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] 📗

and cheered him on. He walked home in his wet clothes, which they say is a sure thing, but it was no go, though his boots were quite spoiled. And three days after Noel began to cough and sneeze.

So then Dicky said it was not fair.

‘I can’t help it,’ Noel said. ‘You should have caught it yourself, then it wouldn’t have come to me.’

And Alice said she had known all along Noel oughtn’t to have stood about on the bank cheering in the cold.

Noel had to go to bed, and then we began to make the medicines; we were sorry he was out of it, but he had the fun of taking the things.

We made a great many medicines. Alice made herb tea. She got sage and thyme and savory and marjoram and boiled them all up together with salt and water, but she would put parsley in too. Oswald is sure parsley is not a herb. It is only put on the cold meat and you are not supposed to eat it. It kills parrots to eat parsley, I believe. I expect it was the parsley that disagreed so with Noel. The medicine did not seem to do the cough any good.

Oswald got a pennyworth of alum, because it is so cheap, and some turpentine which every one knows is good for colds, and a little sugar and an aniseed ball. These were mixed in a bottle with water, but Eliza threw it away and said it was nasty rubbish, and I hadn’t any money to get more things with.

Dora made him some gruel, and he said it did his chest good; but of course that was no use, because you cannot put gruel in bottles and say it is medicine. It would not be honest, and besides nobody would believe you.

Dick mixed up lemon-juice and sugar and a little of the juice of the red flannel that Noel’s throat was done up in. It comes out beautifully in hot water. Noel took this and he liked it. Noel’s own idea was liquorice-water, and we let him have it, but it is too plain and black to sell in bottles at the proper price.

Noel liked H. O.‘s medicine the best, which was silly of him, because it was only peppermints melted in hot water, and a little cobalt to make it look blue. It was all right, because H. O.‘s paint-box is the French kind, with Couleurs non Veneneuses on it. This means you may suck your brushes if you want to, or even your paints if you are a very little boy.

It was rather jolly while Noel had that cold. He had a fire in his bedroom which opens out of Dicky’s and Oswald’s, and the girls used to read aloud to Noel all day; they will not read aloud to you when you are well. Father was away at Liverpool on business, and Albert’s uncle was at Hastings. We were rather glad of this, because we wished to give all the medicines a fair trial, and grown-ups are but too fond of interfering. As if we should have given him anything poisonous!

His cold went on—it was bad in his head, but it was not one of the kind when he has to have poultices and can’t sit up in bed. But when it had been in his head nearly a week, Oswald happened to tumble over Alice on the stairs. When we got up she was crying.

‘Don’t cry silly!’ said Oswald; ‘you know I didn’t hurt you.’ I was very sorry if I had hurt her, but you ought not to sit on the stairs in the dark and let other people tumble over you. You ought to remember how beastly it is for them if they do hurt you.

‘Oh, it’s not that, Oswald,’ Alice said. ‘Don’t be a pig! I am so miserable. Do be kind to me.’

So Oswald thumped her on the back and told her to shut up.

‘It’s about Noel,’ she said. ‘I’m sure he’s very ill; and playing about with medicines is all very well, but I know he’s ill, and Eliza won’t send for the doctor: she says it’s only a cold. And I know the doctor’s bills are awful. I heard Father telling Aunt Emily so in the summer. But he is ill, and perhaps he’ll die or something.’

Then she began to cry again. Oswald thumped her again, because he knows how a good brother ought to behave, and said, ‘Cheer up.’ If we had been in a book Oswald would have embraced his little sister tenderly, and mingled his tears with hers.

Then Oswald said, ‘Why not write to Father?’

And she cried more and said, ‘I’ve lost the paper with the address. H. O. had it to draw on the back of, and I can’t find it now; I’ve looked everywhere. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. No I won’t. But I’m going out. Don’t tell the others. And I say, Oswald, do pretend I’m in if Eliza asks. Promise.’

‘Tell me what you’re going to do,’ I said. But she said ‘No’; and there was a good reason why not. So I said I wouldn’t promise if it came to that. Of course I meant to all right. But it did seem mean of her not to tell me.

So Alice went out by the side door while Eliza was setting tea, and she was a long time gone; she was not in to tea. When Eliza asked Oswald where she was he said he did not know, but perhaps she was tidying her corner drawer. Girls often do this, and it takes a long time. Noel coughed a good bit after tea, and asked for Alice.

Oswald told him she was doing something and it was a secret. Oswald did not tell any lies even to save his sister. When Alice came back she was very quiet, but she whispered to Oswald that it was all right. When it was rather late Eliza said she was going out to post a letter. This always takes her an hour, because she will go to the post-office across the Heath instead of the pillar-box, because once a boy dropped fusees in our pillar-box and burnt the letters. It was not any of us; Eliza told us about it. And when there was a knock at the door a long time after we thought it was Eliza come back, and that she had forgotten the back-door key. We made H. O. go down to open the door, because it is his place to run about: his legs are younger than ours. And we heard boots on the stairs besides H. O.‘s, and we listened spellbound till the door opened, and it was Albert’s uncle. He looked very tired.

‘I am glad you’ve come,’ Oswald said. ‘Alice began to think Noel—’

Alice stopped me, and her face was very red, her nose was shiny too, with having cried so much before tea.

She said, ‘I only said I thought Noel ought to have the doctor. Don’t you think he ought?’ She got hold of Albert’s uncle and held on to him.

‘Let’s have a look at you, young man,’ said Albert’s uncle, and he sat down on the edge of the bed. It is a rather shaky bed, the bar that keeps it steady underneath got broken when we were playing burglars last winter. It was our crowbar. He began to feel Noel’s pulse, and went on talking.

‘It was revealed to the Arab physician as he made merry