well think what they like."
After this no one spoke to Archibald.
Oswald rushed for a plumber, and such was his fiery eloquence he really caught one and brought him home. Then he and Dicky waited for Father when he came in, and they got him into the study, and Oswald said what they had all agreed on. It was this:
"Father, we are all most awfully sorry, but one of us has cut the pipe in the loft, and if you make us tell you any more it will not be honourable, and we are very sorry. Please, please don't ask who it was did it."
Father bit his moustache and looked worried, and Dicky went on—
"Oswald has got a plumber and he is doing it now."
Then Father said, "How on earth did you get into the loft?"
And then of course the treasured secret of the rope-ladder had to be revealed. We had never been told not to make rope-ladders and go into the loft, but we did not try to soften the anger of our Father by saying this. It would not have been any good either. We just had to stick it. And the punishment of our crime was most awful. It was that we weren't to go to Mrs. Leslie's party. And Archibald was to go, because when Father asked him if he was in it with the rest of us, he said "No." I cannot think of any really gentle, manly, and proper words to say what I think about my unnatural cousin.
We kept our word about not speaking to him, and I think Father thought we were jealous because he was going to that conjuring, magic lantern party and we were not. Noël was the most unhappy, because he knew we were all being punished for what he had done. He was very affectionate and tried to write pieces of poetry to us all, but he was so unhappy he couldn't even write, and he went into the kitchen and sat on Jane's knee and said his head ached.
Next day it was the day of the party and we were plunged in gloom. Archibald got out his Etons and put his clean shirt ready, and a pair of flashy silk socks with red spots, and then he went into the bath-room.
Noël and Jane were whispering on the stairs. Jane came up and Noël went down, Jane knocked at the bath-room door and said—
"Here's the soap, Master Archerbald. I didn't put none in to-day."
He opened the door and put out his hand.
"Half a moment," said Jane, "I've got something else in my hand."
As she spoke the gas all over the house went down blue, and then went out. We held our breaths heavily.
"Here it is," she said; "I'll put it in your hand. I'll go down and turn off the burners and see about the gas. You'll be late, sir. If I was you I should get on a bit with the washing of myself in the dark. I daresay the gas'll be five or ten minutes, and it's five o'clock now."
It wasn't, and of course she ought not to have said it, but it was useful all the same.
Noël came stumping up the stairs in the dark. He fumbled about and then whispered, "I've turned the little white china knob that locks the bath-room door on the outside."
The water was bubbling and hissing in the pipes inside, and the darkness went on. Father and uncle had not come in yet, which was a fortunate blessing.
"Do be quiet!" said Noël. "Just you wait."
We all sat on the stairs and waited. Noël said—
"Don't ask me yet—you'll see—you wait."
And we waited, and the gas did not come back.
At last Archibald tried to come out—he thought he had washed himself clean, I suppose—and of course the door was fastened. He kicked and he hammered and he shouted, and we were glad.
At last Noël banged on the door and screamed through the keyhole—
"If we let you out will you let us off our promise not to tell about you and the pipes? We won't tell till you've gone back to school."
He wouldn't for a long time, but at last he had to.
"I shan't ever come to your beastly house again," he bellowed through the keyhole, "so I don't mind."
"Turn off the gas-burners then," said Oswald, ever thoughtful, though he was still in ignorance of the beautiful truth.
Then Noël sang out over the stairs, "Light up!" and Jane went round with a taper, and when the landing gas was lighted Noël turned the knob of the bath-room, and Archibald exited in his Indian red and yellow dressing-gown that he thought so much of. Of course we expected his face to be red with rage, or white with passion, or purple with mixed emotions, but you cannot think what our feelings were—indeed, we hardly knew what they were ourselves—when we saw that he was not red or white or purple, but black. He looked like an uneven sort of bluish nigger. His face and hands were all black and blue in streaks, and so were the bits of his feet that showed between his Indian dressing-gown and his Turkish slippers.
The word "Krikey" fell from more than one lip.
"What are you staring at?" he asked.
We did not answer even then, though I think it was less from keep-your-wordishness than amazement. But Jane did.
"Nyang, Nyang!" she uttered tauntingly. "You thought it was soap I was giving you, and all the time it was Maple's dark bright navy-blue indelible dye—won't wash out." She flashed a looking-glass in his face, and he looked and saw the depth of his dark bright navy-blueness.
Now, you may think that we shouted with laughing to see him done brown and dyed blue like this, but we did not. There was a spellbound silence. Oswald, I know, felt a quite uncomfortable feeling inside him.
When Archibald had had one good look at himself he did not want any more. He ran to his room and bolted himself in.
"He won't go to no parties," said Jane, and she flounced downstairs.
We never knew how much Noël had told her. He is very young, and not so strong as we are, and we thought it better not to ask.
Oswald and Dicky and H.O.—particularly H.O.—told each other it served him right, but after a bit Dora asked Noël if he would mind her trying to get some of it off our unloved cousin, and he said "No."
But nothing would get it off him; and when Father came home there was an awful row. And he said we had disgraced ourselves and forgotten the duties of hospitality. We got it pretty straight, I can tell you. And we bore it all. I do not say we were martyrs to the honour of our house and to our plighted word, but I do say that we got it very straight indeed, and we did not tell the provocativeness we had had from our guest that drove the poet Noël to this wild and desperate revenge.
But some one told, and I have always thought it was Jane, and that is why we did not ask too many questions about what Noël had told her, because late that night Father came and said he now understood that we had meant to do right, except perhaps the one who cut the pipe with a chisel, and that must have been more silliness than naughtiness; and perhaps the being dyed blue served our cousin rather right. And he gave Archibald a few remarks in private, and when the dye began to come off—it was not a fast dye, though it said so on the paper it was wrapped in—Archibald, now a light streaky blue, really did seem to be making an effort to be something like decent. And when, now merely a pale grey, he had returned to school, he sent us a letter. It said:—
"My dear Cousins,—
"I
