you," said Mrs. Bax. And we had. Two bottles of it.
"I never knew any one like you," said Noël to Mrs. Red House, dreamily with his mouth full, "for knowing the things people really like to eat, not the things that are good for them, but what they like, and Mrs. Bax is just the same."
"It was one of the things they taught at our school," said Mrs. Bax. "Do you remember the Saturday night feasts, Chloe, and how good the cocoanut ice tasted after extra strong peppermints?"
"Fancy you knowing that!" said H.O. "I thought it was us found that out."
"I really know much more about things to eat than she does," said Mrs. Bax. "I was quite an old girl when she was a little thing in pinafores. She was such a nice little girl."
"I shouldn't wonder if she was always nice," said Noël, "even when she was a baby!"
Everybody laughed at this, except the existing baby, and it was asleep on the waggonette cushions, under the white may-tree, and perhaps if it had been awake it wouldn't have laughed, for Oswald himself, though possessing a keen sense of humour, did not see anything to laugh at.
Mr. Red House made a speech after dinner, and said drink to the health of everybody, one after the other, in currant wine, which was done, beginning with Mrs. Bax and ending with H.O.
Then he said—
"Somnus, avaunt! What shall we play at?" and nobody, as so often happens, had any idea ready. Then suddenly Mrs. Red House said—
"Good gracious, look there!" and we looked there, and where we were to look was the lowest piece of the castle wall, just beside the keep that the bridge led over to, and what we were to look at was a strange blobbiness of knobbly bumps along the top, that looked exactly like human heads.
It turned out, when we had talked about cannibals and New Guinea, that human heads were just exactly what they were. Not loose heads, stuck on pikes or things like that, such as there often must have been while the castle stayed in the olden times it was built in and belonged to, but real live heads with their bodies still in attendance on them.
They were, in fact, the village children.
"Poor little Lazaruses!" said Mr. Red House.
"There's not such a bad slice of Dives' feast left," said Mrs. Bax. "Shall we——?"
So Mr. Red House went out by the keep and called the heads in (with the bodies they were connected with, of course), and they came and ate up all that was left of the lunch. Not the buns, of course, for those were sacred to tea-time, but all the other things, even the nuts and figs, and we were quite glad that they should have them—really and truly we were, even H.O.!
They did not seem to be very clever children, or just the sort you would choose for your friends, but I suppose you like to play, however little you are other people's sort. So, after they had eaten all there was, when Mrs. Red House invited them all to join in games with us we knew we ought to be pleased. But village children are not taught rounders, and though we wondered at first why their teachers had not seen to this, we understood presently. Because it is most awfully difficult to make them understand the very simplest thing.
But they could play all the ring games, and "Nuts and May," and "There Came Three Knights"—and another one we had never heard of before. The singing part begins:—
"Up and down the green grass,
This and that and thus,
Come along, my pretty maid,
And take a walk with us.
You shall have a duck, my dear,
And you shall have a drake,
And you shall have a handsome man
For your father's sake."
I forget the rest, and if anybody who reads this knows it, and will write and tell me, the author will not have laboured in vain.
The grown-ups played with all their heart and soul—I expect it is but seldom they are able to play, and they enjoy the novel excitement. And when we'd been at it some time we saw there was another head looking over the wall.
"Hullo!" said Mrs. Bax, "here's another of them, run along and ask it to come and join in."
She spoke to the village children, but nobody ran.
"Here, you go," she said, pointing at a girl in red plaits tied with dirty sky-blue ribbon.
"Please, miss, I'd leifer not," replied the red-haired. "Mother says we ain't to play along of him."
"Why, what's the matter with him?" asked Mrs. Red House.
"His father's in jail, miss, along of snares and night lines, and no one won't give his mother any work, so my mother says we ain't to demean ourselves to speak to him."
"But it's not the child's fault," said Mrs. Red House, "is it now?"
"I don't know, miss," said the red-haired.
"But it's cruel," said Mrs. Bax. "How would you like it if your father was sent to prison, and nobody would speak to you?"
"Father's always kep' hisself respectable," said the girl with the dirty blue ribbon. "You can't be sent to gaol, not if you keeps yourself respectable, you can't, miss."
"And do none of you speak to him?"
The other children put their fingers in their mouths, and looked silly, showing plainly that they didn't.
"Don't you feel sorry for the poor little chap?" said Mrs. Bax.
No answer transpired.
"Can't you imagine how you'd feel if it was your father?"
"My father always kep' hisself respectable," the red-haired girl said again.
"Well, I shall ask him to come and play with us," said Mrs. Red House. "Little pigs!" she added in low tones only heard by the author and Mr. Red House.
But Mr. Red House said in a whisper that no one overheard except Mrs. R. H. and the present author.
"Don't, Puss-cat; it's no good. The poor little pariah wouldn't like it. And these kids only do what their parents teach them."
If the author didn't know what a stainless gentleman Mr. Red House is he would think he heard him mutter a word that gentlemen wouldn't say.
"Tell off a detachment of consolation," Mr. Red House went on; "look here, our kids—who'll go and talk to the poor little chap?"
We all instantly said, "I will!"
The present author was chosen to be the one.
When you think about yourself there is a kind of you that is not what you generally are but that you know you would like to be if only you were good enough. Albert's uncle says this is called your ideal of yourself. I will call it your best I, for short. Oswald's "best I" was glad to go and talk to that boy whose father was in prison, but the Oswald that generally exists hated
