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The Wonderful Garden or The Three Cs
‘I am much better. I am quite well,’ said Rupert obediently. ‘I am much better. I am quite well. I am much better. I am a bell. I shall ring presently for Mrs. Wilmington. I have a clapper inside my head. I am much better. I am a bell.’ And so on, for a very long time.
‘This is the delirium it talked about,’ said Caroline in a satisfied tone, and held the blankets down more firmly.
Presently Rupert began to shiver, and Charlotte fetched the eiderdowns from the beds of the three, while the others held the blankets tightly round Rupert, who now no longer seemed to know at all what he was saying, nor who he was saying it to. He talked about India, and seemed to fancy that Charles was his ayah and Caroline his syce. Charlotte he mistook for the Murdstone man, which was very painful for her. But they held the blankets tightly round him, even when he said it was too hot out there in the sun and begged to have the punkahs set going.
Then quite suddenly he went to sleep; they waited a little, and when they were quite sure that he was asleep, they took up the fur hearth-rug and put that on his bed for fear he should take cold, and then, very cold indeed themselves, but quite certain that their spell had cured Rupert, they crept back to their own beds – rather chilly places without their eiderdowns.
‘I know the spell will work,’ were Caroline’s last words. ‘You’ll see, Rupert will be all right in the morning.’
At five o’clock Mrs. Wilmington crept into Rupert’s room to see if he needed anything. The floor was strewn with wet, cold, crushed rose leaves, and on it lay two wet sheets. Rupert, rolled in a tangle of blankets, eiderdowns, and hearth-rug, was sleeping as a healthy baby sleeps. She laid her hand very gently on his forehead. It was cool and soft.
By breakfast-time Rupert was much better. The fever had gone.
‘So you see the spell did work,’ said Caroline. ‘Rupert is much better. I sometimes think we are much cleverer than grown-up people think we are. Rupert is much better.’
But all the three C.’s had dreadful colds in their heads.
CHAPTER XIII
THE ROSY CURE
When Mrs. Wilmington found Rupert asleep among the remains of the dewy, crushed rose leaves, she had the sense not to disturb him, but to put two more blankets over him and to let him go on sleeping, while she wrapped herself in a shawl and spent what was left of the night on the blue sofa at the end of the four-post bed.
Uncle Charles, coming down, neat and early, to his study, was met by a very pale housekeeper with prim lips tightly set, who said:
‘If you please, sir, them children leave this house or else I do. I mean those children.’
‘What have they been doing now?’ asked the Uncle wearily. He had thought of a new idea about Coptic magic while he was shaving, and he wanted to be alone with his idea and his breakfast.
‘Doing their very best to murder that poor young gentleman in his very bed,’ said the housekeeper, looking like a thin portrait of Mrs. Siddons.
‘Did they put flowers and things into the boy’s food or drink?’ the Uncle asked, frowning.
‘Worse, sir, far worse. They put him into flowers and things. And I’ve taken the liberty of sending for the doctor. And, please, mayn’t I pack their boxes? No one’s lives is safe – are, I mean.’ Mrs. Wilmington sniffed and got out her handkerchief.
‘Please control yourself,’ said the Uncle. ‘I will inquire into what you have told me, and I will see the doctor when he has seen the boy. In the meantime, kindly refrain from further fuss. And, please, tell the cook to serve another omelette and some fresh tea. These are no longer warm enough for human food.’
Mrs. Wilmington put her handkerchief in her pocket and went back to Rupert, who was now wriggling among the blankets and asking what he could have to eat.
Rupert was much better. There was not a doubt of it. Harriet had told the children as much, in confidence, when she brought their breakfast.
‘But Mrs. W. she is in a paddy and no error,’ Harriet assured them. ‘A regular fanteague she’s in. I wouldn’t be you for something. However you come to think of such things beats me. An’ she was on at the Master before he was up a’most about it, going on something chronic.’
‘How do you know?’ Charlotte asked.
