 CHAPTER IV. OVER THE WATER TO CHINA Uswald is a very modest boy, I believe, but even he would not deny that he has an active brain. The authors heard both his father and Albert's uncle say so, and the most far-reaching ideas often come to him quite naturally, just as silly notions that aren't any good might come to you. And he had an idea which he meant to hold a council about with his brothers and sisters. But just as he was going to enrol his idea to them, my father occurred suddenly in our midst and said a strange cousin was coming, and he came, and he was strange indeed. And when fate had woven the threads of his dark destiny, and he'd been dyed a dark bright navy blue and had gone from our midst, Uswald went back to the idea that he had not forgotten. The words tenacious of purpose mean sticking to things, and these words always make me think of the character of the young hero of these pages. At least I suppose his brothers Dick and Noel and HO are heroes too, in a way. But somehow the author of these lines knows more about Uswald's inside realness than he does about the others, but I am getting too deep for words. So Uswald went into the common room. Everyone was busy. Noel and HO were playing Homer. Dora was covering boxes for silver paper to put sweets in for a school treat. And Dickie was making a cardboard model of a new screw he has invented for ocean steamers. But Uswald did not mind interrupting because Dora ought not to work too hard, and Homer always ends in a row. And I would rather not say what I think of Dickie's screw. So Uswald said, I want a cancer, where's Alice? Everyone said they didn't know, and they made haste to say that we couldn't have a cancer without her. But Uswald's determined nature made him tell HO to chuck that rotten game and go and look for her. HO is our youngest brother, and it is right that he should remember this and do as he was told. But he happened to be winning the beastly Homer game, and Uswald saw that there was going to be trouble, big trouble, as Mr Kipling says, and he was just bracing his young nerves for the conflict with HO because he was not going to stand any nonsense from his young brother about not fetching Alice when he was jolly what toad to, when the missing maiden bounced into the room bearing upon her brow the marks of ravaging agitatedness. Have any of you seen Pinscher? She cried and haste. We all said no, not since last night. Alice said making the ugly face means you are going to blub and have a minute. Everyone had sprung to their feet, even Noel and HO saw it once what a dodder in game Homer is. And Dora and Dickie whatever their faults care more for Pinscher than for boxes and screws, because Pinscher is our fox terrier. He is of noble race, and he was ours when we were poor lonely treasure seekers and lived in humble hard-upness in the Lewisham Road. To the faithful heart of young Uswald the Blackheath, affluent mansion in all it contains, even the stuffed fox eating a duck in the glass case in the hall that he is so fond of, and even the council he wanted to have seemed to matter much less an old Pinscher. I want you all to let's go out to look for him, said Alice, carrying out the meaning of the faces she had made and beginning to howl. Oh Pinscher, suppose something's happened to him. You might get my hat and coat Dora. We all got our coats and hats and by the time we were ready Alice had conquered it to only sniffing, or else, as Uswald told her kindly, she wouldn't have been allowed to come. Let's go to the Heath. Noel said, the dear departed dog used to like digging there. So we went, and we said to every single person we met, please have you seen a thoroughbred fox terrier doe with a black patch over one eye, and another over his tail, and a tan patch on his right shoulder, and everyone said no they hadn't. Only some had more polite ways of saying it than others. But after a bit we met a policeman and he said, I see one when I was on duty last night like what you described, but it was at the end of a string. There was a young lad at the other end, the dog didn't seem to go exactly willing. He also told us the lad and the dog had gone over Greenwich way. So we went down, not quite so wretched in our insights because now it seemed that there was some chance there we wondered the policeman could have let Pinscher go when he saw I didn't want to, but he said it won his business and now we asked everyone if they'd seen a lad and a thoroughbred fox terrier with a black patch and etc. I wanted to people said they had and we thought it must be the same policeman had seen because they said too that the dog didn't seem to care about going where he was going. So we went on and through the park and past the Naval College and we didn't even stop to look at that light-size firm ship in the playground that the Naval Collegians have to learn about ropes and sparsons and Oswald would willingly give a year of his young life to have that ship for his very own. And we didn't go into the paint at all either because our fond hearts were with Pinscher and we could not really have enjoyed looking at Nelson's remains of the shipwrecks where the drowned people all look so dry, or even the pictures where young heroes are boarding pirates from Spain just as Oswald would do if he had half a chance, with the pirates fighting in attitudes more twisted and Spanish than the pirates of any nation could manage even if they were not above it. It is a odd thing but all those pictures are awfully bad weather even the ones that are not shipwrecks and yet in books the skies are usually a stainless blue and the sea is a liquid gem when you are engaged in the avocation of pirate boarding. The author is sorry to see that he is not going on with the story. We walk through Greenwich Hospital and ask there if they had seen Pinscher because I heard father say once that dogs are sometimes stolen and taken to hospitals and never seen again. It is wrong to steal but I suppose the hospital doctors forget this because they are so sorry for the poor ill people and like to give them dogs to play with them and amuse them on their beds of anguish but no one had seen our Pinscher who seemed to be becoming more dear to our hearts every moment. When we got through the hospital grounds they are big and the buildings are big and I like it all because there's so much room everywhere and nothing niggling. We got down to the terrace over the river next to the Tralfaga Hotel and there was a sailor leaning on the railings and we asked him the usual question. It seems that he was asleep but of course we did not know or we would not have disturbed him. He was very angry and he swore and Oswald told the girls to come away but Alice pulled away from Oswald and said oh don't be so cross do tell us if you've seen our doll he is and she recited Pinscher's qualifications. Oh yeah said the sailor he had a red and angry face. I see him an hour ago long of a Chinaman. Hey cross the river in an open boat you best look slippy after him. He grinned and spat he was a detestable character I think. Chinaman puts puppy dogs in pies. If he catches you three young chaps he'll have a pie as he'll need a big crust to cover it. Get along with your cheek. So we got along of course we knew that the Chinese are not cannibals so we were not frightened by that rot but we knew too that the Chinese do really eat dogs as well as rats and bird's nest and other disgraceful forms of eating. H.O. was very tired and he said his boots hurt him and Noah was beginning to look like a young throttle all eyes and beak he always does when he is tired. The others were tired too but their proud spirits would never have owned it. So we went round to the Tralfalga Hotel's boat house and there was a man in slippers and we said could we have a boat and he said he would lend a boatman and would we walk in. We did and we went through a dark room piled up to the ceiling with boats and out onto a sort of thing half like a balcony and half like a pier and there were boats there too far more than you would think anyone could want and then a boy came we said we wanted to go across the river and he said where to to where the Chinaman live said Alice. You can go to Millwall if you want to. He said beginning to put oars into the boat. Are there any Chinese people there? Alice asked and the boy replied. I don't know. He added that he supposed we could pay for the boat. By a fortunate accident I think the father had rather wanted to make up to us for our martelike enduring when our cousin was with us we were fairly flush of chink. Uswold and Dickie were proudly able to produce handfuls of money. It was mostly copper but it did not fail of its effect. The boy seemed not to dislike us quite so much as before and he helped the girls into the boat which was now in the water at the edge of a sort of floating unsteady raft with openings in it that you could see the water through. The water was very rough just like real sea and not like a river at all and the boy rode he wouldn't let us although I can't quite well. The boat trembled and tossed just like a sea boat when we were about halfway over Noah pulled Alice's sleeve and said do I look very green? You do rather dear she said kindly I feel much greener than I look. Said Noel and later on he was not at all well. The boy laughed but we pretended not to notice. I wish I could tell you half the things we saw as our boat was pulled along through the swish and numpy water that turned into great waves after every steamer that went by. Uswold was quite fit but some of the others were very silent. Dickie says he saw everything that Uswold saw but I am not sure. There were wharves and engines and great rusty cranes swinging giants handfuls of iron rails about in the air and once we passed a ship that was being broken up all the wood was gone and they were taken away her plates and the red rust was running from her and colouring the water all round. It looked as though she was blading to death. I suppose it was silly to feel sorry for her but I did. I thought how beastly it was as she would never go to sea again. Were the waves are clean and green even if no rougher than the black waves now raging round our stance let to bark. I never knew before what lots of kinds of ships there can be and I think I could have gone on and on forever and ever looking at the shapes of things and the colours they were and dreaming about being a pirate and things like that but we had come some way and now Alice said Uswold I think Noel and Dive would don't make land soon. And indeed he had been rather bad for some time only I thought it was kinder to take no notice. So a ship was steered among other pirate craft and moored at a landing place where there were steps up. Noel was now so ill that we felt we could not take him on a Chinese hunt and H.O. had sneaked his boots off in the boat and he said they hurt him too much to put them on again so it was arranged those two should sit on a dry corner of the steps and wait and Dora said she would stay with them. I think we ought to go home she said and quite your father wouldn't like us being in these wild savage places the police ought to find pincher but the others weren't going to surrender like that especially as Dora had actually had the sense to bring a bag of biscuits which all except Noel now eating perhaps they are but they won't said Dickie I'm boiling hot I'll leave you my other coat in case you're cold. Uswold had been just about to make the same manly proposal though he was not extra warm so they left their coats in with Alice who would come though told not to they climbed the steps and went along a narrow passage and started boldly on the Chinese hunt. I was a strange sort of place over the river all the streets were narrow and the houses and the pavements and the people's clothes and the mud and the road all seemed the same sort of dull color a sort of brown gray it was all the house doors were open and you could see that the insides of the house are the same color as the outsides some of the women had blue and violet or red shawls and they sat on the doorsteps and combed the children's hair and shouted things to each other across the street they seemed very much struck by the appearance of the three travellers and some of the things they said were not pretty that was the day when Uswold found out a thing that has often been used to him in afterlife however rudely poor people stare at you they become all right instantly if you ask them something I think they don't hate you so much when they've done something for you if it's only to tell you the time or the way so we