The House of Arden, E. Nesbit [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

stools in a room that was, and was not, the parlour in which they had had that hopeful eggy breakfast, each holding a marbled side of Dr. Watts’s Hymns.

“You will commit to memory the whole of the one commencing⁠—

“ ‘Happy the child whose youngest years
Receive instruction well,’

And you will be deprived of pudding with your dinners,” remarked the old lady.

“I say!” murmured Edred.

“Oh, hush!” said Elfrida, as the old lady carried her cambric frills to the window-seat.

“But I won’t stand it,” whispered Edred. “I’ll tell Aunt Edith⁠—and who’s she anyhow?” He glowered at the old lady across the speckless carpet.

“Oh, don’t you understand?” Elfrida whispered back. “We’ve got turned into somebody else, and she’s our grandmamma.”

I don’t know how it was that Elfrida saw this and Edred didn’t. Perhaps because she was a girl, perhaps because she was two years older than he. They looked hopelessly at the bright sunlight outside, and then at the dull, small print of the marble-backed book.

“Edred,” said the old lady, “hand me the paper.” She pointed at the sheet on the brightly polished table. He got up and carried it across to her, and as he did so he glanced at it and saw:⁠—

The Times

June 16, 1807

And then he knew, as well as Elfrida did, exactly where he was, and when.

III In Boney’s Times

Edred crept back to his stool, and took his corner of the marble-backed book of Dr. Watts with fingers that trembled. If you are inclined to despise him, consider that it was his first real adventure. Even in ordinary life, and in the time he naturally lived in, nothing particularly thrilling had ever happened to happen to him until he became Lord Arden and explored Arden Castle. And now he and Elfrida had not only discovered a disused house and a wonderful garret with chests in it, but had been clothed by mysterious pigeon noises in clothes belonging to another age. But, you will say, pigeon noises can’t clothe you in anything, whatever it belongs to. Well, that was just what Edred told himself at the time. And yet it was certain that they did. This sort of thing it was that made the whole business so mysterious. Further, he and his sister had managed somehow to go back a hundred years. He knew this quite well, though he had no evidence but that one sheet of newspaper. He felt it, as they say, in his bones. I don’t know how it was, perhaps the air felt a hundred years younger. Shepherds and country people can tell the hour of night by the feel of the air. So perhaps very sensitive people can tell the century by much the same means. These, of course, would be the people to whom adventures in times past or present would be likely to happen. We must always consider what is likely, especially when we are reading stories about unusual things.

“I say,” Edred whispered presently, “we’ve got back to 1807. That paper says so.”

“I know,” Elfrida whispered. So she must have had more of that like-shepherds-telling-the-time-of-night feeling than even her brother.

“I wish I could remember what was happening in history in 1807,” said Elfrida, “but we never get past Edward IV. We always have to go back to the Saxons because of the new girls.”

“But we’re not in history. We’re at Arden,” Edred said.

“We are in history. It’ll be awful not even knowing who’s king,” said Elfrida; and then the stiff old lady looked up over very large spectacles with thick silver rims, and said⁠—

“Silence!”

Presently she laid down the Times and got ink and paper⁠—no envelopes⁠—and began to write. She was finishing a letter, the large sheet was almost covered on one side. When she had covered it quite, she turned it round and began to write across it. She used a white goose-quill pen. The inkstand was of china, with gold scrolls and cupids and wreaths of roses painted on it. On one side was the inkwell, on the other a thing like a china pepper-pot, and in front a tray for the pens and sealing-wax to lie in. Both children now knew their unpleasant poem by heart; so they watched the old lady, who was grandmother to the children she supposed them to be. When she had finished writing she sprinkled some dust out of the pepper-pot over the letter to dry the ink. There was no blotting-paper to be seen. Then she folded the sheet, and sealed it with a silver seal from the pen-tray, and wrote the address on the outside. Then⁠—

“Have you got your task?” she asked.

“Here it is,” said Elfrida, holding up the book.

“No impudence, miss!” said the grandmother sternly. “You very well know that I mean, have you got it by rote yet? And you know, too, that you should say ‘ma’am’ whenever you address me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Elfrida; and this was taken to mean that she knew her task.

“Then come and say it. No, no; you know better than that. Feet in the first position, hands behind you, heads straight, and do not fidget with your feet.”

So then first Elfrida and then Edred recited the melancholy verses.

“Now,” said the old lady, “you may go and play in the garden.”

“Mayn’t we take your letter to the post?” Elfrida asked.

“Yes; but you are not to stay in the ‘George’ bar, mind, not even if Mrs. Skinner should invite you. Just hand her the letter and come out. Shut the door softly, and do not shuffle with your feet.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Elfrida; and on that they got out.

“They’ll find us out⁠—bound to,” said Edred; “we don’t know a single thing about anything. I don’t know where the ‘George’ is, or where to get a stamp, or anything.”

“We must find someone we can trust, and tell them the truth,” said Elfrida.

“There isn’t anyone,” said Edred, “that I’d trust. You can’t trust the sort of people who stick this sort of baby flummery round