‘Oh, I know more then you think, Miss,’ said Harriet, tossing her head. ‘I’ve ways of my own of finding out what I want to know. I know a sure spell to find out the gentleman’s name you’re going to marry,’ she added rather in a hurry. ‘I’ll show you some time, if this blows over and you don’t have to leave on account of it.’
‘Bother marrying,’ said Charlotte briefly. ‘I don’t mean to marry any one. I shall be an Arctic explorer, and sail in the cold waters of the North.’
‘It’s hot water you’ll be in first,’ said Harriet. ‘Don’t answer her back’s my advice. Then p’raps it’ll blow over. Least said soonest mended’s what I say. They can’t go on at you for ever if you don’t answer ’em back.’
‘If you don’t answer they say you’re sulky,’ said Charles, who sometimes noticed things.
‘No, they don’t, Master Charles; not if you keep on saying “Yes’m” and “No’m” every time they stops for breath. That’s the way to egg-sauce ’em, trust me it is.’
The three C.’s did not quite see their way to exhaust Mrs. Wilmington by saying “Yes’m” and “No’m” in answer to her reproaches, and they felt that she would not understand if they tried to explain why they had done what they did do. So they had rather a poor time with Mrs. Wilmington, who said a good deal about the rose leaves, and told them they might have been the death of Rupert, ‘when really,’ as Caroline said afterwards, ‘they had been the life and soul of his getting better.’
Mrs. Wilmington also told them that they were not to think of going out and getting into any more of their dangerous mischief, because their uncle was going to give them a right-down good talking to as soon as the doctor had been.
‘But we may go out to-morrow, mayn’t we?’ Charles asked hopefully. And Mrs. Wilmington replied:
‘Perhaps you won’t be here to-morrow’ – a very disquieting remark.
The children remained in the dining-room waiting for that right-down good talking to; and you know what a hateful thing that is to wait for. They sat there miserably, wondering whether Mrs. Wilmington could possibly happen by any extraordinary accident to be right for once, and whether they had done Rupert any harm. They tried to console themselves by saying every half minute or so, ‘But Rupert is better, all the same,’ and ‘Whatever she says, Rupert is better,’ and things like that.
One thing all felt, that they must see the doctor and know if they really had done any harm. Thoughts of concealing themselves in the wardrobe in Rupert’s room, and listening to the doctor’s wise words at the bedside, were dismissed, partly owing to an honourable feeling about listening, and partly because Mrs. Wilmington didn’t give them any opportunities for that sort of concealment. Listening at the Uncle’s door when the doctor had come down and been shown into the study was also impossible, for the same reasons. The only thing they could do was to keep the dining-room door open.
‘And pounce,’ said Caroline. ‘If we pounce, suddenly and well, we shall be able to say, “How is Rupert; is he really worse or better?” before any one can stop us. And the doctor is a gentleman. He must answer a lady’s question.’
‘You’re not ladies, you’re only little girls,’ said Charles. But the others made allowances. It was a time of trial. Caroline answered with that soft answer which is sometimes so hard to bear:
‘Yes, dear Charles, we are. Aunt Emmeline says you cannot begin to be a lady too soon, and that is why you must wipe your mouth before drinking as well as after, and never interrupt, and put on your gloves before you go out, and things like that. And when I gave my penny to the crossing-sweeper, you know, that muddy Friday, he said I was a real little lady. You must remember that day, Charles – the day you upset the ink over my Hereward the Wake.’
‘Here, I say, chuck it,’ said Charles, rather red. ‘I never – ’
‘Oh, Pax, for goodness’ sake,’ said Charlotte; ‘if we begin ragging just when we ought to stand by each other, we’re like deserters. United we stand, divided we fall a victim to the Wilmington. Hark! that’s the Uncle’s door.’
They flung themselves into the hall; and the astonished doctor, just saying a few last words of politeness to Uncle Charles, was met by a charge of children all firmly asking, ‘How is Rupert? Is he worse? Is he better? Did we really do him any harm?’
