The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (179 page)

We had found means to secrete a dish, and we now tried to dish the pudding up, but it stuck to the basin, and had to be dislodged with the chisel. The pudding was horribly pale. We poured the holly sauce over it, and Dora took up the knife and was just cutting it when a few simple words from H.O. turned us from happy and triumphing cookery artists to persons in despair.

He said: “How pleased all those kind ladies and gentlemen would be if they knew we were the poor children they gave the shillings and sixpences and things for!”

We all said, “What?” It was no moment for politeness.

“I say,” H.O. said, “they’d be glad if they knew it was us was enjoying the pudding, and not dirty little, really poor children.”

“You should say ‘you were,’ not ‘you was,’” said Dora, but it was as in a dream and only from habit.

“Do you mean to say”—Oswald spoke firmly, yet not angrily—“that you and Alice went and begged for money for poor children, and then kept it?”

“We didn’t keep it,” said H.O., “we spent it.”

“We’ve kept the things, you little duffer!” said Dicky, looking at the pudding sitting alone and uncared for on its dish. “You begged for money for poor children, and then kept it. It’s stealing, that’s what it is. I don’t say so much about you—you’re only a silly kid—but Alice knew better. Why did you do it?”

He turned to Alice, but she was now too deep in tears to get a word out.

H.O. looked a bit frightened, but he answered the question. We have taught him this. He said—

“I thought they’d give us more if I said poor children than if I said just us.”

“That’s cheating,” said Dicky—“downright beastly, mean, low cheating.”

“I’m not,” said H.O.; “and you’re another.” Then he began to cry too. I do not know how the others felt, but I understand from Oswald that he felt that now the honour of the house of Bastable had been stamped on in the dust, and it didn’t matter what happened. He looked at the beastly holly that had been left over from the sauce and was stuck up over the pictures. It now appeared hollow and disgusting, though it had got quite a lot of berries, and some of it was the varied kind—green and white. The figs and dates and toffee were set out in the doll’s dinner service. The very sight of it all made Oswald blush sickly. He owns he would have liked to cuff H.O., and, if he did for a moment wish to shake Alice, the author, for one, can make allowances.

Now Alice choked and spluttered, and wiped her eyes fiercely, and said, “It’s no use ragging H.O. It’s my fault. I’m older than he is.”

H.O. said, “It couldn’t be Alice’s fault. I don’t see as it was wrong.”

“That, not as,” murmured Dora, putting her arm round the sinner who had brought this degrading blight upon our family tree, but such is girls’ undetermined and affectionate silliness. “Tell sister all about it, H.O. dear. Why couldn’t it be Alice’s fault?”

H.O. cuddled up to Dora and said snufflingly in his nose—

“Because she hadn’t got nothing to do with it. I collected it all. She never went into one of the houses. She didn’t want to.”

“And then took all the credit of getting the money,” said Dicky savagely.

Oswald said, “Not much credit,” in scornful tones.

“Oh, you are beastly, the whole lot of you, except Dora!” Alice said, stamping her foot in rage and despair. “I tore my frock on a nail going out, and I didn’t want to go back, and I got H.O. to go to the houses alone, and I waited for him outside. And I asked him not to say anything because I didn’t want Dora to know about the frock—it’s my best. And I don’t know what he said inside. He never told me. But I’ll bet anything he didn’t mean to cheat.”

“You said lots of kind people would be ready to give money to get pudding for poor children. So I asked them to.”

Oswald, with his strong right hand, waved a wave of passing things over.

“We’ll talk about that another time,” he said; “just now we’ve got weightier things to deal with.”

He pointed to the pudding, which had grown cold during the conversation to which I have alluded. H.O. stopped crying, but Alice went on with it. Oswald now said—

“We’re a base and outcast family. Until that pudding’s out of the house we shan’t be able to look any one in the face. We must see that that pudding goes to poor children—not grisling, grumpy, whiney-piney, pretending poor children—but real poor ones, just as poor as they can stick.”

“And the figs too—and the dates,” said Noël, with regretting tones.

“Every fig,” said Dicky sternly. “Oswald is quite right.”