got on very well but it does not make me comfortable to see people so poor and we have such a jolly house people in books feel this and I know it is right to feel it but I hate the feeling all the same and it is worse when the people are nice to you and we asked and we asked and we asked but no one has seen a dog or a Chinaman and I began to think all was indeed lost and you can't go and biscuits all day when we went round a corner rather fast and came slapping to the largest woman I've ever seen she must have been yards and yards round and before she had time to be in the rage that we saw she was getting into Alice said oh I beg your pardon I am so sorry but we really didn't mean to I do so hope we didn't hurt you we saw the growing rage fade away and she said as soon as she got her fat breath no I'm done my little dear and where you off doing such a hurry so we told her all about it she's quite friendly although so stout and she said we ought to be gallivanting about all on our own we told her we were all right though our own Oswell was glad that in the hurry of departing Alice hadn't had time to find anything smarter looking to wear than her garden coat and grey tan would she been regretted by some earlier in the day well said the woman if you go long this year turn and as far as ever you can go and then take the first to the right and bear round to the left and take the second to the right again and go down the alley between the stumps you come to rose gardens there's often Chinaman about there and if you come along this way as you come back keep your eye open for me and I like some young chaps as I know is as interested like in dogs and perhaps I'll have news for you thank you very much Alice said and the woman asked her to give her a kiss everybody's always wanting to kiss Alice I can't think why and we got her to tell us away again and we noticed the name of the street and it was nightingale street and the stairs where we had left the others was Bullamy's causeway because we have the true explorer's instincts and when your cat blaze your way on trees with your axe or lay cross twigs like the gypsies do it is best to remember the names of streets so he said goodbye and went on through the grey brown streets with hardly any shops and those only very small in common and we got to the alley all right it was a narrow place between high blank brown grey walls I think by the smell it was gasworks and tannries there was hardly anyone there but when we got into it we had feet running ahead of us in Oswald said hello suppose that's someone with pincher and they've recognized as long-lost masters and they're making a bolt for it and we all started running as hard as ever we could there was a turn in the passenger when we got round it we saw that the running was stopping there were four or five boys in a little crowd ran someone in blue blue looks such a change after the muddy color of everything in that dead eastern domain and when we got up the person the blue was on was a very wrinkled old man with a yellow wrinkled face and a soft felt hat and blue blouse like coat and I see that I ought not to conceal any longer from the discerning reader that it was exactly what we had been looking for it was indeed a celestial Chinaman and deep difficulties with these boys who were as Alice said afterwards truly fiends in mortal shape they were laughing at the old Chinaman and chatting to each other and their language was of that kind I was sorry we had got Alice with us but she told Oswald afterwards but she was so angry she did not know what they were saying hold this blue man pig tail said one of these outcasts from decent conduct the old man was trying to keep him off with both hands but the hands were very wrinkly and trembling Oswald is grateful to his good father who taught him and Dickie the proper way to put the hands up if I did not bin for that Oswald does not know what on earth would have happened for the outcasts were five to R2 because no one could have expected Alice to do what she did before Oswald had even got his hands in the position required by the noble art of self-defense she had slapped the largest boy on the face as hard as ever she could and she can slap pretty hard as Oswald knows but too well and she had taken the second-sized boy and was shaking him before Dickie could is left in on the eye of the slapped assailant of the aged denizen of the flower east the other three went for Oswald but three to one is nothing to one of us hopes of being a pirate in his spare time when he grows up in an instant the five were on us Dickie and I got and some good ones and though Oswald cannot approve of my sister being in a street fight he must own she was very quick and useful in pulling ears and twisting arms and slapping and pinching but she had quite forgotten how to hit out from the shoulder like I've often shown her the battle raged and Alice often turned the tide of it by a well-timed shove or nip the aged eastern leaned against the wall panting and holding his blue heart with his yellow hand Oswald had got a boy down it was kneeling on him and Alice was trying to pull off two other boys who'd fallen on top of the fray while Dickie was letting the fifth have it when there was a flash of blue and another Chinaman dashed into the tournament fortunately this one was not old and with a few well-directed if foreign looking blows he finished the work so ably begun by the brave festivals the next moment the five loathsome and youthful aggressors were bolting down the passage Oswald and Dickie were trying to get their breath and find out exactly where they were hurt now much and Alice had burst out crying was howling as though she would never stop that is the worst of girls there never can keep anything up any brave act they may suddenly do when for a moment they forget that they have not the honor to be boys is almost instantly made into contemptibility by a sudden attack of cry babyishness but I will say no more for she did strike the first blow after all and it did turn out that the boys had scratched her wrist and kicked her shins these things make girls cry the venerable stranger from distant shores said a good deal to the other in what I suppose was the language used in China it all sounded like hung and Lee and Chi and then the other one turned to us and said nice little girly same PC flolly you take my head to walk this is only same my father first chop ancestor dirty white devils making him hurt you come along if I see proper me like you really muchy Alice was crying too much to answer especially she could not find a handkerchief I gave a mind and then she was able to say that she did not want to walk on anybody's head and she wanted to go home this not messy place for lily whitey girly said the young China man his pigtail was thicker than his father's and black right up to the top the old man's was gray at the beginning but lower down it was black because that part of it was not hair at all but black threads and ribbons and odds and ends of trimmings and towards the end both pigtails were greenish me long backy take him safe the younger of the eastern adventurers went on pointing to his father then make me walk it all along you take it you back same place you come from little white devils waiting for you on so lord you come with not lily gully not clay John give me her one PC pletty pletty come make it talky with the house lady I believe this is about what he said and we understood that he wanted us to come and see his mother and that he would give Alice something pretty and then see a safe out of the horrible brown grey country so we agreed to go with them for we knew those five boys would be waiting for us on the way back most likely with strong reinforcements Alice stopped crying the minute she could I must say she is better than Dora in that way and we followed the Chinaman who walked in single fire like Indians so we did the same and talked to each other over our shoulders our grateful oriental friends led us through a good many streets and suddenly opened a door with a key pulled us in and shut the door dick thought to the kidnapping of Florence donby and good mrs. Brown but Oswald had no such unknowable thoughts the room was small and very very odd it was very dirty too but perhaps it is not polite to say that there was a sort of sideboard at one end of the room with an embroidered dirty cloth on it and on the cloth a bluey white crockery image over a foot high it was very fat and army and leggy and I think it was an idol the minute we got inside the young man lighted little brown sticks and set them to burn in front of it I suppose it was incense there was a sort of long wide low sofa without any arms or legs and a table that was like a box with another box in front of it for you to sit down on when you worked and on the table were all sorts of tiny little tools owls and brads they look like and pipe stems and broken bowls of pipes and mouthpieces for our rescued Chinaman was a pipe mender by trade there wasn't much else in the room except the smell and that seemed to fill it choke full the smell seemed to have all sorts of things in it glue and gunpowder and white garden lilies and burnt fat and it was not so easy to breathe as plain air then a Chinese lady came in she had gray green trousers shiny like varnish and a blue gown and her hair was pulled back very tight and twisted into a little knob at the back she wanted to go down on the floor before Alice but we wouldn't let her and then she said a great many things that we felt sure were very nice only they were in Chinese so we could not tell what they were and the Chinaman said that his mother also wanted Alice to walk on her head not Alice's own of course but the mother's I wish we had stayed longer and tried harder to understand what they said because it was an adventure take it how you like that we're not likely to look upon the like of again only we were too flustered to see this we said don't mention it and things like that and when Dickie said I think we ought to be going Oswald said so too then they all began talking Chinese like mad and Chinese lady came back and suddenly gave Alice a parrot it was red and green with a very long tail and as tame as any pet fawn I ever read about it walked up her arm and round her neck and stroked her face with its beak and it did not bite Oswald or Alice or even Dickie though they could not be sure it first said it was not going to we said all the polite things we could and the old lady made thousands of hurried Chinese replies and repeated many times old lady John which seemed to be all the English she knew we never had so much fuss made over us in all our lives I think it was that that upset our calmness and seemed to put us into a sort of silly dream that made us not see what idiots we were to hurry off from scenes we should never again behold so we went and the youthful celestial saw us safely to the top of below me stairs and there left us with the parrot and floods of words that seemed all to end in double e we wanted to show him to the others but he would not come so we rejoined our anxious relations without him the scene of rejoinder was painful at first because they were most frightfully sick at us having been such an age away but when we let them look at the parrot and tell them about the fight they agreed that was not our fault and we really had been unavoidably detained but Dora said well you may say I'm always preaching but I don't think father would like Alice to be fighting street boys in Millwall I suppose you'd have run away and let the old man be killed said Dickie and peace was not restored till we were nearly at Greenwich again we took the tram to Greenwich station and we took a cab home and well worth the money which was all we now had got except four pence half penny for we were all dog tired and dog tired reminds me that we hadn't found pinching spite of all our trouble Miss Blake who is our housekeeper was angrier than I've ever seen her she'd been so anxious that she had sent the police to look for us but of course they had not found us you ought to make allowances for what people do when they're anxious so I forgive her everything even what she said about Oswald being a disgrace to a respectable house he owns we were rather muddy owing to the fight and when the draw was over and we were having tea and there was meat to it because we were as near starving as I ever wish to be we all ate lots even the thought to pinch you could not thwart our bold appetites though we kept saying poor old pinch I do wish we'd found them and things like that the parrot walked about among