‘He’s much better,’ said the doctor, rubbing his hands cheerfully; ‘your rose leaves were a variant of what is known as the packing treatment. You did him a world of good. But,’ he added hastily, as Uncle Charles, behind him, uttered the ghost of a grunt, and Mrs. Wilmington, from the top of the stairs, coughed loudly and expressively, ‘it might have been very dangerous, very. Verdict: not guilty, but don’t do it again.’
And with that he laughed in a jolly, red-faced way, and went out of the front door and on to his horse and rode away.
‘And now,’ said the Uncle, leading the way back into the dining-room.
I will draw a veil over that scene. A right-down good talking to is never a pleasant thing to record. And I am not sure whether the three C.’s deserved this one or not. Was it chance or magic that made them do exactly the right thing for Rupert? Of course they explained fully to the Uncle that as it was a threefold spell it was bound to act exactly as it had acted. He shook his head, did not smile, and went on talking about responsibility and carefulness and so on. He really did smile when Charlotte, very near to tears, explained that they had only been acting like the Rosicurians in olden days. But he hid his smile in his handkerchief, and the children did not see it.
‘And now – ’ said the Uncle once again, and paused. The three children knew those words well, and each wondered what their punishment was to be.
‘I hope it won’t be lines,’ Charles told himself. ‘I’d rather anything than lines.’
‘I hope it won’t be keeping us in,’ thought Caroline. ‘I’d rather anything than be kept in. And such a fine day too.’
And still the Uncle paused, till Charlotte could bear it no longer. She did not stop to think what she would rather the punishment was or wasn’t. She said, ‘Oh, uncle, we really didn’t mean to be naughty! And it really hasn’t hurt him. But we don’t want to shirk. Only don’t keep us suspended. Let us know the worst. Are we to be hanged for a sheep as a lamb? You know you’re hanged twice if you’re hanged quickly. We’ll do whatever you say, and we don’t mind being punished if you think we ought. Only don’t do what the Wil – I mean, Mrs. Wilmington, said.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said perhaps we shouldn’t be here to-morrow. Oh!’ said Charlotte, and began to cry. So did Caroline. Charles put his hands in his pockets and sniffed.
‘Don’t!’ said the Uncle earnestly; ‘please don’t. I have said what I felt it my duty to say. But it is all over. I certainly have no intention of punishing you for what was a mistake. What I blame you for is – well, briefly, interference, and taking too much on yourselves.’
‘Shoving our oar in,’ sobbed Charlotte. ‘But we did so want Rupert to be better.’
‘He is better,’ said the Uncle. ‘Please don’t cry. It is over now. But I must ask for a promise.’
‘We did keep the other promise,’ Charles reminded him.
‘I know you did. This is more comprehensive as well as more definite. I want you to promise me that you will not only refrain from administering your remedies internally, but that you will not make any external application of them to any of your friends – or enemies,’ he added hastily.
‘Not put them on to people’s outsides? – yes,’ murmured Caroline.
‘Without consulting me. If you wish to try any more experiments, the simple presentation of a symbolic bouquet should be enough. It was enough in my case. You remember.’
‘Of course we promise,’ said every one.
‘Oh, uncle, you are kind not to be crosser!’
‘We don’t really mean to do wrong.’
‘But you can’t do right without it turning out wrong sometimes. You can’t just do nothing,’ said Caroline; ‘though really it’s the only safe way. Things do so turn out wrong that you didn’t think would.’
‘They do,’ said the Uncle. ‘Now dry your eyes and run out and play. And if you see your way to letting Mrs. Wilmington know that you’re sorry, it would perhaps be well.’
‘Of course we will if you want us to,’ they said; and Charlotte added:
‘It will be well. She always says it is.’
‘Always says what is what?’
‘She always says everything’s all very well when we say we’re sorry.’
Then they went round to the terraced garden and sat on the grass and talked it all over.
‘And if ever there was an angel uncle, ours is it,’ said Charlotte.
