we were playing burglars last winter. It was our crowbar. He began to feel Noel’s pulse, and went on talking.
‘It was revealed to the Arab physician as he made merry in his tents on the wild plains of Hastings that the Presence had a cold in its head. So he immediately seated himself on the magic carpet, and bade it bear him hither, only pausing in the flight to purchase a few sweetmeats in the bazaar.’
He pulled out a jolly lot of chocolate and some butterscotch, and grapes for Noel. When we had all said thank you, he went on.
‘The physician’s are the words of wisdom: it’s high time this kid was asleep. I have spoken. Ye have my leave to depart.’
So we bunked, and Dora and Albert’s uncle made Noel comfortable for the night.
Then they came to the nursery which we had gone down to, and he sat down in the Guy Fawkes chair and said, ‘Now then.’
Alice said, ‘You may tell them what I did. I daresay they’ll all be in a wax, but I don’t care.’
‘I think you were very wise,’ said Albert’s uncle, pulling her close to him to sit on his knee. ‘I am very glad you telegraphed.’
So then Oswald understood what Alice’s secret was. She had gone out and sent a telegram to Albert’s uncle at Hastings. But Oswald thought she might have told him. Afterwards she told me what she had put in the telegram. It was, ‘Come home. We have given Noel a cold, and I think we are killing him.’ With the address it came to tenpence-halfpenny.
Then Albert’s uncle began to ask questions, and it all came out, how Dicky had tried to catch the cold, but the cold had gone to Noel instead, and about the medicines and all. Albert’s uncle looked very serious.
‘Look here,’ he said, ‘You’re old enough not to play the fool like this. Health is the best thing you’ve got; you ought to know better than to risk it. You might have killed your little brother with your precious medicines. You’ve had a lucky escape, certainly. But poor Noel!’
‘Oh, do you think he’s going to die?’ Alice asked that, and she was crying again.
‘No, no,’ said Albert’s uncle; ‘but look here. Do you see how silly you’ve been? And I thought you promised your Father —’ And then he gave us a long talking-to. He can make you feel most awfully small. At last he stopped, and we said we were very sorry, and he said, ‘You know I promised to take you all to the pantomime?’
So we said, ‘Yes,’ and knew but too well that now he wasn’t going to. Then he went on —
‘Well, I will take you if you like, or I will take Noel to the sea for a week to cure his cold. Which is it to be?’
Of course he knew we should say, ‘Take Noel’ and we did; but Dicky told me afterwards he thought it was hard on H. O.
Albert’s uncle stayed till Eliza came in, and then he said good night in a way that showed us that all was forgiven and forgotten.
And we went to bed. It must have been the middle of the night when Oswald woke up suddenly, and there was Alice with her teeth chattering, shaking him to wake him.
‘Oh, Oswald!’ she said, ‘I am so unhappy. Suppose I should die in the night!’
Oswald told her to go to bed and not gas. But she said, ‘I must tell you; I wish I’d told Albert’s uncle. I’m a thief, and if I die to-night I know where thieves go to.’ So Oswald saw it was no good and he sat up in bed and said —‘Go ahead.’ So Alice stood shivering and said —‘I hadn’t enough money for the telegram, so I took the bad sixpence out of the exchequer. And I paid for it with that and the fivepence I had. And I wouldn’t tell you, because if you’d stopped me doing it I couldn’t have borne it; and if you’d helped me you’d have been a thief too. Oh, what shall I do?’
Oswald thought a minute, and then he said —
‘You’d better have told me. But I think it will be all right if we pay it back. Go to bed. Cross with you? No, stupid! Only another time you’d better not keep secrets.’
So she kissed Oswald, and he let her, and she went back to bed.
The next day Albert’s uncle took Noel away, before Oswald had time to persuade Alice that we ought to tell him about the sixpence. Alice was very unhappy, but not so much as in the night: you can be very miserable in the night if you have done anything wrong and you happen to be awake. I know this for a fact.
None of us had any money except Eliza, and she wouldn’t give us any unless we said what for; and of course we could not do that because of the honour of the family. And Oswald was anxious to get the sixpence to give to the telegraph people because he feared that the badness of that sixpence might have been found out, and that the police might come for Alice at any moment. I don’t think I ever had such an unhappy day. Of course we could have written to Albert’s uncle, but it would have taken a long time, and every moment of delay added to Alice’s danger. We thought and thought, but we couldn’t think of any way to get that sixpence. It seems a small sum, but you see Alice’s liberty depended on it. It was quite late in the afternoon when I met Mrs Leslie on the Parade. She had a brown fur coat and a lot of yellow flowers in her hands. She stopped to speak to me, and asked me how the Poet was. I told her he had a cold, and I wondered whether she would lend me sixpence if I asked her, but I could not make up my mind how to begin to say it. It is a hard thing to say — much harder than you would think. She talked to me for a bit, and then she suddenly got into a cab, and said —
‘I’d no idea it was so late,’ and told the man where to go. And just as she started she shoved the yellow flowers through the window and said, ‘For the sick poet, with my love,’ and was driven off.
Gentle reader, I will not conceal from you what Oswald did. He knew all about not disgracing the family, and he did not like doing what I am going to say: and they were really Noel’s flowers, only he could not have sent them to Hastings, and Oswald knew he would say ‘Yes’ if Oswald asked him. Oswald sacrificed his family pride because of his little sister’s danger. I do not say he was a noble boy — I just tell you what he did, and you can decide for yourself about the nobleness.
He put on his oldest clothes — they’re much older than any you would think he had if you saw him when he was tidy — and he took those yellow chrysanthemums and he walked with them to Greenwich Station and waited for the trains bringing people from London. He sold those flowers in penny bunches and got tenpence. Then he went to the telegraph office at Lewisham, and said to the lady there:
‘A little girl gave you a bad sixpence yesterday. Here are six good pennies.’
The lady said she had not noticed it, and never mind, but Oswald knew that ‘Honesty is the best Policy’, and he refused to take back the pennies. So at last she said she should put them in the plate on Sunday. She is a very nice lady. I like the way she does her hair.
Then Oswald went home to Alice and told her, and she hugged him, and said he was a dear, good, kind boy, and he said ‘Oh, it’s all right.’
We bought peppermint bullseyes with the fourpence I had over, and the others wanted to know where we got the money, but we would not tell.
Only