the tea things as tame as tame and just as Alice was saying how we'd go out again tomorrow and have another try for our faithful hand there was a scratching at the door and we rushed and there was pinching perfectly well and mad with joy to see us H.O. turned an abrupt beetroot colour oh he said we said what out with it and though he would much rather have kept it a secret buried in his breast we made him own that he had shot pinch you up yesterday in the empty rabbit hutch when he was playing zoological gardens and forgotten all about it in the pleasures of our cousin haven't left us so we need not have gone over the water at all but though Oswald pity's old dumb animals especially those hopelessly shucked in rabbit hutches at the bottoms of gardens he cannot be sorry that we had such a celestial adventure and got hold of such a parrot but Alice says that Oswald and Dickey and she shall have the parrot between them she is tremendous for straight i often wonder why she was made to go she's a jolly sight more of a gentleman than half the boys at our school end of chapter four over the water to china recording by madera chapter five of new treasure seekers this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org new treasure seekers by Edith Nesbitt chapter five the new antiquaries this really happened before christmas but many authors go back to bygone years for whole chapters and i don't see why i shouldn't it was one sunday the something sunday an advent i think and denny and daisy and their father and albert's uncle came to dinner which is in the middle of the day on that day of rest and the same things to eat for grown-ups and us it is nearly always roast beef and yorkshire but the puddings and vegetables are brightly variegated and never the same two sundays running at dinner someone said something about the coat of arms that is on the silver tankards which once when we were poor and honest used to stay at the shop having the dense slowly taken out of them for months and months but now they are always at home and are put at the four corners of the table every day and any grown-up who likes can drink beer out of them after some talk of the sort you don't listen to in which bends and leon cells and ghouls and things played a promising part albert's uncle said that mr. turnbull had told him something about that coat of arms being carved on a bridge somewhere in cambridge shear and again the conversation wandered into things like albert's uncle had talked about to the maidstone antiquarian society the day they came over to see his old house in the country and we arranged the time honored roman remains for them to dig up so hearing the words king post and mullion and molding and underpin oswald said we might go and we went and took our dessert with us and had it in our own common room where you can roast chestnuts with a free heart and never mind what your fingers get like when we first knew daisy we used to call her the white mouse and her brother had all the appearance of being one too but you know how untruthful appearances are or else it was that we taught him happier things for he certainly turned out quite different in the end and she was not a bad sort of kid though we never could quite cure her of wanting to be ladylike that is the beastliest word there is i think and albert's uncle says so too he says if a girl can't be a lady it's not worthwhile to be only like one she'd better let it alone and be a free and happy bounder but all this is not what i was going to say only the author does think of so many things besides the story and sometimes he puts them in this is the case with thackery and the religious tract society and other authors as well as mrs. humphrey ward only i don't suppose you've ever heard of her though she writes books that some people like very much but perhaps they are her friends i did not like the one i read about the baronet it was on a wet sunday at the seaside and nothing else in the house but bradshaw and lc or like a or i shouldn't have but what really happened to us before christmas is strictly the following narrative i say remarked denny when he had burned his fingers with the chestnut that turned out a bad one after all and such as life and he had finished sucking his fingers and getting rid of the chestnut about these antiquaries well what about them said oswald he always tries to be gentle and kind to denny because he knows he helped to make a man out of the young mouse i shouldn't think said denny that it was so very difficult to be one i don't know said dicky you have to read very dull books and an awful lot of them and remember what you read what's more i don't think so said alice that girl who came with the antiquaries the one albert's uncle said was a pollstered in red flesh like furniture she hadn't read anything you bet dora said you ought not to bet especially on a sunday and alice altered it to you may be sure well but what then oswald asked denny out with it for he saw that his youthful friend had got an idea and couldn't get it out you should always listen patiently to the ideas of others no matter how silly you expect them to be i do wish you wouldn't hurry me so said denny snapping his fingers anxiously and we tried to be patient why shouldn't we be them denny said at last he means antiquaries said oswald to the bewildered others but there's nowhere to go and nothing to do when we get there the dentist so called for short his real name being denis got red and white and drew oswald aside to the window for a secret discussion oswald listened as carefully as he could but denny always buzzes so when he whispers right oh he remarked when the confiding of the dentist had got so that you could understand what he was driving at though you're being shy with us now after all we went through together in the summer is simply skittles then he turned to the polite and attentive others and said you remember that day we went into bexley heath with albert's uncle well there was a house and albert's uncle said a clever rider lived there and in more ancient years that chap in history sir thomas what's his name and denny thinks he might let us be antiquaries there it looks a ripping place from the railway it really does it's a big fine house and splendid garden and a lawn with a sundial and the tallest trees anywhere but here but what could we do said dickie i don't suppose he'd give us tea though such indeed had been our hospitable conduct to the antiquaries who came to see albert's uncle oh i don't know said alice we might dress up for it and wear spectacles and we could all read papers it would be lovely something to fill up the christmas holidays the part before the wedding i mean do let's all right i don't mind i suppose it would be improving said dora we should have to read a lot of history you can settle it i'm going to show daisy our bridesmaid's dresses it was a last two true albert's uncle was to be married but shortly after and it was partly our faults though that does not come into this story so the two d's went to look at the clothes girls like this but alice who wishes she had never consented to be born a girl stayed with us and we had a long and earnest counsel about it one thing said oswald it can't possibly be wrong so perhaps it won't be amusing oh oswald said alice and she spoke rather like dora i don't know what you mean said oswald in lofty scorn what i mean to say is that when a thing is quite sure to be right it's not so well i mean to say there it is don't you know and if it might be wrong and isn't it's a score to you and if it might be wrong and is as so often happens well you know yourself adventures sometimes turn out wrong that you didn't think we're going to but seldom or never the uninteresting kind and dicky told oswald to dry up which of course no one stands from a younger brother but though oswald explained this at the time he felt in his heart that he has sometimes said what he meant with more clearness when oswald and dicky had finished we went on and arranged everything everyone was to write a paper and read it if the papers are too long to read while we're there said no well we can read them in the long winter evenings when we are grouped along the household hearth rug i shall do my paper in poetry about ajan corps some of us thought ajan corps wasn't fair because no one could be sure about any night who took part in that well-known conflict having lived in the red house because she said it would be precious dull if we all wrote about nothing but sir thomas what do you call him whose real name in history oswald said he would find out and then write his paper on that world renowned person who is a household word in all families denny said he would write about charles the first because they were just doing that part at his school i shall write about what happened in 1066 said ho i know that alice said if i write a paper it will be about mary queen of scots dora and daisy came in just as she said this and it transpired that this ill-fated but good-looking lady was the only one they either of them wanted to write about so alice gave it up to them and settled to do magna carta and they could settle something between themselves for the one who would have to give up mary queen of scots in the end we all agreed that the story of that lamented wearer of pearls and black velvet would not make enough for two papers everything was beautifully arranged when suddenly ho said supposing he doesn't let us who doesn't let us what the red house man read the papers at his red house this was indeed what nobody had thought of and even now we did not think anyone could be so lost to proper hospitableness as to say no yet none of us like to write and ask so we tossed up for it only dora had feelings about tossing up on sunday so we did it with a hymn book instead of a penny we all won except noel who lost so he said he would do it on albert's uncle's typewriter which was on a visit to us at the time waiting for mr. remington to fetch it away to mend the m we think it was broken through albert's uncle writing margaret so often because it is the name of the lady he was doomed to be married by the girls had got the letter the maidstone antiquarian society and field club secretary had sent to albert's uncle ho said they kept it for a momentum of the day and we altered the dates and names in blue chalk and put in a piece about might we skate on the moat and gave it to noel who had already begun to make up his poetry about adjunctor and so had to be shaken before he would attend and that evening when father and our indian uncle and albert's uncle were seeing the others on the way to forest hill noel's poetry and pencil were taken away from him and he was shut up in father's room with the remington typewriter which we had never been forbidden to touch and i don't think he heard it much except quite at the beginning when he jammed the s and the j and the thing that means percent so that they stuck and dickie soon put that right with a screwdriver he did not get on very well but kept on writing m o r seven e h o a s five or m o r d six m h o v c e on new pieces of paper and then beginning again till the floor was strewn with his remains so we left him at it and went and played celebrated painters a game even dora cannot say anything about on sunday considering the bible kind of pictures most of them painted and much later the library door having banged once and the front door twice noel came and said he had posted it and already he was deep in poetry again and had to be roused when rec was it for bed it was not till next day that he owned that the type writer had been a fiend in disguise and that the letter had come out so odd that he could hardly read it himself the hateful engine of destruction wouldn't answer to the bit in the least he said and i'd use nearly a waste paper basket of father's best paper and i thought he might come in and say something so i just finished it as well as i could and corrected it with the blue chalk because you'd bagged that bb of mine and i didn't notice what name i'd sign till after i'd licked the stamp the hearts of his kind brothers and sisters sank low but they kept them up as well as they could and said what name did you sign and noel said why edward turnbull of course like at the end of the real letter you never crossed it out like you did his address no oswald said witheringly you see i did think whatever else you didn't know i did think you knew your own silly name then alice said oswald was unkind though you see was not and she kissed noel and said she and he would take turns to watch for the postman so as to get