This honourable resolution made us feel a bit better. We hastily put on our best things, and washed ourselves a bit, and hurried out to find some really poor people to give the pudding to. We cut it in slices ready, and put it in a basket with the figs and dates and toffee. We would not let H.O. come with us at first because he wanted to. And Alice would not come because of him. So at last we had to let him. The excitement of tearing into your best things heals the hurt that wounded honour feels, as the poetry writer said—or at any rate it makes the hurt feel better.

We went out into the streets. They were pretty quiet—nearly everybody was eating its Christmas dessert. But presently we met a woman in an apron. Oswald said very politely—

“Please, are you a poor person?” And she told us to get along with us.

The next we met was a shabby man with a hole in his left boot.

Again Oswald said, “Please, are you a poor person, and have you any poor little children?”

The man told us not to come any of our games with him, or we should laugh on the wrong side of our faces. We went on sadly. We had no heart to stop and explain to him that we had no games to come.

The next was a young man near the Obelisk. Dora tried this time.

She said, “Oh, if you please we’ve got some Christmas pudding in this basket, and if you’re a poor person you can have some.”

“Poor as Job,” said the young man in a hoarse voice, and he had to come up out of a red comforter to say it.

We gave him a slice of the pudding, and he bit into it without thanks or delay. The next minute he had thrown the pudding slap in Dora’s face, and was clutching Dicky by the collar.

“Blime if I don’t chuck ye in the river, the whole bloomin’ lot of you!” he exclaimed.

The girls screamed, the boys shouted, and though Oswald threw himself on the insulter of his sister with all his manly vigour, yet but for a friend of Oswald’s, who is in the police, passing at that instant, the author shudders to think what might have happened, for he was a strong young man, and Oswald is not yet come to his full strength, and the Quaggy runs all too near.

Our policeman led our assailant aside, and we waited anxiously, as he told us to. After long uncertain moments the young man in the comforter loafed off grumbling, and our policeman turned to us.

“Said you give him a dollop o’ pudding, and it tasted of soap and hair-oil.”

I suppose the hair-oil must have been the Brown Windsoriness of the soap coming out. We were sorry, but it was still our duty to get rid of the pudding. The Quaggy was handy, it is true, but when you have collected money to feed poor children and spent it on pudding it is not right to throw that pudding in the river. People do not subscribe shillings and sixpences and half-crowns to feed a hungry flood with Christmas pudding.

Yet we shrank from asking any more people whether they were poor persons, or about their families, and still more from offering the pudding to chance people who might bite into it and taste the soap before we had time to get away.

It was Alice, the most paralysed with disgrace of all of us, who thought of the best idea.

She said, “Let’s take it to the workhouse. At any rate they’re all poor people there, and they mayn’t go out without leave, so they can’t run after us to do anything to us after the pudding. No one would give them leave to go out to pursue people who had brought them pudding, and wreck vengeance on them, and at any rate we shall get rid of the conscience-pudding—it’s a sort of conscience-money, you know—only it isn’t money but pudding.”

The workhouse is a good way, but we stuck to it, though very cold, and hungrier than we thought possible when we started, for we had been so agitated we had not even stayed to eat the plain pudding our good Father had so kindly and thoughtfully ordered for our Christmas dinner.

The big bell at the workhouse made a man open the door to us, when we rang it. Oswald said (and he spoke because he is next eldest to Dora, and she had had jolly well enough of saying anything about pudding)—he said—

“Please we’ve brought some pudding for the poor people.”

He looked us up and down, and he looked at our basket, then he said: “You’d better see the Matron.”

We waited in a hall, feeling more and more uncomfy, and less and less like Christmas. We were very cold indeed, especially our hands and our noses. And we felt less and less able to face the Matron if she was horrid, and one of us at least wished we had chosen the Quaggy for the pudding’s long home, and made it up to the robbed poor in some other way afterwards.

Just as Alice was saying earnestly in the burning cold ear of Oswald, “Let’s put down the basket and make a bolt for it. Oh, Oswald, let’s!” a lady came along the passage. She was very upright, and she had eyes that went through you like blue gimlets. I should not like to be obliged to thwart that lady if she had any design, and mine was opposite. I am glad this is not likely to occur.

She said, “What’s all this about a pudding?”

H.O. said at once, before we could stop him, “They say I’ve stolen the pudding, so we’ve brought it here for the poor people.”

“No, we didn’t!” “That wasn’t why!” “The money was given!” “It was meant for the poor!” “Shut up, H.O.!” said the rest of us all at once.