‘Yes,’ said Charles, ‘and Rupert is better. I’m glad we did it, aren’t you?’
‘I suppose so. Yes. No. Yes. I don’t know,’ said Caroline. ‘You see the spell worked. That’s a great thing to be sure of, anyhow.’
It was the one thing, however, that they couldn’t persuade Rupert to be sure of. He was certainly better, but, as he pointed out, he might have got better without the rose leaves.
‘Of course it was jolly decent of you to get them, and all that,’ he said; ‘but the medicine the doctor gave me cured me, I expect. I don’t want to be ungrateful, but what are doctors for, anyhow?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Charles, ‘but I know you jolly well tried fern-seed when you pretended to be invisible.’
‘I feel much older than I did then,’ said Rupert, biting ends of grass as he lay on the dry crisp turf. It was the first day of his being loosed from those bonds which hamper the movements of persons who have been ill. You know the sort of times when you feel perfectly well, and yet, merely because you have a cold or measles or something, you are kept in when you want to go out, and sent out (in what is called ‘the best of the day’) when you want to stay in, and little driblets of medicine are brought you when you feel least need of them, and glasses of hot milk and cups of beef-tea occur just when you are thinking fondly of roast beef and suet pudding, and you are assured that what you need is not heavy food like pudding and beef, but something light and at the same time nourishing. Also you have to go to bed earlier than the others and not to sit in draughts.
However, all this was now over for Rupert, and he was one of the others, on a natural meal-footing. His parents, by the way, had telegraphed thanking Uncle Charles very much, and accepting his invitation for Rupert to spend the rest of the holidays at the Manor House. They had also telegraphed to the Murdstone master telling him that Rupert would not return to him. So that now there seemed to be no bar to complete enjoyment, except that one little fact that Rupert wouldn’t believe in spells.
‘But the fern-seed acted,’ said Caroline, ‘and the secret rose acted, and the Rosicurian rose leaves acted.’
‘I don’t see how you can say the fern-seed acted. I wasn’t invisible, because you all saw me through the window.’
‘Oh, but,’ said Charlotte eagerly, ‘don’t you see? You wanted us to see you. You can’t expect a spell to act if you don’t want it to act. I wouldn’t myself, if I was a spell.’
‘It wasn’t that at all,’ said Caroline; ‘don’t you remember we chewed the fern-seed to make us see invisible things, and we saw you. And you were invisible, because you’d chewed fern-seed too. It came out just perfectly. Only you won’t see it. But let’s try it again if you like – the fern-seed, I mean.’
But Rupert wouldn’t. He preferred to read The Dog Crusoe, lying on his front upon the grass. The others also got books.
CHAPTER XIV
THE MINERAL WOMAN
Next day Rupert felt more alive, as he explained.
‘Now, look here,’ he said at breakfast, ‘suppose we go and discover the North Pole.’
‘That would be nice,’ said Caroline; ‘the attics? We’ve never explored them yet.’
‘No, attics are for wet days,’ said Rupert.
‘Not the real North Pole, you don’t mean?’ said Charles, quite ready to believe that Rupert might mean anything, however wonderful and adventurous.
‘No,’ said Rupert; ‘what I thought of was a via medias res.’
‘Latin,’ explained Charles to the girls.
‘It means a middle way. You ask your uncle to let us take our lunch out, bread and cheese and cake will do; and to not expect us till tea-time, and perhaps not then. We’ll just go where we think we will, and shut our eyes when we pass signposts and post-offices. We might get lost, you know, but I’d take care of you.’
‘We mustn’t disturb the Uncle,’ Caroline reminded them. ‘We promised. Not for a week.’
‘Write him a letter,’ said Rupert. And this is the letter they wrote. At least Caroline wrote it and they all signed their names.
‘Dearest Uncle’ (‘Dearest is rot,’ said Charles, looking at Rupert to be sure that he thought so too; ‘put Dear’).