the answer which of course would be subscribed on the envelope with the name of turnbull instead of bastable before the servant could tell the postman that the name was a stranger to her and next evening it came and it was very polite and grown up and said we should be most welcome and that we might read our papers and skate on the moat the red house has a moat like the moat house in the country but not so wild and dangerous only we never skated on it because the frost gave out the minute we had got leave to such as life as the sparks fly upwards the last above is called a moral reflection so now having got leave from mr red house i won't give his name because he is a writer of worldly fame and he might not like it we said about writing our papers it was not bad fun only rather difficult because dora said she never knew which encyclopedia volume she might be wanting as she was using edinburgh mary scotland both well holy well and france and many others and oswald never knew which he might want owing to his not being able exactly to remember the distinguished and deathless other appellation of sir thomas thingamy who had lived in the red house noel was up to the ears in azincor yet that made but little difference to our destiny he is always plunged in poetry of one sort or another and if it hadn't been that it would have been something else this at least we insisted on having kept a secret so he could not read it to us ho got very inky the first half holiday and then he got some ceiling wax and a big envelope from father and put something in and fastened it up and said he had done his dicky would not tell us what his paper was going to be about but he said it would not be like ours and he let ho help him by looking on while he invented more patents screws for ships the spectacles were difficult we got three pairs of the uncles and one that had belonged to the housekeeper's grandfather but nine pairs were needed because albert next door mushed in one half holiday and wanted to join and said if we'd let him he'd write a paper on the constitutions of clarendon and we thought he couldn't do it so we let him and then after all he did so at last alice went down to bennett's in the village that we are such good customers of because when our watches stop we take them there and he lent us a lot of empty frames on the instinctive understanding that we would pay for them if we broke them or let them get rusty and so all was ready and the fatal day approached and it was the holidays for us that is but not for father for his business never seems to rest by day and night except at christmas and times like that so we did not need to ask him if we might go oswald thought it would be more amusing for father if we told it to him all in the form of an entertaining anecdote afterwards denny and daisy and albert came to spend the day we told mrs. blake mr. red house and asked us and she let the girls put on their second best things which are coats with capes and red tamo shanters these capacious coats are very good for playing high women in we made ourselves quite clean and tidy at the very last we found that a joe had been making marks on his face with burnt matches to imitate wrinkles but really it only imitated dirt so we made him wash it off then he wanted to paint himself red like a clown but we had decided that spectacles were to be our only disguise and even those were not to be assumed till oswald gave the word no casualist observer could have thought that the nine apparently lightheaded and careless party who now wended their way to blackheath station looking as if they were not up to anything in particular were really an antiquarian society of the deepest dye we got an empty carriage to ourselves and halfway between blackheath and the other station oswald gave the word and we all put on the spectacles we had our antiquarian papers of lore and researched history in exercise books rolled up and tied with string the station master and porter of each of which the station boasted but one specimen of each of which the station boasted but one specimen looked respectfully at us as we got out of the train and we went straight out of the station under the railway arch and down to the green gate of the red house it has a lodge but there is no one in it we peeped in at the window and there was nothing in the room but an old beehive and a broken leather strap we waited in the front for a bit so that mr red house could come out and welcome us like albert's uncle did the other antiquaries but no one came so we went round the garden it was very brown and wet but full of things you didn't see every day first summer houses for instance and a red wall all around it with holes in it that you might have walled up heretics in in the olden times some of the holes were quite big enough to have taken a very small heretic there was a broken swing a fish pond but we were on business and oswald insisted on reading the papers he said let's go to the sundial it looks drier there my feet are like ice houses it was drier because there was a soaking wet green lawn around it and around that a sloping path made of little squares of red and white marble this was quite waterless and the sun shone on it so that it was warm to the hands though not to the feet because of boots oswald called on albert to read first albert is not a clever boy he is not one of us and oswald wanted to get over the constitutions for albert is hardly ever amusing even in fun and when he tries to show off it is sometimes hard to bear clarendon sometimes called clarence had only one constitution it must have been a very bad one because he was killed by the butt of malmsey if he had had more constitutions or better ones he would have lived to be very old this is a warning to everybody to this day none of us know how he could and whether his uncle helped him we clapped of course but not with our hearts which were hissing inside us and then oswald began to read his paper he had not a chance to ask albert's uncle what the other name of the world famous sir thomas was so he had put him in a sir thomas blank and make it up being a very strong on scenes that could be better imagined than described and as we knew that the garden was five hundred years old of course he could bring in any eventful things since the year 1400 he was just reading the part about the sundial which he had noticed from the train we went to it was rather a nice piece i think most likely this sundial told the time when charles the first was beheaded and recorded the death devouring progress of the great plague in the fire of london there is no doubt that the sun often shown even in these devastating occasions so that we may pictures sir thomas blank telling the time here and remarking oh crikey these last words are what oswald himself remarked of course a person in history would never have said them the reader of the paper had suddenly heard a fierce woodeny sound like giant single sticks terrifyingly close behind him and looking hastily round he saw a most angry lady in a bright blue dress with fur on it like a picture and very large wooden shoes which had made the single stick noise her eyes were very fierce and her mouth tight shut she did not look hideous but more like an avenging sprite or angel though of course we knew she was only mortals so we took off our caps a gentleman also bounded toward us over some vegetables and acted as reserve support to the lady her voice when she told us we were trespassing and it was a private garden was not so furious as oswald expected from her face but it was angry h.o said at once it wasn't her garden was it but of course we could see it was because of her not having any hat or jacket or gloves and wearing those wooden shoes to keep her feet dry which no one would do in the street so then oswald said we had leave and showed her mr redhouse's letter but that was written to mr turnbull she said and how did you get it then mr redhouse weirdly begged us to explain so oswald did in that clear straightforward way some people think he has and that no one can suspect for an instant and he ended by saying how far from comfortable it would be to have mr turnbull coming with his thin mouth and his tight legs and that we were bestables and much nicer than the tight-legged one whatever she might think and she listened and then she quite suddenly gave a most jolly grin and asked us to go on reading our papers it was plain that all disagreeableness was at an end and to show this even to the stupidest she instantly asked us to lunch before we could politely accept h.o shoved his ore in as usual and said he would stop no matter how little there was for lunch because he liked her very much so she laughed and mr redhouse laughed and she said they wouldn't interfere with the papers and they went away and left us of course oswald and dickie insisted on going on with the papers though the girls wanted to talk about mrs redhouse and how nice she was and the way her dress was made oswald finished his paper but later he was sorry he had been in such a hurry because after a bit mrs redhouse came out and said she wanted to play too she pretended to be a very ancient antiquary and was most jolly so that the others read their papers to her and oswald knows she would have liked his paper best because it was the best though i say it dickies turned out to be all about the patent screw and how nelson would not have been killed if his ship had been built with one daisy's paper was about lady jane gray and hers and dora's were exactly alike the dullest by far because they had got theirs out of books alice had not written hers because she had been helping noelle to copy his denny's was about king charles and he was very grown up and fervent about this ill-fated monarch and white roses mrs redhouse took us into the summer houses where it was warmer and such is the wonderful architecture of the redhouse gardens that there was a fresh summer house for each paper except no wells and hos which were read in the stable there were no horses there no wells was very long and it began this is the story of adjuncor if you don't know it you jolly well ought it was a famous battle fair and all your ancestors fought there that is if you come of a family old the bastibles do they were always very bold and at adjuncor they fought as they ought so we have been taught and so on and so on till some of us wondered why poetry was ever invented but mrs redhouse said she liked it awfully so noelle said you may have it to keep i've got another one of it at home i'll put it next to my heart noelle she said and she did under the blue stuff and fur hos was last but when we let him read it he wouldn't so dora opened his envelope and it was thick inside with blotting paper and in the middle there was a page with 1066 william the conqueror and nothing else well he said i said i'd write all i knew about 1066 and that's it i can't write more than i know can i the girl said he couldn't but oswald thought he might have tried it wasn't worth blacking your face all over just for that he said but mrs red house laughed very much and said it was a lovely paper and told her all she wanted to know about 1066 then we went into the garden again and ran races and mrs redhouse held all our spectacles for us and cheered us on she said she was the patent automatic cheering winning post we do like her lunch was the glorious end of the morden house antiquarian society and field clubs field day but after lunch was the beginning of a real adventure such as real antiquarians hardly ever get this will be unrolled later i will finish with some french out of a newspaper albert's uncle told it to me i know it is right any of your own grown-ups will tell you what it means au prochain numéro je vous promets des émotions ps in case your grown-ups can't be bothered emotion means sensation i believe end of chapter five recording by sabella denton chapter six of new treasure seekers this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org new treasure seekers by edith nesbit chapter six the intrepid explorer and his lieutenant we had spectacles to play antiquaries in and the rims were vaseline to prevent rust and it came off on our faces with other kinds of dirt and when the antiquary game was over mrs redhouse helped us to wash it off with all the thoroughness of aunts and far more gentleness then clean and with our hairs brushed we were led from the bathroom to the banqueting hall or dining room it is a very beautiful house the girls thought it was bare but oswald likes bairness because it leaves more room for games all the furniture was of agreeable shapes