The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (14 page)

“All right, old man. Good dog,” said she. “Here—give me the baby, Peter; you’re so wet you’ll give it cold.”

Peter was only too glad to hand over the strange little bundle that squirmed and whimpered in his arms.

“Now,” said Bobbie, quickly, “you run straight to the ‘Rose and Crown’ and tell them. Phil and I will stay here with the precious. Hush, then, a dear, a duck, a darling! Go
now
, Peter! Run!”

“I can’t run in these things,” said Peter, firmly; “they’re as heavy as lead. I’ll walk.”

“Then
I’ll
run,” said Bobbie. “Get on the bank, Phil, and I’ll hand you the dear.”

The baby was carefully handed. Phyllis sat down on the bank and tried to hush the baby. Peter wrung the water from his sleeves and knickerbocker legs as well as he could, and it was Bobbie who ran like the wind across the bridge and up the long white quiet twilight road towards the ‘Rose and Crown.’

There is a nice old-fashioned room at the ‘Rose and Crown; where Bargees and their wives sit of an evening drinking their supper beer, and toasting their supper cheese at a glowing basketful of coals that sticks out into the room under a great hooded chimney and is warmer and prettier and more comforting than any other fireplace
I
ever saw.

There was a pleasant party of barge people round the fire. You might not have thought it pleasant, but they did; for they were all friends or acquaintances, and they liked the same sort of things, and talked the same sort of talk. This is the real secret of pleasant society. The Bargee Bill, whom the children had found so disagreeable, was considered excellent company by his mates. He was telling a tale of his own wrongs—always a thrilling subject. It was his barge he was speaking about.

“And ’e sent down word ‘paint her inside hout,’ not namin’ no colour, d’ye see? So I gets a lotter green paint and I paints her stem to stern, and I tell yer she looked A1. Then ‘E comes along and ’e says, ‘Wot yer paint ’er all one colour for?’ ’e says. And I says, says I, ‘Cause I thought she’d look fust-rate,’ says I, ‘and I think so still.’ An’ he says, ‘
dew
yer? Then ye can just pay for the bloomin’ paint yerself,’ says he. An’ I ’ad to, too.” A murmur of sympathy ran round the room. Breaking noisily in on it came Bobbie. She burst open the swing door—crying breathlessly:—

“Bill! I want Bill the Bargeman.”

There was a stupefied silence. Pots of beer were held in mid-air, paralysed on their way to thirsty mouths.

“Oh,” said Bobbie, seeing the bargewoman and making for her. “Your barge cabin’s on fire. Go quickly.”

The woman started to her feet, and put a big red hand to her waist, on the left side, where your heart seems to be when you are frightened or miserable.

“Reginald Horace!” she cried in a terrible voice; “my Reginald Horace!”

“All right,” said Bobbie, “if you mean the baby; got him out safe. Dog, too.” She had no breath for more, except, “Go on—it’s all alight.”

Then she sank on the ale-house bench and tried to get that breath of relief after running which people call the ‘second wind.’ But she felt as though she would never breathe again.

Bill the Bargee rose slowly and heavily. But his wife was a hundred yards up the road before he had quite understood what was the matter.

Phyllis, shivering by the canal side, had hardly heard the quick approaching feet before the woman had flung herself on the railing, rolled down the bank, and snatched the baby from her.

“Don’t,” said Phyllis, reproachfully; “I’d just got him to sleep.”

* * * *

Bill came up later talking in a language with which the children were wholly unfamiliar. He leaped on to the barge and dipped up pails of water. Peter helped him and they put out the fire. Phyllis, the bargewoman, and the baby—and presently Bobbie, too—cuddled together in a heap on the bank.

“Lord help me, if it was me left anything as could catch alight,” said the woman again and again.

But it wasn’t she. It was Bill the Bargeman, who had knocked his pipe out and the red ash had fallen on the hearth-rug and smouldered there and at last broken into flame. Though a stern man he was just. He did not blame his wife for what was his own fault, as many bargemen, and other men, too, would have done.

* * * *

Mother was half wild with anxiety when at last the three children turned up at Three Chimneys, all very wet by now, for Peter seemed to have come off on the others. But when she had disentangled the truth of what had happened from their mixed and incoherent narrative, she owned that they had done quite right, and could not possibly have done otherwise. Nor did she put any obstacles in the way of their accepting the cordial invitation with which the bargeman had parted from them.

“Ye be here at seven tomorrow,” he had said, “and I’ll take you the entire trip to Farley and back, so I will, and not a penny to pay. Nineteen locks!”

