第2章 CHAPTER 1(2)

We remembered them right enough--they were little pinky, frightened things, like white mice, with very bright eyes. They had not been to our house since Christmas, because Denis, the boy, had been ill, and they had been with an aunt at Ramsgate.

Alice and Dora would have liked to get the bedrooms ready for the honoured guests, but a really good housemaid is sometimes more ready to say 'Don't' than even a general. So the girls had to chuck it. Jane only let them put flowers in the pots on the visitors' mantelpieces, and then they had to ask the gardener which kind they might pick, because nothing worth gathering happened to be growing in our own gardens just then.

Their train got in at 12.27. We all went to meet them. Afterwards I thought that was a mistake, because their aunt was with them, and she wore black with beady things and a tight bonnet, and she said, when we took our hats off-- 'Who are you?' quite crossly.

We said, 'We are the Bastables; we've come to meet Daisy and Denny.'

The aunt is a very rude lady, and it made us sorry for Daisy and Denny when she said to them--'Are these the children? Do you remember them?' We weren't very tidy, perhaps, because we'd been playing brigands in the shrubbery; and we knew we should have to wash for dinner as soon as we got back, anyhow. But still--Denny said he thought he remembered us. But Daisy said, 'Of course they are,' and then looked as if she was going to cry.

So then the aunt called a cab, and told the man where to drive, and put Daisy and Denny in, and then she said--'You two little girls may go too, if you like, but you little boys must walk.'

So the cab went off, and we were left. The aunt turned to us to say a few last words. We knew it would have been about brushing your hair and wearing gloves, so Oswald said, 'Good-bye', and turned haughtily away, before she could begin, and so did the others. No one but that kind of black beady tight lady would say 'little boys'. She is like Miss Murdstone in David Copperfield.

I should like to tell her so; but she would not understand. I don't suppose she has ever read anything but Markham's History and Mangnall's Questions--improving books like that.

When we got home we found all four of those who had ridden in the cab sitting in our sitting-room--we don't call it nursery now--looking very thoroughly washed, and our girls were asking polite questions and the others were saying 'Yes' and 'No', and 'I don't know'. We boys did not say anything. We stood at the window and looked out till the gong went for our dinner. We felt it was going to be awful--and it was. The newcomers would never have done for knight-errants, or to carry the Cardinal's sealed message through the heart of France on a horse; they would never have thought of anything to say to throw the enemy off the scent when they got into a tight place.

They said 'Yes, please', and 'No, thank you'; and they ate very neatly, and always wiped their mouths before they drank, as well as after, and never spoke with them full.

And after dinner it got worse and worse.

We got out all our books and they said 'Thank you', and didn't look at them properly. And we got out all our toys, and they said 'Thank you, it's very nice' to everything. And it got less and less pleasant, and towards teatime it came to nobody saying anything except Noel and H. O.--and they talked to each other about cricket.

After tea Father came in, and he played 'Letters' with them and the girls, and it was a little better; but while late dinner was going on--I shall never forget it. Oswald felt like the hero of a book--'almost at the end of his resources'. I don't think I was ever glad of bedtime before, but that time I was.

When they had gone to bed (Daisy had to have all her strings and buttons undone for her, Dora told me, though she is nearly ten, and Denny said he couldn't sleep without the gas being left a little bit on) we held a council in the girls' room. We all sat on the bed--it is a mahogany fourposter with green curtains very good for tents, only the housekeeper doesn't allow it, and Oswald said--'This is jolly nice, isn't it?'

'They'll be better to-morrow,' Alice said, 'they're only shy.'

Dicky said shy was all very well, but you needn't behave like a perfect idiot.

'They're frightened. You see we're all strange to them,' Dora said.

'We're not wild beasts or Indians; we shan't eat them. What have they got to be frightened of?' Dicky said this.

Noel told us he thought they were an enchanted prince and princess who'd been turned into white rabbits, and their bodies had got changed back but not their insides.

But Oswald told him to dry up.

'It's no use making things up about them,' he said. 'The thing is: what are we going to DO? We can't have our holidays spoiled by these snivelling kids.'

'No,' Alice said, 'but they can't possibly go on snivelling for ever. Perhaps they've got into the habit of it with that Murdstone aunt. She's enough to make anyone snivel.'

'All the same,' said Oswald, 'we jolly well aren't going to have another day like today. We must do something to rouse them from their snivelling leth--what's its name?--something sudden and--what is it?--decisive.'

'A booby trap,' said H. O., 'the first thing when they get up, and an apple-pie bed at night.'

But Dora would not hear of it, and I own she was right.

'Suppose,' she said, 'we could get up a good play-- like we did when we were Treasure Seekers.'

We said, well what? But she did not say.

'It ought to be a good long thing--to last all day,' Dicky said, 'and if they like they can play, and if they don't--'

'If they don't, I'll read to them,' Alice said.

But we all said 'No, you don't--if you begin that way you'll have to go on.'

And Dicky added, 'I wasn't going to say that at all. I was going to say if they didn't like it they could jolly well do the other thing.'

We all agreed that we must think of something, but we none of us could, and at last the council broke up in confusion because Mrs Blake--she is the housekeeper--came up and turned off the gas.