‘But Dear is rottener,’ answered Caroline, going on; ‘it’s what you say to the butcher when you write about the ribs that ought to have been Sir Something. I know.’
Please may we go out for the day and take our lunch, bread and cheese and cake would do, Rupert says he will take care of us, and not expect us home till tea, and perhaps not then, with love
CarolineCharlotteCharles.
‘Rupert can’t sign because he’s “he” in the letter. Only the “we’s” can sign,’ said Caroline. And Harriet took the letter to the Uncle, and the Uncle wrote back:
By all means. I am sure you will remember not to administer spells internally or externally to any one you may meet. Be home by half-past six. If anything should detain you, send a telegram. I enclose 2s. 6d. for incidental expenses. – Your dearest
Uncle.
‘How sweet of him,’ the girls agreed, and Charles wanted to know what sort of expenses he meant.
‘“Incidental”? Oh, if you want an apple or some chocks in a hurry and don’t happen to have any on you,’ Rupert explained. ‘Or ginger beer. Or raw eggs to suck as you go along; they’re very sustaining when all other food’s despaired of.’
The Uncle must have given orders, for Harriet soon brought in four neat brown-paper parcels.
‘Your lunches,’ she said. ‘Hope you’ll enjoy yourselves. You’ve got a nice day for your outing. Bring me a keepsake, won’t you? from wherever it is you’re going to.’
‘Of course we will,’ said Charlotte. ‘What would you like?’
But Harriet laughed, and said she was only talking.
They put on their thinnest clothes, for it was a very hot day, and they got William to cut them ash-sticks, ‘in case we want to be pilgrims with staffs,’ said Charles. The girls were very anxious for Rupert to wear his school blazer, and so flattering were their opinions of it, and of him, and of it on him, and of him in it, that he consented. Charles wore his school blazer, and the girls’ frocks were of blue muslin, and they had their soft white muslin hats, so they looked very bright and yet very cool as they started off down the drive with their ash-sticks over their shoulders and their brown-paper parcels in knotted handkerchiefs dangling from the ends of the sticks.
‘Who shall we be?’ Charlotte asked, as they passed into the shadow of the woods where the road runs through to the lodge gate.
‘I’ll be Nansen,’ said Charles. ‘I wish we had some Equismo dogs and a sledge.’
‘It’s Eskimo,’ said Rupert.
‘I know it is,’ said Charles.
‘I don’t believe you did,’ said Rupert, and Charles turned red and the girls looked at each other uncomfortably.
‘I didn’t say I did,’ Charles answered. ‘Not when I said it first. I meant I know now you’ve told me. It looked like Equismo in the books.’
This was disarming. Rupert could do no less than thump Charles on the back and say, ‘Sorry, old man’; and Caroline hastened to say, ‘What will you be, Rupert?’
‘Why, Rupert, of course. Prince Rupert. He invented Prince Rupert drops that are glass and crumble to powder if you look at them too hard. And he fought at Naseby – Rupert of the Rhine, you know. “For Charles, King of England, and Rupert of the Rhine!”’ he shouted.
‘Oh, I say,’ Charles urged, ‘do let me be Charles if you’re Rupert. It’s only fair.’
‘You can’t keep changing,’ said Rupert. ‘Besides, Charles had his head chopped off afterwards.’
‘Well, Rupert died too, if you come to that. You might, Rupert.’
And the girls said, ‘Do let him’; so Rupert said, ‘All right, he didn’t mind.’
Charlotte said she thought she would be Charles the Second, because he was a merry monarch; but it was decided that it might be confusing to have two Charles’s; so she had to be content with being Joan of Arc, while Caroline was Boadicea.
‘She was British, you see,’ Caroline explained; ‘and Aunt Emmeline says you ought to support home industries.’
‘Now we all call each other by our play names all day,’ Charlotte said, ‘and if you make a mistake you lose a mark.’
‘Who keeps the marks?’
‘You keep your own, of course – counting on your fingers. And if you did it ten times, you’d tie a knot in your handkerchief. Aunts do it ten times if they play often. We don’t.’