They did not know what locks were; but they were at the bridge at seven, with bread and cheese and half a soda cake, and quite a quarter of a leg of mutton in a basket.

It was a glorious day. The old white horse strained at the ropes, the barge glided smoothly and steadily through the still water. The sky was blue overhead. Mr. Bill was as nice as anyone could possibly be. No one would have thought that he could be the same man who had held Peter by the ear. As for Mrs. Bill, she had always been nice, as Bobbie said, and so had the baby, and even Spot, who might have bitten them quite badly if he had liked.

“It was simply ripping, Mother,” said Peter, when they reached home very happy, very tired, and very dirty, “right over that glorious aqueduct. And locks—you don’t know what they’re like. You sink into the ground and then, when you feel you’re never going to stop going down, two great black gates open slowly, slowly—you go out, and there you are on the canal just like you were before.”

“I know,” said Mother, “there are locks on the Thames. Father and I used to go on the river at Marlow before we were married.”

“And the dear, darling, ducky baby,” said Bobbie; “it let me nurse it for ages and ages—and it
was
so good. Mother, I wish we had a baby to play with.”

“And everybody was so nice to us,” said Phyllis, “everybody we met. And they say we may fish whenever we like. And Bill is going to show us the way next time he’s in these parts. He says we don’t know really.”

“He said
you
didn’t know,” said Peter; “but, Mother, he said he’d tell all the bargees up and down the canal that we were the real, right sort, and they were to treat us like good pals, as we were.”

“So then I said,” Phyllis interrupted, “we’d always each wear a red ribbon when we went fishing by the canal, so they’d know it was
us
, and we were the real, right sort, and be nice to us!”

“So you’ve made another lot of friends,” said Mother; “first the railway and then the canal!”

“Oh, yes,” said Bobbie; “I think everyone in the world is friends if you can only get them to see you don’t want to be
un
-friends.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Mother; and she sighed. “Come, Chicks. It’s bedtime.”

“Yes,” said Phyllis. “Oh dear—and we went up there to talk about what we’d do for Perks’s birthday. And we haven’t talked a single thing about it!”

“No more we have,” said Bobbie; “but Peter’s saved Reginald Horace’s life. I think that’s about good enough for one evening.”

“Bobbie would have saved him if I hadn’t knocked her down; twice I did,” said Peter, loyally.

“So would I,” said Phyllis, “if I’d known what to do.”

“Yes,” said Mother, “you’ve saved a little child’s life. I do think that’s enough for one evening. Oh, my darlings, thank God
you’re
all safe!”

CHAPTER IX

The pride of Perks

It was breakfast-time. Mother’s face was very bright as she poured the milk a
nd ladled out the porridge.

“I’ve sold another story, Chickies,” she said; “the one about the King of the Mussels, so there’ll be buns for tea. You can go and get them as soon as they’re baked. About eleven, isn’t it?”

Peter, Phyllis, and Bobbie exchanged glances with each other, six glances in all. Then Bobbie said:—

“Mother, would you mind if we didn’t have the buns for tea tonight, but on the fifteenth? That’s next Thursday.”

“
I
don’t mind when you have them, dear,” said Mother, “but why?”

“Because it’s Perks’s birthday,” said Bobbie; “he’s thirty-two, and he says he doesn’t keep his birthday any more, because he’s got other things to keep—not rabbits or secrets—but the kids and the missus.”

“You mean his wife and children,” said Mother.

“Yes,” said Phyllis; “it’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

“And we thought we’d make a nice birthday for him. He’s been so awfully jolly decent to us, you know, Mother,” said Peter, “and we agreed that next bun-day we’d ask you if we could.”

“But suppose there hadn’t been a bun-day before the fifteenth?” said Mother.

“Oh, then, we meant to ask you to let us anti—antipate it, and go without when the bun-day came.”

“Anticipate,” said Mother. “I see. Certainly. It would be nice to put his name on the buns with pink sugar, wouldn’t it?”

“Perks,” said Peter, “it’s not a pretty name.”

“His other name’s Albert,” said Phyllis; “I asked him once.”

“We might put A. P.,” said Mother; “I’ll show you how when the day comes.”

This was all very well as far as it went. But even fourteen halfpenny buns with A. P. on them in pink sugar do not of themselves make a very grand celebration.

