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] 📗

Dicky did not do this. He said—

‘Why, you remember when we first began about treasure-seeking, I said I had thought of something, only I could not tell you because I hadn’t finished thinking about it.’

We said ‘Yes.’

‘Well, this liquorice water—’

‘Tea,’ said Alice softly.

‘Well, tea then—made me think.’ He was going on to say what it made him think, but Noel interrupted and cried out, ‘I say; let’s finish off this old tea-party and have a council of war.’

So we got out the flags and the wooden sword and the drum, and Oswald beat it while the girls washed up, till Eliza came up to say she had the jumping toothache, and the noise went through her like a knife. So of course Oswald left off at once. When you are polite to Oswald he never refuses to grant your requests.

When we were all dressed up we sat down round the camp fire, and Dicky began again.

‘Every one in the world wants money. Some people get it. The people who get it are the ones who see things. I have seen one thing.’

Dicky stopped and smoked the pipe of peace. It is the pipe we did bubbles with in the summer, and somehow it has not got broken yet. We put tea-leaves in it for the pipe of peace, but the girls are not allowed to have any. It is not right to let girls smoke. They get to think too much of themselves if you let them do everything the same as men. Oswald said, ‘Out with it.’

‘I see that glass bottles only cost a penny. H. O., if you dare to snigger I’ll send you round selling old bottles, and you shan’t have any sweets except out of the money you get for them. And the same with you, Noel.’

‘Noel wasn’t sniggering,’ said Alice in a hurry; ‘it is only his taking so much interest in what you were saying makes him look like that. Be quiet, H. O., and don’t you make faces, either. Do go on, Dicky dear.’

So Dicky went on.

‘There must be hundreds of millions of bottles of medicines sold every year. Because all the different medicines say, “Thousands of cures daily,” and if you only take that as two thousand, which it must be, at least, it mounts up. And the people who sell them must make a great deal of money by them because they are nearly always two-and-ninepence the bottle, and three-and-six for one nearly double the size. Now the bottles, as I was saying, don’t cost anything like that.’

‘It’s the medicine costs the money,’ said Dora; ‘look how expensive jujubes are at the chemist’s, and peppermints too.’

‘That’s only because they’re nice,’ Dicky explained; ‘nasty things are not so dear. Look what a lot of brimstone you get for a penny, and the same with alum. We would not put the nice kinds of chemist’s things in our medicine.’

Then he went on to tell us that when we had invented our medicine we would write and tell the editor about it, and he would put it in the paper, and then people would send their two-and-ninepence and three-and-six for the bottle nearly double the size, and then when the medicine had cured them they would write to the paper and their letters would be printed, saying how they had been suffering for years, and never thought to get about again, but thanks to the blessing of our ointment—’

Dora interrupted and said, ‘Not ointment—it’s so messy.’ And Alice thought so too. And Dicky said he did not mean it, he was quite decided to let it be in bottles. So now it was all settled, and we did not see at the time that this would be a sort of going into business, but afterwards when Albert’s uncle showed us we saw it, and we were sorry. We only had to invent the medicine. You might think that was easy, because of the number of them you see every day in the paper, but it is much harder than you think. First we had to decide what sort of illness we should like to cure, and a ‘heated discussion ensued’, like in Parliament.

Dora wanted it to be something to make the complexion of dazzling fairness, but we remembered how her face came all red and rough when she used the Rosabella soap that was advertised to make the darkest complexion fair as the lily, and she agreed that perhaps it was better not. Noel wanted to make the medicine first and then find out what it would cure, but Dicky thought not, because there are so many more medicines than there are things the matter with us, so it would be easier to choose the disease first. Oswald would have liked wounds. I still think it was a good idea, but Dicky said, ‘Who has wounds, especially now there aren’t any wars? We shouldn’t sell a bottle a day!’ So Oswald gave in because he knows what manners are, and it was Dicky’s idea. H. O. wanted a cure for the uncomfortable feeling that they give you powders for, but we explained to him that grown-up people do not have this feeling, however much they eat, and he agreed. Dicky said he did not care a straw what the loathsome disease was, as long as we hurried up and settled on something. Then Alice said—

‘It ought to be something very common, and only one thing. Not the pains in the back and all the hundreds of things the people have in somebody’s syrup. What’s the commonest thing of all?’

And at once we said, ‘Colds.’

So that was settled.

Then we wrote a label to go on the bottle. When it was written it would not go on the vinegar bottle that we had got, but we knew it would go small when it was printed. It was like this:

BASTABLE’S CERTAIN CURE FOR COLDS Coughs, Asthma, Shortness of Breath, and all infections of the Chest One dose gives immediate relief It will cure your cold in one bottle Especially the larger size at 3s. 6d. Order at once of the Makers To prevent disappointment Makers: D., O., R., A., N., and H. O. BASTABLE 150, Lewisham Road, S.E. (A halfpenny for all bottles returned) ——————

Of course the next thing was for one of us to catch a cold and try what cured it; we all wanted to be the one, but it was Dicky’s idea, and he said he was not going to be done out of it, so we let him. It was only fair. He left off his undershirt that very day, and next morning he stood in a draught in his nightgown for quite a long time. And we damped his day-shirt with the nail-brush before he put it on. But all was vain. They always tell you that these things will give you cold, but we found it was not so.

So then we all went over to the Park, and Dicky went right into the water with his boots on, and stood there as long as he could bear it, for it was rather cold, and we stood