and colors and so were all the things on the table glasses and dishes and everything oswald politely said how nice everything was the lunch was a blissful dream of perfect a-one miss tongue and nuts and apples and oranges and candied fruits and ginger wine in tiny glasses that noelle said were fairy goblets everybody drank everybody else's health and noelle told mrs redhouse just how lovely she was and he would have paper and pencil and write her a poem for her very own i will not put it in here because mr redhouse is an author himself and he might want to use it in some of his books and the writer of these pages has been taught to think of others and besides i expect you're jolly well sick of noelle's poetry there was no restraining this about that lunch as far as a married lady can possibly be a regular brick mrs redhouse is one and mr redhouse is not half bad and knows how to talk about interesting things like sieges and cricket and foreign postage stamps even poets think of things sometimes and it was noelle who said directly he had finished his poetry have you got a secret staircase and have you explored your house properly yes we have said that well behaved an unusual lady mrs redhouse but you haven't you may if you like go anywhere she added with the unexpected magnificence of a really noble heart look at everything only don't make hay off with you or words to that effect and the whole of us with proper thanks offed with us instantly in case she should change her mind i will not describe the redhouse to you because perhaps you do not care about a house having three staircases and more cupboards and odd corners than we'd ever seen before and great attics with beams and enormous drawers on rollers let into the wall and half the rooms not furnished and those that were all with old looking interesting furniture there was something about that furniture that even the present author can't describe as though any of it might have secret drawers or panels even the chairs it was all beautiful and mysterious in the deepest degree when we had been all over the house several times we thought about the sellers there was only one servant in the kitchen so we saw mr and mrs redhouse must be poor but honest like we used to be and we said to her how do you do we've got leave to go wherever we like and please where are the sellers and may we go in she was quite nice though she seemed to think there was an awful lot of us people often think this she said Lord love a duck yes i suppose so in not ungentle tones and showed us i don't think we should ever have found the way from the house into the cellar by ourselves there was a wide shelf in the scullery with a row of gentlemanly boots on it that had been cleaned and on the floor in front a piece of wood the general servant for such indeed she proved to be lifted up the wood and opened a little door under the shelf and there was the beginning of steps and the entrance to them was half trap door and half the upright kind a thing none of us had ever seen before she gave us a candle end and we pressed forward to the dark unknown the stair was of stone arched overhead like churches and it twisted most unlike other seller stairs and when we got down it was all arched like vaults very cobwebby just the place for crimes said dickie there was a beer seller and a wine seller with bins and a keeping cellar with hooks in the ceiling and stone shelves just right for venison pasties and haunches of the same swift animal then we opened a door and there was a seller with a well in it to throw bodies down no doubt oswald explained they were sellers full of glory and passages leading from one to the other like the inquisition and i wish ours at home were like them there was a pile of beer barrels in the largest seller and it was ho who said why not play king of the castle so we did we had a most refreshing game it was exactly like denny to be the one who slipped down behind the barrels and did not break a single one of all his legs or arms no he cried in answer to our anxious inquiries i'm not hurt a bit but the wall here feels soft at least not soft but it doesn't scratch your nails like stone does so perhaps it's the door of a secret dungeon or something like that good old dentist replied oswald who always liked denny to have ideas of his own because it was us who taught him the folly of white mouse ishness it might be he went on but these barrels are as heavy as lead and much more awkward to collar hold of couldn't we get in some other way alice said there ought to be a subterranean passage i expect there is if we only knew oswald has an enormous geographical bump in his head he said look here that far seller where the wall doesn't go quite up to the roof that space we made out was under the dining room i could creep under there i believe it leads into behind this door get me out oh do get me out and let me come shouted the barrel imprisoned dentist from the unseen regions near the door so we got him out by oswald lying flat on his front on the top barrel and the dentist clawed himself up by oswald's hands while the others kept hold of the boots of the representative of the house of basketball which of course oswald is whenever father is not there come on cried oswald when danie was at last able to appear very cobwebby and black give us what's left of the matches the others agreed to stand by the barrels and answer our knocking on the door if we ever got there but i dare say we shall perish on the way said oswald hopefully so we started the other seller was easily found by the ingenious and geography bump headed oswald it opened straight on to the moat and we think it was a boat house in middle-aged times denny made a back for oswald who led the way and then he turned round and hauled up his inexperienced but rapidly improving follower on to the top of the wall that did not go quite up to the roof it is like coal mines he said beginning to crawl on hands and knees over what felt like very prickly beach only we've no picks or shovels and no sir humphrey davie safety lamps said denny in sadness oh they wouldn't be any good said oswald they're only to protect the hard-working mining men against fire damp and choke damp and there's none of those kinds here no said denny the damp here is only just the common kind well then said oswald and they crawled a bit further still on their furtive and unassuming stomachs this is a very glorious adventure it is isn't it inquired the dentist in breathlessness when the young stomachs of the young explorers had bitten the dust for some yards further yes said oswald encouraging the boy and it's your find too he added with admirable fairness and justice unusual in one so young i only hope we shan't find a moldering skeleton buried alive behind that door when we get to it come on what are you stopping for now he added kindly uh it's it's only cobwebs in my throat denny remarked and he came on though slower than before oswald with his customary intrepid caution was leading the way and he paused every now and then to strike a match because it was pitch dark and at any moment the courageous leader might have tumbled into a well or a dungeon or knocked his dauntless nose against something in the dark it's all right for you he said to denny when he had happened to kick his follower in the eye you've nothing to fear except my boots and whatever they do is accidental and so it doesn't count but i may be going straight into some trap that has been yawning for me for countless ages i won't come on so fast thank you said the dentist i don't think you've kicked my eye out yet so they went on and on crampedly crawling on what i have mentioned before and at last oswald did not strike the next match carefully enough and with the suddenness of a falling star his hands which with his knees he was crawling on went over the edge into infinite space and his chest alone catching sharply on the edge of the precipice saved him from being hurled at the bottom of it halt he cried as soon as he had any breath again but alas it was too late the dentist's nose had been too rapid and had caught up with the boot heel of the daring leader this was very annoying to oswald and was not in the least his fault do keep your nose off my boots half a sec he remarked but not crossily i'll strike a match and he did and by its weird and inscrutaceous light looked down into the precipice its bottom transpired to be not much more than six feet below so oswald turned the other end of himself first hung by his hands and dropped with fearless promptness uninjured in another cellar he then helped denny down the cornery thing denny happened to fall on could not have hurt him so much as he said the light of the torch i mean match now revealed to the two bold and youthful youths another cellar with things in it very dirty indeed but a thrilling interest and unusual shapes but the match went out before we could see exactly what the things were the next match was the last but one but oswald was undismayed whatever denny may have been he lighted it and looked hastily around there was a door bang on that door over there silly he cried in cheering accents to his trusty lieutenant behind that thing that looks like a chavo de frieze denny had never been to woowich and while oswald was explaining what a chavo de frieze is the match burnt his fingers almost to the bone and he had to feel his way to the door and hammer on it yourself the blows of the others from the other side were deafening all was saved it was the right door go and ask for candles and matches shouted the brave oswald tell them there are all sorts of things in here a chavo de frieze of chair legs and a shovel of what asked dicky's voice hollowly from the other side of the door frieze shouted denny i don't know what it means but do get a candle and make them unbarricade the door i don't want to go back the way we came he said something about oswald's boots that he was sorry for afterwards so i will not repeat it and i don't think the others heard because of the noise the barrels made while they were being climbed over this noise however was like balmy zephyrs compared to the noise the barrels insisted on making when dicky had collected some grown-ups and the barrels were being rolled away during this thunder-like interval denny and oswald were all the time in the pitch dark they had lighted their last match and by its flickering gleam we saw a long large mangle it's like a double coffin said oswald as the match went out you can take my arm if you like dentist the dentist did and then afterwards he said he only did it because he thought oswald was frightened of the dark it's only for a little while said oswald in the pauses of barrel thunder and i once read about two brothers confined for life in a cage so constructed that the unfortunate prisoners could neither sit lie nor stand in comfort we can do all those things yes said denny but i'd rather keep on standing if it's the same to you oswald i don't like spiders not much that is you are right said oswald with affable gentleness and there might be toads perhaps in a vault like this or serpents guarding the treasure like in the cold layers but of course they couldn't have cobras in england they'd have to put up with vipers i suppose denny shivered and oswald could feel him stand first on one leg and then on the other i wish i could stand on neither of my legs for a bit he said but oswald answered firmly that this could not be and then the door opened with a crack crash and we saw lights and faces through it and something fell from the top of the door that oswald really did think for one awful instant was a hideous mass of writhing serpents put there to guard the entrance like a sort of live booby trap he explained just the sort of thing a magician or which would have thought of doing but it was only dust and cobwebs a thick damp mat of them then the others surged in in light-hearted misunderstanding of the perils oswald had led denny into i mean through with mr red house and another gentleman and loud voices and candles that dripped all over everybody's hands as well as their clothes and the solitary confinement of a gallant oswald was at an end denny's solitary confinement was as an end too and he was now able to stand on both legs and to let go the arm of his leader who was so full of fortitude this is a fine said the pleased voice of mr red house do you know we've been in this house six whole months and a bit and we never thought of there being a door here perhaps you don't often play king of the castle said dora politely it is rather a rough game i always think well curiously enough we never