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

“Of course I don’t mean to say,” he admitted, “that it wasn’t a good thing to get Martha and the Lamb out of the light for the afternoon; but as for Red Indians⁠—why, you know jolly well the wishes always come that very minute. If there was going to be Red Indians, they’d be here now.”

“I expect they are,” said Anthea; “they’re lurking amid the undergrowth, for anything you know. I do think you’re most beastly unkind.”

“Indians almost always do lurk, really, though, don’t they?” put in Jane, anxious for peace.

“No, they don’t,” said Cyril tartly. “And I’m not unkind, I’m only truthful. And I say it was utter rot breaking the water-jug; and as for the missionary-box, I believe it’s a treason-crime, and I shouldn’t wonder if you could be hanged for it, if any of us was to split⁠—”

“Shut up, can’t you?” said Robert; but Cyril couldn’t. You see, he felt in his heart that if there should be Indians they would be entirely his own fault, so he did not wish to believe in them. And trying not to believe things when in your heart you are almost sure they are true, is as bad for the temper as anything I know.

“It’s simply idiotic,” he said, “talking about Indians, when you can see for yourselves that it’s Jane who’s got her wish. Look what a fine day it is⁠—Oh!⁠—”

He had turned towards the window to point out the fineness of the day⁠—the others turned too⁠—and a frozen silence caught at Cyril, and none of the others felt at all like breaking it. For there, peering round the corner of the window, among the red leaves of the Virginia creeper, was a face⁠—a brown face, with a long nose and a tight mouth and very bright eyes. And the face was painted in coloured patches. It had long black hair, and in the hair were feathers!

Every child’s mouth in the room opened, and stayed open. The treacle-pudding was growing white and cold on their plates. No one could move.

Suddenly the feathered head was cautiously withdrawn, and the spell was broken. I am sorry to say that Anthea’s first words were very like a girl.

“There, now!” she said. “I told you so!”

Treacle-pudding had now definitely ceased to charm. Hastily wrapping their portions in a Spectator of the week before the week before last, they hid them behind the crinkled-paper stove-ornament, and fled upstairs to reconnoitre and to hold a hurried council.

“Pax,” said Cyril handsomely when they reached their mother’s bedroom. “Panther, I’m sorry if I was a brute.”

“All right,” said Anthea; “but you see now!”

No further trace of Indians, however, could be discerned from the windows.

“Well,” said Robert, “what are we to do?”

“The only thing I can think of,” said Anthea, who was now generally admitted to be the heroine of the day, “is⁠—if we dressed up as like Indians as we can, and looked out of the windows, or even went out. They might think we were the powerful leaders of a large neighbouring tribe, and⁠—and not do anything to us, you know, for fear of awful vengeance.”

“But Eliza, and the cook?” said Jane.

“You forget⁠—they can’t notice anything,” said Robert. “They wouldn’t notice anything out of the way, even if they were scalped or roasted at a slow fire.”

“But would they come right at sunset?”

“Of course. You can’t be really scalped or burned to death without noticing it, and you’d be sure to notice it next day, even if it escaped your attention at the time,” said Cyril. “I think Anthea’s right, but we shall want a most awful lot of feathers.”

“I’ll go down to the henhouse,” said Robert. “There’s one of the turkeys in there⁠—it’s not very well. I could cut its feathers without it minding much. It’s very bad⁠—doesn’t seem to care what happens to it. Get me the cutting-out scissors.”

Earnest reconnoitring convinced them all that no Indians were in the poultry-yard. Robert went. In five minutes he came back⁠—pale, but with many feathers.

“Look here,” he said, “this is jolly serious. I cut off the feathers, and when I turned to come out there was an Indian squinting at me from under the old hen-coop. I just brandished the feathers and yelled, and got away before he could get the coop off top of himself. Panther, get the coloured blankets off our beds, and look slippy, can’t you?”

It is wonderful how like an Indian you can make yourselves with blankets and feathers and coloured scarves. Of course none of the children happened to have long black hair, but there was a lot of black calico that had been got to cover schoolbooks with. They cut strips of this into a sort of fine fringe, and fastened it round their heads with the amber-coloured ribbons off the girls’ Sunday dresses. Then they stuck turkeys’ feathers in the ribbons. The calico looked very like long black hair, especially when the strips began to curl up a bit.

“But our faces,” said Anthea, “they’re not at all the right colour. We’re all rather pale, and I’m sure I don’t know why, but Cyril is the colour of putty.”

“I’m not,” said Cyril.

“The real Indians outside seem to be brownish,” said Robert hastily. “I think we ought to be really red⁠—it’s sort of superior to have a red skin, if you are one.”

The red ochre cook used for the kitchen bricks seemed to be about the reddest thing in the house. The children mixed some in a saucer with milk, as they had seen cook do for the kitchen floor. Then they carefully painted each other’s faces and hands with it, till they were quite as red as any Red Indian need be⁠—if not redder.

They knew at once that they must look very terrible when they met Eliza in the passage, and she screamed aloud. This unsolicited testimonial pleased them very much. Hastily telling her not to be a goose, and that it