Here Boadicea, Joan of Arc, Prince Rupert, and King Charles turned out of the lodge gate, and the exploring expedition began at seventeen minutes past ten, precisely. The three C.’s kept up the game, calling each other by the new names with frequency and accurateness; but Rupert grew more and more silent, and when Charlotte addressed him as Prince Rupert the stainless knight, he told her not to be silly.
At a quarter-past twelve, the four children, very dusty, very hot and rather tired, reached a level crossing. The gates were shut because a train was coming, and already, as you looked along the line, you could see the front of the engine getting bigger and blacker, and the steam from it getting whiter and puffier, and you could feel the vibration of its coming in the shuddering of the gate as you leaned on it.
The train stopped, in a snorting, panting hurry, at the little station just beside the gates, let out a few passengers, shook itself impatiently, screamed, and went on. The big gates across the road swung slowly back till they stretched across the railway, and the people who had got out of the train came down the sloping end of the platform and through the small swing-gates, and the four children, who were crossing the line, met the little crowd from the train half-way. There were two women with baskets, a man with a bandy-legged dog, and a girl with a large band-box partly hidden by brown paper, and – the four children were face to face with him before they knew that there was any one coming from that train whom they had rather not be face to face with – the Murdstone man himself. He was not a yard from them. Rupert threw up his head and backed a little as if he expected to be hit. The three C.’s breathed a deep concerted ‘Oh!’ and trembled on the edge of what might be going to happen. No one knew what Mr. Murdstone’s power might be. Could he seize on Rupert and take him away? Could he call the police? Anything seemed possible in that terrible instant when they were confronted, suddenly and beyond hope of retreat, with the hated master.
And nothing happened at all. The Murdstone man passed by. He gave a cold, sour, unrecognising glance at the three C.’s, but he never looked at Rupert. He looked over his head as though Rupert had not been there, and passed on.
Rupert grew very red and said nothing. The girls looked at each other.
‘Let’s walk along by the river,’ said Caroline, ‘and then we’ll tell you why he didn’t look at you.’
‘You’ll tell me now,’ said Rupert firmly, ‘or I won’t go another step.’
‘He didn’t look at you,’ said Charlotte, ‘because he didn’t see you. And he didn’t see you because you were invisible just when you wanted to be.’
‘I didn’t want to be,’ said Rupert; ‘at least – Oh, well, come on.’
When they had reached a green meadow that sloped pleasantly to the willow-fringed edge of the river Medway, Charlotte said:
‘You were invisible, to him. That’s the magic. Perhaps you’ll believe in spells now.’
‘But there wasn’t any spell,’ said Rupert impatiently.
And the girls said with one voice, ‘You take off your blazer and see.’
‘I hate hanky panky,’ said Rupert, but he took off the coat.
‘Look, in there,’ said Caroline, turning back that loose fold which the button-holes are made in – ‘fern-seed. Char and I seccotined it on while you and Charles were washing your hands. We meant to ask you to wish to be invisible when we went into a shop or something, just to prove about spells, but you did it without our asking. And now you will believe, won’t you?’
‘I can’t,’ said Rupert; ‘don’t talk about it any more. Let’s have the grub out.’
They opened the parcels and ‘had the grub out,’ and it was sandwiches, and jam-tarts packed face to face, and raspberries in a card-board box that had once held chocolates – that was in Rupert’s parcel – and biscuits, and large wedges of that pleasant solid cake which you still get sometimes in old-fashioned houses where baking powder and self-raising flour are unknown.
‘This is the first picnic we’ve ever had by ourselves; don’t you like it, Prince Rupert?’
Rupert’s mouth was full of sandwich. He was understood to say that it was ‘all right.’
‘King Charles is gracefully pleased to like it,’ said Charles. ‘Boadicea had better pour out the Rhine wine, for it’s a thirsty day.’
‘Oh,’ said Boadicea in stricken tones, ‘there isn’t any!’