have said mr red house beginning to lift out the chairs in which avocation we all helped of course nansen is nothing to you you ought to have a medal for daring explorations said the other gentleman but nobody gave us one and of course we did not want any reward for doing our duty however tight and cobwebby the sellers proved to be well stocked with spiders and old furniture but no toads or snakes which few if any regretted snakes are outcasts from human affection oswald pitties them of course there was a great lumpish thing in four parts that mr red house said was a press and a ripping settle besides the chairs and some carved wood that mr red house and his friend made out to be part of an old four post bed there was also a wooden thing like a box with another box on it at one end and h o said you could make a ripping rabbit hutch out of that oswald thought so himself but mr red house said he had other uses for it and would bring it up later it took us all that was left of the afternoon to get the things up the stairs into the kitchen it was hard work but we know all about the dignity of labor the general hated the things we had so enter prizingly discovered i suppose she knew who would have to clean them but mrs red house was awfully pleased and said we were dears we were not very clean dears by the time our work was done and when the other gentleman said won't you take a dish of tea under my humble roof the words like this were formed by more than one youthful voice well if you would be happier in a partially cleansed state said mr red house and mrs red house who was my idea of a feudal lady in a castle said oh come along let's go and partially clean ourselves i'm dirtier than anybody though i haven't explored a bit i've often noticed that the more you admire things the more they come off on you so we all washed as much as we cared to and went to tea at the gentleman's house which was only a cottage but very beautiful he had been a war correspondent and he knew a great many things besides having books and books of pictures it was a splendid party we thanked mrs rh and everybody when it was time to go and she kissed the girls and the little boys and then she put her head on one side and looked at oswald and said i suppose you're too old oswald did not like to say he was not if kissed at all he would prefer it being for some other reason than his being not too old for it so he did not know what to say but noel chipped in with you'll never be too old for it to mrs red house which seemed to oswald most silly and unmeaning because she was already much too old to be kissed by people unless she chose to begin it but everyone seemed to think noel had said something clever and oswald felt like a young ass but mrs rh looked at him so kindly and held out her hand so cleanly that before he knew he meant to he had kissed it like you do the queens then of course denny and dicky went and did the same oswald wishes that the word kiss might never be spoken again in this world not that he minded kissing mrs red house's hand in the least especially as she seemed to think it was nice of him too but the whole thing is such contemptible piffle we were seen home by the gentleman who wasn't mr red house and he stood a glorious cab with a white horse who had a rolling eye from blackheath station and so ended one of the most adventuring times we ever got out of a play beginning the time ended as the author has pointed out but not its resultiveness thus we ever find it in life the most unharmful things thoroughly approved even by grown-ups but too often lead to something quite different and that no one can possibly approve of not even yourself when you come to think it over afterwards like noel and ho had to it was but natural that the hearts of the young explorers should have dwelt fondly on everything underground even drains which was what made us read a book by mr hugo all the next day it is called the miserables in french and the man in it who was a splendid hero though a convict and a robber and various other professions escapes into a drain with great rats in it and is miraculously restored to the light of day unharmed by the kindly rodents and be rodents means rats when we had finished all the part about drains it was nearly dinnertime and noel said quite suddenly in the middle of a bite of mutton the red house isn't nearly so red as ours is outside why should the sellers be so much sellerier shut up a joe for a joe was trying to speak dora explained to him how we don't all have exactly the same blessings but he didn't seem to see it it doesn't seem like the way things happen in books he said in walter scott it wouldn't be like that nor yet in anthony hope i should think the rule would be the redder the seller rear if i was putting it into poetry i should make our sellers have something much wonderful or in them than just wooden things ho if you don't shut up i'll never let you be in anything again there's that door you go down steps to said dickie we've never been in there if dora and i weren't going with miss blake to be fitted for boots we might try that that's just what i was coming to stow it a joe i felt just like sellers today while you other chaps were washing your hands for din and it was very cold but i made a joe feel the same and we went down and that door isn't shut now the intelligible reader may easily guess that we finished our dinner as quickly as we could and we put on our outers sympathizing with dickie and dora who owing to boots were out of it and we went into the garden there are five steps down to that door they were red brick when they began but now they are green with age and mysteriousness and not being walked on and to the bottom of them the door was as noel said not fastened we went in it isn't brewery whiny sellers at all alice said it's more like a robber's storehouse look there we had got to the inner cellar and there were heaps of carrots and other vegetables halt my men cried as well advance not an inch further the bandits may look not a yard from you suppose they jump out on us said ho they will not rashly leap into the light said the discerning oswald and he went to fetch a new dark lantern of his that he had not had any chance of really using before but someone had taken oswald's secret matches and then the beastly lantern wouldn't light forever so long but he thought it didn't matter his being rather a long time gone because the others could pass the time in wondering whether anything would jump out on them and if so what and when so when he got back to the red steps and the open door and flashed his glorious bull's eye round it was rather an annoying thing for there not to be a single other eye for it to flash into everyone had vanished hello cried oswald and if his gallant voice trembled he is not ashamed of it because he knows about wells in cellars and for an instant even he did not know what happened but an answering hello came from beyond and he hastened after the others look out said alice don't tumble over that heap of bones oswald did look out of course he would not wish to walk on anyone's bones but he did not jump back with a scream whatever no one may say when he is in a temper the heap really did look very like bones partly covered with earth oswald was glad to learn that they were only parsnips we waited as long as we could sit alice but we thought perhaps you'd been collared for some little thing you'd forgotten all about doing and wouldn't be able to come back but we found noelle had fortunately got your matches i'm so glad you weren't collared oswald dear some boys would have let noelle know about the matches but oswald didn't the heaps of carrots and turnips and parsnips and things were not very interesting when you knew that they were not bleeding warriors or pilgrims bones and it was too cold to pretend for long with any comfort to the young pretenders so oswald said let's go out on the heath and play something warm you can't warm yourself with matches even if they're not your own that was all he said a great hero would not stoop to argue about matches and alice said all right and she and oswald went out and played pretending golf with some walking sticks of fathers but noelle and h.o preferred to sit stuffily over the common room fire so that oswald and alice as well as dora and dickie who were being measured for boots were entirely out of the rest of what happened and the author can only imagine the events that now occurred when noelle and h.o had roasted their legs by the fire till they were so hot that their stockings quite hurt them one of them must have said to the other i never knew which let's go and have another look at that seller the other whoever it was foolishly consented so they went and they took oswald's dark lantern in his absence and without his leave they found a hitherto unnoticed door behind the other one and noelle says he said we better not go in h.o says he said so too but anyway they did go in they found themselves in a small vaulted place that we found out afterwards had been used for mushrooms but it was long since any fair bud of a mushroom had blossomed in that dark retreat the place had been cleaned and new shelves put up and when noelle and h.o saw what was on these shelves the author is sure they turned pale though they say not for what they saw was coils and pots and wires and one of them said in a voice that must have trembled it is dynamite i am certain of it what shall we do i am certain the other said this is to blow up father because he took part in the lewish him election and his side won the reply no doubt was there is no time for delay we must act we must cut the fuse all the fuses there are dozens oswald thinks it was not half bad business those two kids for noelle is a little more than one owing to his poetry and his bronchitis standing in the abode of dynamite and not screeching or running off the tell miss blake or the servants or anyone but just doing the right thing without any fuss i need hardly say it did not prove to be the right thing but they thought it was and oswald cannot think that you are really doing wrong if you really think you are doing right i hope you will understand this i believe the kids tried cutting the fuses with dick's pocket knife that was in the pocket of his other clothes but the fuses would not no matter how little you trembled when you touched them but at last with scissors and the gas pliers they cut every fuse the fuses were long twisty wire things covered with green wool like blind cords then noelle and ho and oswald for one thinks it showed a goodish bit of pluck and policemen have been made heroes for less got cans and cans of water from the tap by the greenhouse and poured sluicing showers of the icy fluid in among the internal machinery of the dynamite arrangement for so they believed it to be then very wet but feeling that they had saved their father and the house they went and changed their clothes i think they were a little stuck up about it believing it to be an act unrivaled in devotedness and they were most tiresome all the afternoon talking about their secret and not letting us know what it was but when father came home early as it happened those swollen headed but in oswald's opinion quite to be excused kiddies learned the terrible truth of course oswald and dickie would have known it once if noelle and ho hadn't been so cocky about not telling us we could have exposed the truth to them in all its uninteresting nature i hope the reader will not prepare himself for a shock in a wild whirl of darkness and the gas being cut off and not being able to get any light and father saying all sorts of things it all came out those coils and jars and wires in that cellar were not an infernal machine at all it was i know you will be very much surprised it was the electric lights and bells that father had had put in while we were at the red house the day before ho and noelle caught it very fully and oswald thinks this was one of the few occasions when my father was not as just as he meant to be my uncle was not just either but then it is much longer since he was a boy so we must make excuses for him we sent mrs redhouse a christmas card each in spite of the trouble that her cellars had lured him into noelle sent her a homemade one with an endless piece of his everlasting poetry on it and next may she wrote and asked us to come and see her we tried to be just and we saw that it was not really her fault that noelle and ho had cut those electric wires so we all went but we did not take albert morrison because he was fortunately away with an aged godparent of his mother's who writes