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

up, and then real earnest wishes come into the heads of the beholder⁠—”

“Hear, hear!” said Robert.

“⁠—of the beholder, however stupid he is,” Cyril went on. “Why, even Robert might happen to think of a really useful wish if he didn’t injure his poor little brains trying so hard to think.⁠—Shut up, Bobs, I tell you!⁠—You’ll have the whole show over.”

A struggle on the edge of a water-butt is exciting, but damp. When it was over, and the boys were partially dried, Anthea said⁠—

“It really was you began it, Bobs. Now honour is satisfied, do let Squirrel go on. We’re wasting the whole morning.”

“Well then,” said Cyril, still wringing the water out of the tails of his jacket, “I’ll call it pax if Bobs will.”

“Pax then,” said Robert sulkily. “But I’ve got a lump as big as a cricket ball over my eye.”

Anthea patiently offered a dust-coloured handkerchief, and Robert bathed his wounds in silence. “Now, Squirrel,” she said.

“Well then⁠—let’s just play bandits, or forts, or soldiers, or any of the old games. We’re dead sure to think of something if we try not to. You always do.”

The others consented. Bandits was hastily chosen for the game. “It’s as good as anything else,” said Jane gloomily. It must be owned that Robert was at first but a halfhearted bandit, but when Anthea had borrowed from Martha the red-spotted handkerchief in which the keeper had brought her mushrooms that morning, and had tied up Robert’s head with it so that he could be the wounded hero who had saved the bandit captain’s life the day before, he cheered up wonderfully. All were soon armed. Bows and arrows slung on the back look well; and umbrellas and cricket stumps stuck through the belt give a fine impression of the wearer’s being armed to the teeth. The white cotton hats that men wear in the country nowadays have a very brigandish effect when a few turkey’s feathers are stuck in them. The Lamb’s mail-cart was covered with a red-and-blue checked tablecloth, and made an admirable baggage-wagon. The Lamb asleep inside it was not at all in the way. So the banditti set out along the road that led to the sandpit.

“We ought to be near the Sammyadd,” said Cyril, “in case we think of anything suddenly.”

It is all very well to make up your minds to play bandits⁠—or chess, or ping-pong, or any other agreeable game⁠—but it is not easy to do it with spirit when all the wonderful wishes you can think of, or can’t think of, are waiting for you round the corner. The game was dragging a little, and some of the bandits were beginning to feel that the others were disagreeable things, and were saying so candidly, when the baker’s boy came along the road with loaves in a basket. The opportunity was not one to be lost.

“Stand and deliver!” cried Cyril.

“Your money or your life!” said Robert.

And they stood on each side of the baker’s boy. Unfortunately, he did not seem to enter into the spirit of the thing at all. He was a baker’s boy of an unusually large size. He merely said⁠—

“Chuck it now, d’ye hear!” and pushed the bandits aside most disrespectfully.

Then Robert lassoed him with Jane’s skipping-rope, and instead of going round his shoulders, as Robert intended, it went round his feet and tripped him up. The basket was upset, the beautiful new loaves went bumping and bouncing all over the dusty chalky road. The girls ran to pick them up, and all in a moment Robert and the baker’s boy were fighting it out, man to man, with Cyril to see fair play, and the skipping-rope twisting round their legs like an interested snake that wished to be a peacemaker. It did not succeed; indeed the way the boxwood handles sprang up and hit the fighters on the shins and ankles was not at all peace-making. I know this is the second fight⁠—or contest⁠—in this chapter, but I can’t help it. It was that sort of day. You know yourself there are days when rows seem to keep on happening, quite without your meaning them to. If I were a writer of tales of adventure such as those which used to appear in The Boys of England when I was young, of course I should be able to describe the fight, but I cannot do it. I never can see what happens during a fight, even when it is only dogs. Also, if I had been one of these Boys of England writers, Robert would have got the best of it. But I am like George Washington⁠—I cannot tell a lie, even about a cherry-tree, much less about a fight, and I cannot conceal from you that Robert was badly beaten, for the second time that day. The baker’s boy blacked his other eye, and, being ignorant of the first rules of fair play and gentlemanly behaviour, he also pulled Robert’s hair, and kicked him on the knee. Robert always used to say he could have licked the butcher if it hadn’t been for the girls. But I am not sure. Anyway, what happened was this, and very painful it was to self-respecting boys.

Cyril was just tearing off his coat so as to help his brother in proper style, when Jane threw her arms round his legs and began to cry and ask him not to go and be beaten too. That “too” was very nice for Robert, as you can imagine⁠—but it was nothing to what he felt when Anthea rushed in between him and the baker’s boy, and caught that unfair and degraded fighter round the waist, imploring him not to fight any more.

“Oh, don’t hurt my brother any more!” she said in floods of tears. “He didn’t mean it⁠—it’s only play. And I’m sure he’s very sorry.”

You see how unfair this was to Robert. Because, if the baker’s boy had had any right and chivalrous instincts, and had yielded