said Alice, "and we really have sold the Antiquities." She unfolded the tale about our getting the jugs and burying them in the moonlight, and the mound; and the others listened with deeply respectful interest. "We really have done it this time, haven't we?" she added in tones of well-deserved triumph.
But Oswald had noticed a queer look about Albert's uncle from almost the beginning of Alice's recital; and he now had the sensation of something being up, which has on other occasions frozen his noble blood. The silence of Albert's uncle now froze it yet more Arcticly.
"Haven't we?" repeated Alice, unconscious of what her sensitive brother's delicate feelings had ahead got hold of. "We have done it this time, haven't we?"
"Since you ask me thus pointedly," answered Albert's uncle at last, "I cannot but confess that I think you have indeed done it. Those pots on the top of the library cupboard are Roman pottery. The amphoræ which you hid in the mound are probably—I can't say for certain, mind—priceless. They are the property of the owner of this house. You have taken them out and buried them. The President of the Maidstone Antiquarian Society has taken them away in his bag. Now what are you going to do?"
Alice and I did not know what to say, or where to look. The others added to our pained position by some ungenerous murmurs about our not being so jolly clever as we thought ourselves.
There was a very far from pleasing silence. Then Oswald got up. He said:
"Alice, come here a sec., I want to speak to you."
As Albert's uncle had offered no advice, Oswald disdained to ask him for any.
Alice got up too, and she and Oswald went into the garden, and sat down on the bench under the quince-tree, and wished they had never tried to have a private lark of their very own with the Antiquities—"A Private Sale," Albert's uncle called it afterwards. But regrets, as nearly always happens, were vain. Something had to be done.
But what?
Oswald and Alice sat in silent desperateness, and the voices of the gay and careless others came to them from the lawn, where, heartless in their youngness, they were playing tag. I don't know how they could. Oswald would not like to play tag when his brother and sister were in a hole, but Oswald is an exception to some boys. But Dicky told me afterwards he thought it was only a joke of Albert's uncle's.
The dusk grew dusker, till you could hardly tell the quinces from the leaves, and Alice and Oswald still sat exhausted with hard thinking, but they could not think of anything. And it grew so dark that the moonlight began to show.
Then Alice jumped up—just as Oswald was opening his mouth to say the same thing—and said, "Of course—how silly! I know. Come on in, Oswald."
And they went on in.
Oswald was still far too proud to consult any one else. But he just asked carelessly if Alice and he might go into Maidstone the next day to buy some wire-netting for a rabbit-hutch, and to see after one or two things.
Albert's uncle said certainly. And they went by train with the bailiff from the farm, who was going in about some sheep-dip and to buy pigs. At any other time Oswald would not have been able to bear to leave the bailiff without seeing the pigs bought. But now it was different. For he and Alice had the weight on their bosoms of being thieves without having meant it—and nothing, not even pigs, had power to charm the young but honorable Oswald till that stain had been wiped away.
So he took Alice to the Secretary of the Maidstone Antiquities' house, and Mr. Turnbull was out, but the maid-servant kindly told us where the President lived, and ere long the trembling feet of the unfortunate brother and sister vibrated on the spotless gravel of Camperdown Villa.
When they asked, they were told that Mr. Longchamps was at home. Then they waited, paralyzed with undescribed emotions, in a large room with books and swords and glass book-cases with rotten-looking odds and ends in them. Mr. Longchamps was a collector. That means he stuck to anything, no matter how ugly and silly, if only it was old.
He came in rubbing his hands, and very kind. He remembered us very well, he said, and asked what he could do for us.
Oswald for once was dumb. He could not find words in which to own himself the ass he had been.
But Alice was less delicately moulded. She said:
"Oh, if you please, we are most awfully sorry, and we hope you'll forgive us, but we thought it would be such a pity for you and all the other poor dear Antiquities to come all that way and then find nothing Roman—so we put some pots and things in the barrow for you to find."
"So I perceived," said the President, stroking his white beard and smiling most agreeably at us; "a harmless joke, my dear! Youth's the season for jesting. There's no harm done—pray think no more about it. It's very honorable of you to come and apologize, I'm sure."
His brow began to wear the furrowed, anxious look of one who would fain be rid of his guests and get back to what he was doing before they interrupted him.
Alice said, "We didn't come for that. It's much worse. Those were two real true Roman jugs you took away; we put them there; they aren't ours. We didn't know they were real Roman. We wanted to sell the Antiquities—I mean Antiquaries—and we were sold ourselves."
"This is serious," said the gentleman. "I suppose you'd know the—the 'jugs' if you saw them again?"
"Anywhere," said Oswald, with the confidential rashness of one who does not know what he is talking about.
Mr. Longchamps opened the door of a little room leading out of the one we were in, and beckoned us to follow. We found ourselves amid shelves and shelves of pottery of all sorts; and two whole shelves—small ones—were filled with the sort of jug we wanted.
"Well," said the President, with a veiled, menacing sort of smile, like a wicked cardinal, "which is it?"
Oswald said, "I don't know."
Alice said, "I should know if I had it in my hand."
The President patiently took the jugs down one after another, and Alice tried to look inside them. And one after another she shook her head and gave them back.
At last she said, "You didn't wash them?"
Mr. Longchamps shuddered and said "No."
"Then," said Alice, "there is something written with lead-pencil inside both the jugs. I wish I hadn't. I would rather you didn't read it. I didn't know it would be a nice old gentleman like you would find it. I thought it would be the younger gentleman with the thin legs and the narrow smile."
"Mr. Turnbull." The President seemed to recognize the description unerringly. "Well, well—boys will be boys—girls, I mean. I won't be angry. Look at all the 'jugs' and see if you can find yours."
Alice did—and the next one she looked at she said, "This is one"—and two jugs further on she said, "This is the other."
"Well," the President said, "these are certainly the specimens which I obtained yesterday. If your uncle will call on me I will return them to him. But it's a disappointment. Yes. I think you must let me look inside."
He did. And at the first one he said nothing. At the second he laughed.
"Well, well," he said, "we can't