Then there was an awful silence. The lady gimleted us again one by one with her blue eyes.

Then she said: “Come into my room. You all look frozen.”

She took us into a very jolly room with velvet curtains and a big fire, and the gas lighted, because now it was almost dark, even out of doors. She gave us chairs, and Oswald felt as if his was a dock, he felt so criminal, and the lady looked so Judgular.

Then she took the arm-chair by the fire herself, and said, “Who’s the eldest?”

“I am,” said Dora, looking more like a frightened white rabbit than I’ve ever seen her.

“Then tell me all about it.”

Dora looked at Alice and began to cry. That slab of pudding in the face had totally unnerved the gentle girl. Alice’s eyes were red, and her face was puffy with crying; but she spoke up for Dora and said—

“Oh, please let Oswald tell. Dora can’t. She’s tired with the long walk. And a young man threw a piece of it in her face, and——”

The lady nodded and Oswald began. He told the story from the very beginning, as he has always been taught to, though he hated to lay bare the family honour’s wound before a stranger, however judgelike and gimlet-eyed He told all—not concealing the pudding-throwing, nor what the young man said about soap.

“So,” he ended, “we want to give the conscience-pudding to you. It’s like conscience-money—you know what that is, don’t you? But if you really think it is soapy and not just the young man’s horridness, perhaps you’d better not let them eat it. But the figs and things are all right.”

When he had done the lady said, for most of us were crying more or less—

“Come, cheer up! It’s Christmas-time, and he’s very little—your brother, I mean. And I think the rest of you seem pretty well able to take care of the honour of the family. I’ll take the conscience-pudding off your minds. Where are you going now?”

“Home, I suppose,” Oswald said. And he thought how nasty and dark and dull it would be. The fire out most likely and Father away.

“And your Father’s not at home, you say,” the blue-gimlet lady went on. “What do you say to having tea with me, and then seeing the entertainment we have got up for our old people?”

Then the lady smiled and the blue gimlets looked quite merry.

The room was so warm and comfortable and the invitation was the last thing we expected. It was jolly of her, I do think.

No one thought quite at first of saying how pleased we should be to accept her kind invitation. Instead we all just said “Oh!” but in a tone which must have told her we meant “Yes, please,” very deeply.

Oswald (this has more than once happened) was the first to restore his manners. He made a proper bow like he has been taught, and said—

“Thank you very much. We should like it very much. It is very much nicer than going home. Thank you very much.”

I need not tell the reader that Oswald could have made up a much better speech if he had had more time to make it up in, or if he had not been so filled with mixed flusteredness and furification by the shameful events of the day.

We washed our faces and hands and had a first rate muffin and crumpet tea, with slices of cold meats, and many nice jams and cakes. A lot of other people were there, most of them people who were giving the entertainment to the aged poor.

After tea it was the entertainment. Songs and conjuring and a play called “Box and Cox,” very amusing, and a lot of throwing things about in it—bacon and chops and things—and nigger minstrels. We clapped till our hands were sore.

When it was over we said goodbye. In between the songs and things Oswald had had time to make up a speech of thanks to the lady.

He said—

“We all thank you heartily for your goodness. The entertainment was beautiful. We shall never forget your kindness and hospitableness.”

The lady laughed, and said she had been very pleased to have us. A fat gentleman said—

“And your teas? I hope you enjoyed those—eh?”

Oswald had not had time to make up an answer to that, so he answered straight from the heart, and said—

“Ra—ther!”

And every one laughed and slapped us boys on the back and kissed the girls, and the gentleman who played the bones in the nigger minstrels saw us home. We ate the cold pudding that night, and H.O. dreamed that something came to eat him, like it advises you to in the advertisements on the hoardings. The grown-ups said it was the pudding, but I don’t think it could have been that, because, as I have said more than once, it was so very plain.

Some of H.O.’s brothers and sisters thought it was a judgment on him for pretending about who the poor children were he was collecting the money for. Oswald does not believe such a little boy as H.O. would have a real judgment made just for him and nobody else, whatever he did.

But it certainly is odd. H.O. was the only one who had bad dreams, and he was also the only one who got any of the things we bought with that ill-gotten money, because, you remember, he picked a hole in the raisin-paper as he was bringing the parcel home. The rest of us had nothing, unless you count the scrapings of the pudding-basin, and those don’t really count at all.