tracts at tunbridge wells the garden was all flowery and green and mr and mrs redhouse were nice and jolly and we had to distinguish and first class time but would you believe it that boxish thing in the cellar that ho wanted them to make a rabbit hutch of well mr redhouse had cleaned it and mended it and mrs redhouse took us up to the room where it was to let us look at it again and unbelievable to relate it turned out to have rockers and someone in dark bygone ages seems for reasons unknown to the present writer to have wasted no end of carpentry and carving on it just to make it into a cradle and what is more since we were there last mr and mrs redhouse had succeeded in obtaining a small but quite alive baby to put in it i suppose they thought it was willful waste to have a cradle and no baby to use it but it could so easily have been used for something else it would have made a ripping rabbit hutch and babies are far more trouble than rabbits to keep and not nearly so profitable i believe end of chapter six this is a liberivox recording all liberivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit liberivox.org new seekers by edith nesbitt chapter seven the turkey chains or riches revenge the morning dawn in cloudless splendor the sky was a pale cobalt color as in a picture of swiss scenery the sun shone brightly and all the green things in the garden sparkled in the bewitching rays of the monarch of the skies the author of this does not like to read much about the weather in books but he is obliged to put this piece in because it is true and it's a thing that does not very often happen in the middle of january in fact i never remember the weather being at all like that in the winter except on that one day of course we all went into the garden directly after brecker ps i have said green things perhaps you think that is a lapsus lazuli or slip of the tongue and that there are not any green things in the winter but there are and not just ever greens either all flowers and pansies and snapdragons and primgroses and lots of things keep green all the year unless it's too frosty live and learn and it was so warm we were able to sit in the summer house the birds were singing like mad perhaps they thought it was springtime or perhaps they always sing when they see the sun without paying attention to dates and now when all his brothers and sisters were sitting in the rustic seats in the summer house the farsighted oswald suddenly saw that now was the moment for him to hold that council he had been wanting to hold for some time so he stood in the door of the summer house in case any of the others should suddenly remember that they wanted to be in some other place and he said i say about that council i want to hold and ike replied well what about it so then oswald explained all over again that we had been treasure seekers and we had been would be goods and he thought it was time we were something else being something else make you think of things he said at the end of all the other things he said yes said h o yawning without putting up his hand which is not manners and we told him so but i can think of things without being other things look how i thought about being a clown and going to roam i shouldn't think you would want us to remember that said dora and indeed father had not been pleased with a show about that affair but oswald never encourages dora to nag so he said patiently yes you think of things you'd much better not have thought of now my idea is let's each say what sort of society we shall make ourselves into like we did when we were treasure seekers about the different ways to look for it i mean let's hold our tanks no not with your dirty fingers age old chap hold it with your teeth if you must hold it with something let's hold our tanks for a bit and then all say what we thought of in ages the thoughtful boy added hastily so that everyone should not speak at once when we had done holding our tanks so we were all silent and the birds sang industriously among the leafless trees of our large sunny garden in beautiful blackie the author is sorry to see he's getting poetical it shall not happen again and it was an extra fine day really and the birds did think a fair treat when three long minutes had elapsed themselves by the hands of oswald's watch which always keeps perfect time for three or four days after he has had it mended he closed the watch and observed time go ahead dora dora went ahead in the following remarks i've thought as hard as i can and nothing will come into my head except be good sweet maid and let her will be clever don't you think we might try to find some new ways to be good in no you don't i bar that came at once from the mouths of dickie and oswald you don't come that over twice dickie added and oswald eloquently said no more would be good thank you dora dora said well she couldn't think of anything else and she didn't expect oswald had thoughts of anything better yes i have replied her brother what i think is that we don't know half enough if you mean extra swath said alice i'm more homeless than i can care for already thank you i do not mean swath rejoined the experience oswald i want to know all about real things not bookie things if your kids had known about electric bells you wouldn't have oswald stopped and then said i won't say anymore because father says a gentleman does not support his arguments with personal illusions to other people's fault and follies faults and follies yourselves at h o the girls restored peace and oswald went on let us seek to grow wiser and to teach each other i bar that said eight show i don't want oswald and dickie always on to me and call it teaching we might call the society the would be wiser said oswald hastily it's not so dusty said dickie let's go on to the others before we decide your next yourself said alice oh so i am remark dickie trying to look surprised well my idea is let's be a sort of industrious society of beavers and make a solemn vow and covenant to make something every day we might call it the would be clever's it would be the too clever by halves before we've done with it said oswald and ali said we couldn't always make things that would be any good and then we should have to do something that wasn't any good and that would be rot yes i know it's my turn age you'll kick the table to pieces if you go on like that do for goodness sake keep your feet still the only thing i can think of is a society called the would be boys with you and dora for members and noel poats aren't boys exactly it said age oh if you don't shut up you shan't be in it all said alice putting her arm around noel no i meant us all to be in it only you boys are not to keep saying we are only girls and let us do everything the same as you boys do i don't want to be a boy thank you said dora not when i see how they behave age oh do stop sniffing and your handkerchief oh well take mine then it was now noel's turn to disclose his idea which proved most awful let's be would be poets he said and solemnly wow and convenient to write one piece of poetry a day as long as we live most of us were dumb but the dreadful thought but alice said that would never do noel dear because you're the one of us who's clever enough to do it so noel's detestable and degrading idea was shelved without oswald having to say anything that would have made that youthful poet weep i suppose you don't mean me to say what i thought of said eight show but i shall i think you ought all to be in a would be kind society and wow solemn convents and things not to be down on your younger brother we explained to him at once that he couldn't be in that because he hadn't got a younger brother and you may think yourself lucky you haven't dickie added the ingenious and felicitous oswald was just going to begin about the council all over again when the portable form of our indian uncle came stoutly stomping down the garden path under the cedars high brigands he cried in a his cheerful anglish manner who's on for the hippodrome this bright day and instantly we all were even oswald because after all you can have a council any day but hippodromes are not like that we got ready like the whirlwind of the desert for quickness and started off with our kind uncle who's lived so long in india that he's much more warm hearted than you would think to look at him halfway to the station dickie remembered his patent screw for working ships with he had been messing with it in the bath while he was waiting for oswald to have done plunging cleanly in the basin and in the desert whirlwind he had forgotten to take it out so now he ran back because he knew how its cardboard nest would turn to pulp if it was left i'll catch you up he cried the uncle took the tickets and the train came in and still dickie had not caught us up tiresome boy said the uncle you don't want to miss the beginning eh what and here he comes the uncle got in and so did we but dickie did not see the uncle's newspaper which oswald waved and he went running up and down the train looking for us instead of just getting in anywhere sensibly as oswald would have done when the train began to move he did try to open a carriage door but it stuck and the train went faster and just as he got it open a large heavy porter caught him by the collar and pulled him off the train saying now young shaver no susan sides on this airline a few plays dickie hit the porter but his fury was vain next moment the train had passed away and us in it dickie had no money and the uncle had all the tickets in the pocket of his fur coat i'm not going to tell you anything about the hippodrome because the author feels that it was a trifle beastly of us to have enjoyed it as much as we did considering dickie we tried not to talk about it before him when we got home but it was very difficult especially the elephants i suppose he spent an afternoon of bitter thoughts after he had told that porter what he thought of him which took some time and the station master interfered in the end when we got home he was all right with us he had had time to see it was not our faults whatever the thought he thought at the time he refused to talk about it only said i'm going to take it out of that porter you leave me alone i shall think of something presently revenge is very wrong sedora but even alice asked her kindly to dry up we all felt that it was simply pitiful to talk copybook to one so disappointed as our unfortunate brother it is wrong though sedora wrong be blowed said dickie snorting who began it i should like to know the stations a beastly awkward place to take it out of anyone in i wish i knew where he lived i know that said no i've known it a long time before christmas when we were going to the moat house well what is it then asked dickie savagely don't bite his head off remarked alice tell us all about noel how do you know it was when will you were weighing yourselves on the weighing machine i didn't because my weight isn't worth being weighed for and there was a heap of hampers and turkeys and hairs and things and there was a label on a turkey and brown paper parcel and that porter that you hate so said to the other porter oh hurry up do said dickie i won't tell you at all if you bully me said noel and alice had to coax him before he would go on oh well he looked at the label and said little mistake a bell wrong address ought to be three able place a and the other one looked and he said yes it's got your name right enough fine turkey to and is changed in the parcel pity they ain't more careful about addressing things aim so when they had done laughing about it i looked at the label and it said james johnson ate granwell park so i knew it was three able place he lived at and his name was james johnson a good old shellac homes said oswald you won't really hurt him said noel will you not of course can revenge with knives or poison balls i wouldn't do more than a good booby trap if i was you when noel said the word booby trap we all saw a strange happy look come over dickie's face it is called a far away look i believe and you can see it in the picture of a woman cuddling a photograph album with her hair down that is all in the shops and they call it the soul's awakening directly dickie soul had finished waking up he shut his teeth together with a click then he said i've got it of course we all knew that anyone who thinks revenge is wrong is asked to leave now dora said he was very unkind and he really wants to turn her out there is a jolly good firing father study said no i'm not maxi with you but i'm going to have my revenge and i don't want you to do anything you thought wrong you'd