Then our robber said, “Yes, old chap; but when you found there really was someone there, you dropped the pistol and bunked, didn’t you, eh?”
And I said, “No; I thought, ‘Hullo! here’s a robber! Well, it’s all up, I suppose, but I may as well hold on and see what happens.’ ”
And I was glad I’d owned up, for Father slapped me on the back, and said I was a young brick, and our robber said I was no funk anyway, and though I got very hot under the blanket I liked it, and I explained that the others would have done the same if they had thought of it.
Then Father got up some more beer, and laughed about Dora’s responsibility, and he got out a box of figs he had bought for us, only he hadn’t given it to us because of the Water Rates, and Eliza came in and brought up the bread and cheese, and what there was left of the neck of mutton—cold wreck of mutton, Father called it—and we had a feast—like a picnic—all sitting anywhere, and eating with our fingers. It was prime. We sat up till past twelve o’clock, and I never felt so pleased to think I was not born a girl. It was hard on the others; they would have done just the same if they’d thought of it. But it does make you feel jolly when your pater says you’re a young brick!
When Mr. Foulkes was going, he said to Alice, “Goodbye, Hardy.”
And Alice understood, of course, and kissed him as hard as she could.
And she said, “I wanted to, when you said no one kissed you when you left off being a pirate.”
And he said, “I know you did, my dear.”
And Dora kissed him too, and said, “I suppose none of these tales were true?”
And our robber just said, “I tried to play the part properly, my dear.”
And he jolly well did play it, and no mistake. We have often seen him since, and his boy Denny, and his girl Daisy, but that comes in another story.
And if any of you kids who read this ever had two such adventures in one night you can just write and tell me. That’s all.
XIV
The Divining-Rod
You have no idea how uncomfortable the house was on the day when we sought for gold with the divining-rod. It was like a spring-cleaning in the wintertime. All the carpets were up, because Father had told Eliza to make the place decent as there was a gentleman coming to dinner the next day. So she got in a charwoman, and they slopped water about, and left brooms and brushes on the stairs for people to tumble over. H. O. got a big bump on his head in that way, and when he said it was too bad, Eliza said he should keep in the nursery then, and not be where he’d no business. We bandaged his head with a towel, and then he stopped crying and played at being England’s wounded hero dying in the cockpit, while every man was doing his duty, as the hero had told them to, and Alice was Hardy, and I was the doctor, and the others were the crew. Playing at Hardy made us think of our own dear robber, and we wished he was there, and wondered if we should ever see him any more.
We were rather astonished at Father’s having anyone to dinner, because now he never seems to think of anything but business. Before Mother died people often came to dinner, and Father’s business did not take up so much of his time and was not the bother it is now. And we used to see who could go furthest down in our nightgowns and get nice things to eat, without being seen, out of the dishes as they came out of the dining-room. Eliza can’t cook very nice things. She told Father she was a good plain cook, but he says it was a fancy portrait. We stayed in the nursery till the charwoman came in and told us to be off—she was going to make one job of it, and have our carpet up as well as all the others, now the man was here to beat them. It came up, and it was very dusty—and under it we found my threepenny bit that I lost ages ago, which shows what Eliza is. H. O. had got tired of being the wounded hero, and Dicky was so tired of doing nothing that Dora said she knew he’d begin to tease Noël in a minute; then of course Dicky said he wasn’t going to tease anybody—he was going out to the Heath. He said he’d heard that nagging women drove a man from his home, and now he found it was quite true. Oswald always tries to be a peacemaker, so he told Dicky to shut up and not make an ass of himself. And Alice said, “Well, Dora began—” and Dora tossed her chin up and said it wasn’t any business of Oswald’s anyway, and no one asked Alice’s opinion. So we all felt very uncomfortable till Noël said, “Don’t let’s quarrel about nothing. You know let dogs delight—and I made up another piece while you were talking—
Quarrelling is an evil thing,
It fills with gall life’s cup;
For when once you begin
It takes such a long time to make it up.”
We all laughed then and stopped jawing
