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] 📗

But Alice did, and it roused her from her stupor. She spoke suddenly, very fast indeed—so fast that I knew she had made up what she was going to say before. She had got most of it out of the circular.

She said, ‘I want to call your attention to a sample of sherry wine I have here. It is called Castilian something or other, and at the price it is unequalled for flavour and bouquet.’

The butcher said, ‘Well—I never!’

And Alice went on, ‘Would you like to taste it?’

‘Thank you very much, I’m sure, miss,’ said the butcher.

Alice poured some out.

The butcher tasted a very little. He licked his lips, and we thought he was going to say how good it was. But he did not. He put down the medicine glass with nearly all the stuff left in it (we put it back in the bottle afterwards to save waste) and said, ‘Excuse me, miss, but isn’t it a little sweet?—for sherry I mean?’

‘The Real isn’t,’ said Alice. ‘If you order a dozen it will come quite different to that—we like it best with sugar. I wish you would order some.’ The butcher asked why.

Alice did not speak for a minute, and then she said—

‘I don’t mind telling you: you are in business yourself, aren’t you? We are trying to get people to buy it, because we shall have two shillings for every dozen we can make any one buy. It’s called a purr something.’

‘A percentage. Yes, I see,’ said the butcher, looking at the hole in the carpet.

‘You see there are reasons,’ Alice went on, ‘why we want to make our fortunes as quickly as we can.’

‘Quite so,’ said the butcher, and he looked at the place where the paper is coming off the wall.

‘And this seems a good way,’ Alice went on. ‘We paid two shillings for the sample and instructions, and it says you can make two pounds a week easily in your leisure time.’

‘I’m sure I hope you may, miss,’ said the butcher. And Alice said again would he buy some?

‘Sherry is my favourite wine,’ he said. Alice asked him to have some more to drink.

‘No, thank you, miss,’ he said; ‘it’s my favourite wine, but it doesn’t agree with me; not the least bit. But I’ve an uncle drinks it. Suppose I ordered him half a dozen for a Christmas present? Well, miss, here’s the shilling commission, anyway,’ and he pulled out a handful of money and gave her the shilling.

‘But I thought the wine people paid that,’ Alice said.

But the butcher said not on half-dozens they didn’t. Then he said he didn’t think he’d wait any longer for Father—but would Alice ask Father to write him?

Alice offered him the sherry again, but he said something about ‘Not for worlds!’—and then she let him out and came back to us with the shilling, and said, ‘How’s that?’

And we said ‘A1.’

And all the evening we talked of our fortune that we had begun to make.

Nobody came next day, but the day after a lady came to ask for money to build an orphanage for the children of dead sailors. And we saw her. I went in with Alice. And when we had explained to her that we had only a shilling and we wanted it for something else, Alice suddenly said, ‘Would you like some wine?’

And the lady said, ‘Thank you very much,’ but she looked surprised.

She was not a young lady, and she had a mantle with beads, and the beads had come off in places—leaving a browny braid showing, and she had printed papers about the dead sailors in a sealskin bag, and the seal had come off in places, leaving the skin bare. We gave her a tablespoonful of the wine in a proper wine-glass out of the sideboard, because she was a lady. And when she had tasted it she got up in a very great hurry, and shook out her dress and snapped her bag shut, and said, ‘You naughty, wicked children! What do you mean by playing a trick like this? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! I shall write to your Mamma about it. You dreadful little girl!—you might have poisoned me. But your Mamma...’

Then Alice said, ‘I’m very sorry; the butcher liked it, only he said it was sweet. And please don’t write to Mother. It makes Father so unhappy when letters come for her!’—and Alice was very near crying.

‘What do you mean, you silly child?’ said the lady, looking quite bright and interested. ‘Why doesn’t your Father like your Mother to have letters—eh?’

And Alice said, ‘OH, you...!’ and began to cry, and bolted out of the room.

Then I said, ‘Our Mother is dead, and will you please go away now?’

The lady looked at me a minute, and then she looked quite different, and she said, ‘I’m very sorry. I didn’t know. Never mind about the wine. I daresay your little sister meant it kindly.’ And she looked round the room just like the butcher had done. Then she said again, ‘I didn’t know—I’m very sorry...’

So I said, ‘Don’t mention it,’ and shook hands with her, and let her out. Of course we couldn’t have asked her to buy the wine after what she’d said. But I think she was not a bad sort of person. I do like a person to say they’re sorry when they ought to be—especially a grown-up. They do it so seldom. I suppose that’s why we think so much of it.

But Alice and I didn’t feel jolly for ever so long afterwards. And when I went back into the dining-room I saw how different it was from when Mother was here, and we are different, and Father is different, and nothing is like it was. I am glad I am not made to think about it every day.

I went and found Alice, and told her what the lady had said, and when she had finished crying we put away the bottle and said we would not try to sell any more to people who came. And we did not tell the others—we only said the lady did not buy any—but we went up on the Heath, and some soldiers went by and there was a Punch-and-judy show, and when we came back we were better.

The bottle got quite dusty where we had put it, and perhaps the dust of ages would have laid thick and heavy on it, only a clergyman called when we were all out. He was not our own clergyman—Mr Bristow is our own clergyman, and we all love him, and we would not try to sell sherry to people we like, and make two pounds a week out of them in our spare time. It was another clergyman, just a stray one; and he asked Eliza if the dear children would not like to come to his little Sunday school. We always spend Sunday afternoons with Father. But as he had left the