Five Children and It, E. Nesbit [good summer reads TXT] 📗

end. So he stood up, and squared his shoulders and tried to look noble, like the boys in books that no one can look in the face of and doubt that they come of brave and noble families and will be faithful to the death, and he pulled out the soda-water syphon and said⁠—

“Well, there you are, then.”

There was a silence. Cyril went on⁠—there was nothing else for it⁠—

“Yes, we took this out of your larder, and some chicken and tongue and bread. We were very hungry, and we didn’t take the custard or jam. We only took bread and meat and water⁠—and we couldn’t help its being the soda kind⁠—just the necessaries of life; and we left half-a-crown to pay for it, and we left a letter. And we’re very sorry. And my father will pay a fine or anything you like, but don’t send us to prison. Mother would be so vexed. You know what you said about not being a disgrace. Well, don’t you go and do it to us⁠—that’s all! We’re as sorry as we can be. There!”

“However did you get up to the larder window?” said Mrs. Vicar.

“I can’t tell you that,” said Cyril firmly.

“Is this the whole truth you’ve been telling me?” asked the clergyman.

“No,” answered Jane suddenly; “it’s all true, but it’s not the whole truth. We can’t tell you that. It’s no good asking. Oh, do forgive us and take us home!” She ran to the Vicar’s wife and threw her arms round her. The Vicar’s wife put her arms round Jane, and the keeper whispered behind his hand to the Vicar⁠—

“They’re all right, sir⁠—I expect it’s a pal they’re standing by. Someone put ’em up to it, and they won’t peach. Game little kids.”

“Tell me,” said the Vicar kindly, “are you screening someone else? Had anyone else anything to do with this?”

“Yes,” said Anthea, thinking of the Psammead; “but it wasn’t their fault.”

“Very well, my dears,” said the Vicar, “then let’s say no more about it. Only just tell us why you wrote such an odd letter.”

“I don’t know,” said Cyril. “You see, Anthea wrote it in such a hurry, and it really didn’t seem like stealing then. But afterwards, when we found we couldn’t get down off the church-tower, it seemed just exactly like it. We are all very sorry⁠—”

“Say no more about it,” said the Vicar’s wife; “but another time just think before you take other people’s tongues. Now⁠—some cake and milk before you go home?”

When Andrew came to say that the horse was put to, and was he expected to be led alone into the trap that he had plainly seen from the first, he found the children eating cake and drinking milk and laughing at the Vicar’s jokes. Jane was sitting on the Vicar’s wife’s lap.

So you see they got off better than they deserved.

The gamekeeper, who was the cook’s cousin, asked leave to drive home with them, and Andrew was only too glad to have someone to protect him from that trap he was so certain of.

When the wagonette reached their own house, between the chalk-quarry and the gravel-pit, the children were very sleepy, but they felt that they and the keeper were friends for life.

Andrew dumped the children down at the iron gate without a word.

“You get along home,” said the Vicarage cook’s cousin, who was a gamekeeper. “I’ll get me home on Shanks’ mare.”

So Andrew had to drive off alone, which he did not like at all, and it was the keeper that was cousin to the Vicarage cook who went with the children to the door, and, when they had been swept to bed in a whirlwind of reproaches, remained to explain to Martha and the cook and the housemaid exactly what had happened. He explained so well that Martha was quite amiable the next morning.

After that he often used to come over and see Martha, and in the end⁠—but that is another story, as dear Mr. Kipling says.

Martha was obliged to stick to what she had said the night before about keeping the children indoors the next day for a punishment. But she wasn’t at all snarky about it, and agreed to let Robert go out for half an hour to get something he particularly wanted.

This, of course, was the day’s wish.

Robert rushed to the gravel-pit, found the Psammead, and presently wished for⁠—

But that, too, is another story.

VI A Castle and No Dinner

The others were to be kept in as a punishment for the misfortunes of the day before. Of course Martha thought it was naughtiness, and not misfortune⁠—so you must not blame her. She only thought she was doing her duty. You know, grown-up people often say they do not like to punish you, and that they only do it for your own good, and that it hurts them as much as it hurts you⁠—and this is really very often the truth.

Martha certainly hated having to punish the children quite as much as they hated to be punished. For one thing, she knew what a noise there would be in the house all day. And she had other reasons.

“I declare,” she said to the cook, “it seems almost a shame keeping of them indoors this lovely day; but they are that audacious, they’ll be walking in with their heads knocked off some of these days, if I don’t put my foot down. You make them a cake for tea tomorrow, dear. And we’ll have Baby along of us soon as we’ve got a bit forrard with our work. Then they can have a good romp with him out of the way. Now, Eliza, come, get on with them beds. Here’s ten o’clock nearly, and no rabbits caught!”

People say that in Kent when they mean “and no work done.”

So all the others were kept in, but Robert, as I have said, was allowed to go out for half an hour to get something they all wanted. And that,