bottle and the medicine glass were standing on the table all ready.

The others stayed on the stairs, but Oswald crept down and looked through the door-crack.

‘Please sit down,’ said Alice quite calmly, though she told me afterwards I had no idea how silly she felt. And the butcher sat down. Then Alice stood quite still and said nothing, but she fiddled with the medicine glass and put the screw of brown paper straight in the Castilian bottle.

‘Will you tell your Pa I’d like a word with him?’ the butcher said, when he got tired of saying nothing.

‘He’ll be in very soon, I think,’ Alice said.

And then she stood still again and said nothing. It was beginning to look very idiotic of her, and H. O. laughed. I went back and cuffed him for it quite quietly, and I