“There are always flowers, of course,” said Bobbie, later, when a really earnest council was being held on the subject in the hay-loft where the broken chaff-cutting machine was, and the row of holes to drop hay through into the hay-racks over the mangers of the stables below.

“He’s got lots of flowers of his own,” said Peter.

“But it’s always nice to have them given you,” said Bobbie, “however many you’ve got of your own. We can use flowers for trimmings to the birthday. But there must be something to trim besides buns.”

“Let’s all be quiet and think,” said Phyllis; “no one’s to speak until it’s thought of something.”

So they were all quiet and so very still that a brown rat thought that there was no one in the loft and came out very boldly. When Bobbie sneezed, the rat was quite shocked and hurried away, for he saw that a hay-loft where such things could happen was no place for a respectable middle-aged rat that liked a quiet life.

“Hooray!” cried Peter, suddenly, “I’ve got it.” He jumped up and kicked at the loose hay.

“What?” said the others, eagerly.

“Why, Perks is so nice to everybody. There must be lots of people in the village who’d like to help to make him a birthday. Let’s go round and ask everybody.”

“Mother said we weren’t to ask people for things,” said Bobbie, doubtfully.

“For ourselves, she meant, silly, not for other people. I’ll ask the old gentleman too. You see if I don’t,” said Peter.

“Let’s ask Mother first,” said Bobbie.

“Oh, what’s the use of bothering Mother about every little thing?” said Peter, “especially when she’s busy. Come on. Let’s go down to the village now and begin.”

So they went. The old lady at the Post-office said she didn’t see why Perks should have a birthday any more than anyone else.

“No,” said Bobbie, “I should like everyone to have one. Only we know when his is.”

“Mine’s tomorrow,” said the old lady, “and much notice anyone will take of it. Go along with you.”

So they went.

And some people were kind, and some were crusty. And some would give and some would not. It is rather difficult work asking for things, even for other people, as you have no doubt found if you have ever tried it.

When the children got home and counted up what had been given and what had been promised, they felt that for the first day it was not so bad. Peter wrote down the lists of the things in the little pocket-book where he kept the numbers of his engines. These were the lists:—

GIVEN.

A tobacco pipe from the sweet shop.

Half a pound of tea from the grocer’s.

A woollen scarf slightly faded from the draper’s, which was the other side of the grocer’s.

A stuffed squirrel from the Doctor.

PROMISED.

A piece of meat from the butcher.

Six fresh eggs from the woman who lived in the old turnpike cottage.

A piece of honeycomb and six bootlaces from the cobbler, and an iron shovel from the blacksmith’s.

Very early next morning Bobbie got up and woke Phyllis. This had been agreed on between them. They had not told Peter because they thought he would think it silly. But they told him afterwards, when it had turned out all right.

They cut a big bunch of roses, and put it in a basket with the needle-book that Phyllis had made for Bobbie on her birthday, and a very pretty blue necktie of Phyllis’s. Then they wrote on a paper: ‘For Mrs. Ransome, with our best love, because it is her birthday,’ and they put the paper in the basket, and they took it to the Post-office, and went in and put it on the counter and ran away before the old woman at the Post-office had time to get into her shop.

When they got home Peter had grown confidential over helping Mother to get the breakfast and had told her their plans.

“There’s no harm in it,” said Mother, “but it depends
how
you do it. I only hope he won’t be offended and think it’s
charity
. Poor people are very proud, you know.”

“It isn’t because he’s poor,” said Phyllis; “it’s because we’re fond of him.”

“I’ll find some things that Phyllis has outgrown,” said Mother, “if you’re quite sure you can give them to him without his being offended. I should like to do some little thing for him because he’s been so kind to you. I can’t do much because we’re poor ourselves. What are you writing, Bobbie?”

“Nothing particular,” said Bobbie, who had suddenly begun to scribble. “I’m sure he’d like the things, Mother.”

The morning of the fifteenth was spent very happily in getting the buns and watching Mother make A. P. on them with pink sugar. You know how it’s done, of course? You beat up whites of eggs and mix powdered sugar with them, and put in a few drops of cochineal. And then you make a cone of clean, white paper with a little hole at the pointed end, and put the pink egg-sugar in at the big end. It runs slowly out at the pointed end, and you write the letters with it just as though it were a great fat pen full of pink sugar-ink.

The buns looked beautiful with A. P. on every one, and, when they were put in a cool oven to set the sugar, the children went up to the village to collect the honey and the shovel and the other promised things.

The old lady at the Post-office was standing on her doorstep. The children said “Good morning,” politely, as they passed.