only make no end of a fuss afterwards well it is wrong so i'll go sadora don't say i didn't warn you that's all and she went then dickie said now any more conscious objectors and when no one replied he went on it was you saying booby trap gave me the idea his name's james johnson is it and he said the things were addressed wrong did he well i'll send me a turkey and chains a turkey in chains said no growing oily eyed at the thought a live turk or no not a dead one dickie the turk i'm going to send won't be a live one nor yet a dead one how horrible half dead that's worth than anything and no one became so green in the face that alice told dickie to stop playing the goat and tell us what his idea really was don't you see yet he cried i saw it directly i dare say said oswald it's easy to see your own idea drive ahead well i'm going to get a hamper and pack it full of parcels and put a list on them on the top beginning turk and chains and send it to mr james johnson and when he opens the parcels there'll be nothing inside there must be something you know said ho or the parcels won't be any shape except flatness oh there be something right enough was the bitter reply of the one who had not been to the hippodrome but it won't be the sort of something he'll expect it to be let's do it now i'll get a hamper he got a big one out the cellar and four empty bottles with their straw cases we filled the bottles with black ink and water and red ink and water and soapy water and water plain and we put them down on the list one bottle of port wine one bottle of sherry wine one bottle of sparkling champagne one bottle of rum the rest of the things we put on the list were one turkey and chains two pounds of chains one plum pudding four pounds of min spice two pounds of almonds and raisins one box of figs one bottle of french plums one large cake and we made our parcels to look outside as if their inside was full of the delicious attributes described in the list it was rather difficult to get anything just the shape of a turkey but with coals and crushed newspapers and firewood we did it and when it was down up with lots of strings and the paper artfully squeezed tight to the firewood to look like the turk's legs it really was almost lifelike in its deceivingness the chains or sausages we did with dusters and not clean ones roll tight and the paper molded gently to their forms the plum pudding was a newspaper bowl the min spice were newspapers too and so were the almonds and raisins the box of figs was a real fig box with cinders and ashes in it damped to keep them from rattling about the french plum bottle was real too it had newspaper soaked in ink in it and the cake was half a muff box of doras done up very carefully and put at the bottom of the camper inside the muff box we put a paper with revenge is not wrong when the other people begin it was you began and now your jolly well served out we packed all the bottles and parcels into the hampers and put the list on the very top pinned to the paper that covered the false breast of the imitation turk dicky wanted to write from an unknown friend but we did not think that was fair considering how dicky felt so at last we put from one who does not wish to sign his name and that was true at any rate dicky and oswald tagged the hamper down to the shop that has carter paterson sport outside i vote we don't pay the carriage said dicky but that was perhaps because he was still so very angry about being pulled off the train oswald had not had it done to him so he said that we ought to pay the carriage and he was jolly glad afterwards that his honorable feeling had arisen in his junk bosom and that he had jolly well made dicky let it rise in his we paid the carriage it was one and five pence but dicky said it was cheap for a high class revenge like this and after all it was his money the carriage was paid with it so then we went home and had another go in a grub because he had been rather upset by dicky's revenge the people where we left the hamper told us that it would be delivered the next day so the next morning we gloated over thought of the cell that porter was in for and dicky was more deeply gloating than anyone i expect it's got there by now he said at dinner time it's a first class booby trap what a cell for him he'll read the list and then he'll take out one parcel after another till he comes to the cake it was a ripping idea i'm glad i thought of it i'm not said no suddenly i wish you hadn't i wish we hadn't i know just exactly what he feels like now he feels as if he'd liked to kill you for it and i dare say he would if you hadn't been a craven white feathered skulker and not signed your name it was a thunderbolt in our midst no behaving like this it made oswald feel a sick inside feeling that perhaps stora had been right she sometimes is and oswald hates this feeling dicky was so surprised at the unheard of cheek of his younger brother that for a moment he was speechless and before he got over his speechlessness noel was crying and wouldn't have any more dinner ali spoke in the eloquent language of the human eye and begged dicky to look over it this once and he replied by means of the same useful organ that he didn't care what a silly kid thought so no more was said when noel had done crying he began to write a piece of poetry and kept at it all the afternoon oswald only saw just the beginning it was called the disappointed porter's fury supposed to be by the porter himself and it began when first i opened the hamper fair and saw the parcel inside there my heart rejoiced like drake gardens when it rains but soon i changed and then i ceased my trusty knife and bowl of poison and said upon the whole i will have the life of the man or woman who thought of this wicked plan to deceive a trusting porter so no noble heart would have thought of it no there were pages and pages of it of course it was all nonsense the poetry i mean and yet i've seen that put in books when the author does not want to let out all he thought at this time that evening at tea time dane came and said master dicky there is an old aged man at the door inquire if you live here so dicky thought it was the bootmaker perhaps so he went out and oswald went with him because he wanted to ask for a bit of cobblers wax but it wasn't the shoemaker it was an old man pale in the face and white in the hair and he was so old that we asked him into further study by the fire as soon as we had found out it was really dicky he wanted to see when we got him there he said might i trouble you to shut the door this is the way a burglar or a murderer might behave but we did not think he was one he looked too old for those professions when the door was shut he said i ain't got much to say junk it's only to ask was it you sent this he pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and it was our list oswald and dicky looked at each other did you send it said the old man again so then dicky shrugged his shoulders and said yes oswald said how did you know and who are you you the old man got whiter than ever he pulled out a piece of paper it was the greenish gray piece would wrap the turk and chains in and it had a label on it that we hadn't noticed with dicky's name and address on it the new bat he had got at christmas had come in it that's all i know said the old man i'll be sure your sin will find you out but who are you anyway asked oswald again oh i ain't nobody in particular he said i'm only the father of the poor gal as you took in with your cruel deceitful lying tricks oh you may look over pishonk sir what i'm here to speak my mind and i'll speak it if i die for it so now but we didn't send it to a girl sir dicky we wouldn't do such a thing we sent it for a for a i think he tried to say for a joke but he couldn't with the fire away the old man looked at him for a sell to pay a porter out for stopping me getting into a train when it was just starting and i missed going to the circus with the others oswald was glad dicky was not too proud to explain to the old man he was rather afraid he might be i never sent it to a girl he said again oh said the h1 and oh told you that their porter was a single man it was his wife my poor gal has opened your low parcel and she sees your lying list written out so plain on top says she to me father says she there's a friend in need all these good things for us and no name signed so that we can't even say thank you i suppose it's someone who knows how short we are just now and hardly enough to eat with colds the price they are says she to me i do call that kind and christian she says she and i won't open not one of them lovely parcels till jim comes home she says and we'll enjoy the pleasures of it together all three of us says she and when he came home we opened of them lovely parcels she's a cry in her eyes out at home now and jim he only swore once and i don't blame him for that one though never an evil speaker myself and then he set himself down on the chair and puts his elbows on it to hide his face like and Amy says he so helped me i didn't know i'd gotten any me in the world i always thought we'd got nothing but good friends says he and i says nothing but i picks up the paper and comes here to your fine house to tell you what i think of you it's a mean low down dirty nasty trick and no gentleman wouldn't add on it so that's all and is of my chest and good night to you gentlemen both he turned to go out i shall not tell you what oswald felt except that he did hope dicky felt the same and would behave accordingly and dick it did and oswald was was both pleased and surprised dicky said oh i say stop a minute i didn't think of your poor girl and our youngest what but a bear three weeks old said the old man angrily i didn't on my honor i didn't think of anything but paying the porter out he was only doing his duty said the old man well i beg your pardon and his said dicky it was ungentlemanly and i'm very sorry and i'll try to make it up somehow please make it up i can't do more than own i'm sorry i wish i hadn't there well said the old man slowly i will leave it at that next time perhaps you'll think a bit who it's going to be as i'll get the benefit you're paying out dicky made him shake hands and oswald did the same then we had to go back to the others and tell them it was hard but it was ginger ale and seed cake compared to having to tell father which was what it came to in the end for we all saw though no will happen to be the one to say it first that the only way we could really make it up to james johnson and his poor girl and his poor girl's father and the baby that was only three weeks old was to send them a hamper with all the things in it real things that we had put on the list in the revengeful hamper and as we had only six and seven pence among us we had to tell father besides you feel better inside when you have he talked to us about it a bit but he's a good father and does not joe unduly he advanced our pocket money to buy a real large turcan chains and he gave us six bottles of port wine because he thought that would be better for the poor girl who had the baby than rum or sherry or even sparking champagne we were afraid to send the hamper by carter pat for fear they should think it was another avenging take in and that was one reason why we took it ourselves in a cab the other reason was that we wanted to see them open the hamper and another was that we wanted at least dickie wanted to have it out man to man with a porter and his wife and tell them himself how sorry he was so we got our gardener to find out secretly when that porter was off duty and when we knew the times we went to his house at one of them then dickie got out of the cab and went in and said what he had to say and then we took in the hamper and the old man and his daughter and the porter were most awfully decent to us and the porter's wife said Lord let bygones be bygones is what I say why we would never have had this handsome present but for the other say no more about sir and thank you kindly I'm sure and we have been friends with them ever since we were short of pocket money for some time but Oswald does not complain though the Turk was dickie's idea entirely yet Oswald is just and he owns that he helped as much as he could in packing the hamper of the Avenger Dora paid her share to though she wasn't in it the author does not shrink from owning that this was very decent of Dora this is all the story of the turk in chains or Richard's revenge his name is really Richard the same as father's we only call him dickie for short end of chapter seven of Edith Nespid's new seekers read by Lars Rolander