And there wasn’t. Not a drop of milk or water or ginger-beer or anything drinkable. No nephew or niece of Aunt Emmeline’s was likely to do anything so rash as drinking water from a strange river to which it had not been properly introduced, so there was nothing to be done but to eat the raspberries and pretend that raspberries quenched thirst, which, as you probably know only too well, they don’t.
This was why, when they had eaten everything there was to eat, and buried the bits of paper deeply in a hollow tree, so as not to spoil the pretty picture of green willows and blue-green water and grass-green grass, they set out to find a cottage where ginger-beer was sold. There was such a cottage, and they had passed it on the way. It had a neat gay little garden and a yellow rose clambering over its porch, and on one of its red brick sides was a pear-tree that went up the wall with level branches like a double ladder, and on the other a deep-blue iron plate which said in plain white words ‘Bateyes Minerals.’ A stranger from Queen Victoria’s early days might have supposed this to mean that the cottage had a small museum of geological specimens such as you find now and then in Derbyshire; but Rupert and the three C.’s knew that ‘Minerals’ was just short for ginger-beer and other things that fizz.
So, after making sure that they had not lost their two shillings and their sixpence, they unlatched the white gate and went in.
The front door, which was green and had no knocker, was open, and one could see straight into the cottage’s front parlour. It was very neat and oil-clothy, with sea-shells on pink wool mats, and curly glass vases, and a loud green-faced clock on the mantelpiece. There was a horse-hair sofa and more white crochet antimacassars than you would have thought possible even in the most respectable sea-side lodgings. A black and white cat was asleep in the sun, edged in among the pots of geraniums that filled the window. In fact, it was a very clean example of the cottage homes of England, how beautiful they stand!
The thirsty children waited politely as long as they could bear to wait, and then Caroline tip-toed across the speckless brown-and-blue linoleum and tapped at the inner door. Nothing happened. So she pushed the door, which was ajar, a little more open and looked through it. Then she turned, shook her head, made a baffling sign to the others to stay where they were, and went through the door and shut it after her.
The others waited; the sign Caroline had made was a secret one only used in really serious emergencies.
‘I expect there’s a bird in there and she wants to catch it,’ said Charles; but the others could not believe this, and they were right.
Quite soon Caroline returned bearing a wrinkled black tray with three bottles of lemonade, three glasses, and the little round wooden thing that you press the glass marble down with into the neck of the bottle.
‘Here,’ she said in a hurry, ‘you go round to the other side of the cottage, and there’s a hornbeam arbour and a bench and table, and you’re very welcome to sit there. I’ll tell you all about it afterwards,’ she added, whispering. ‘Only do take it and go.’
‘But what is it?’ Rupert asked.
‘She’s crying dreadfully. I don’t know what it is yet. Oh, do go.’
And she thrust the tray on him and went back through the door with an air of importance which even the others found just a little trying. However, they were thirsty and loyal, so they did as they were asked to do; found the hornbeam arbour, and settled down on the blue-painted benches to drink their lemonade and tell each other how thirsty they had been, drawing deep breaths between the draughts to say so with.
Caroline, in the meantime, was in the back kitchen of the strange cottage gently patting the shoulder of a perfect stranger, who sat with her elbows on the mangle and her head in her hands crying, crying, crying.
‘Don’t! oh, please don’t!’ said Caroline, again and again; and again and again the woman who was crying said, ‘Go away. I can’t attend to you. Go away!’
She was a middle-aged woman, and her dark hair, streaked with grey, was screwed up behind in a tight knob. Her sleeves were tucked up, and all round her were piles of those square boxes with wooden divisions in which lemonade and ginger-beer travel about. The boxes were dotted with greeny bottles, some full, some empty, and the boxes were everywhere – on the sink, under the sink, on the copper, on the bricks, and outside the open back door.
‘Don’t cry,’ said Caroline in a voice that would have soothed an angry bear. ‘Do tell me what’s the matter. I might be able to help you.’
