New Treasure Seekers Part 23

There was a good drive in a waggonette after we got to our station.

There were primroses under some of the hedges, and lots of dog-violets.

And at last we got to Miss Sandal's house. It is before you come to the village, and it is a little square white house. There is a big old windmill at the back of it. It is not used any more for grinding corn, but fishermen keep their nets in it.

Miss Sandal came out of the green gate to meet us. She had a soft, drab dress and a long thin neck, and her hair was drab too, and it was screwed up tight.

She said, "Welcome, one and all!" in a kind voice, but it was too much like Mr. Sandal's for me. And we went in. She showed us the sitting-rooms, and the rooms where we were to sleep, and then she left us to wash our hands and faces. When we were alone we burst open the doors of our rooms with one consent, and met on the landing with a rush like the great rivers of America.

"_Well!_" said Oswald, and the others said the same.

"Of all the rummy cribs!" remarked d.i.c.ky.

"It's like a workhouse or a hospital," said Dora. "I think I like it."

"It makes me think of bald-headed gentlemen," said H.O., "it is so bare."

It was. All the walls were white plaster, the furniture was white deal--what there was of it, which was precious little. There were no carpets--only white matting. And there was not a single ornament in a single room! There was a clock on the dining-room mantel-piece, but that could not be counted as an ornament because of the useful side of its character. There were only about six pictures--all of a brownish colour.

One was the blind girl sitting on an orange with a broken fiddle. It is called Hope.

When we were clean Miss Sandal gave us tea. As we sat down she said, "The motto of our little household is 'Plain living and high thinking.'"

And some of us feared for an instant that this might mean not enough to eat. But fortunately this was not the case. There was plenty, but all of a milky, bunny, fruity, vegetable sort. We soon got used to it, and liked it all right.

Miss Sandal was very kind. She offered to read aloud to us after tea, and, exchanging glances of despair, some of us said that we should like it very much.

It was Oswald who found the manly courage to say very politely--

"Would it be all the same to you if we went and looked at the sea first?

Because----"

And she said, "Not at all," adding something about "Nature, the dear old nurse, taking somebody on her knee," and let us go.

We asked her which way, and we tore up the road and through the village and on to the sea-wall, and then with six joyous bounds we leaped down on to the sand.

The author will not bother you with a description of the mighty billows of ocean, which you must have read about, if not seen, but he will just say what perhaps you are not aware of--that seagulls eat clams and mussels and c.o.c.kles, and crack the sh.e.l.ls with their beaks. The author has seen this done.

You also know, I suppose, that you can dig in the sand (if you have a spade) and make sand castles, and stay in them till the tide washes you out.

I will say no more, except that when we gazed upon the sea and the sand we felt we did not care tuppence how highly Miss Sandal might think of us or how plainly she might make us live, so long as we had got the briny deep to go down to.

It was too early in the year and too late in the day to bathe, but we paddled, which comes to much the same thing, and you almost always have to change everything afterwards.

When it got dark we had to go back to the White House, and there was supper, and then we found that Miss Sandal did not keep a servant, so of course we offered to help wash up. H.O. only broke two plates.

Nothing worth telling about happened till we had been there over a week, and had got to know the coastguards and a lot of the village people quite well. I do like coastguards. They seem to know everything you want to hear about. Miss Sandal used to read to us out of poetry books, and about a chap called Th.o.r.eau, who could tickle fish, and they liked it, and let him. She was kind, but rather like her house--there was something bare and bald about her inside mind, I believe. She was very, very calm, and said that people who lost their tempers were not living the higher life. But one day a telegram came, and then she was not calm at all. She got quite like other people, and quite shoved H.O. for getting in her way when she was looking for her purse to pay for the answer to the telegram.

Then she said to Dora--and she was pale and her eyes red, just like people who live the lower or ordinary life--"My dears, it's dreadful! My poor brother! He's had a fall. I must go to him at _once_." And she sent Oswald to order the fly from the Old Ship Hotel, and the girls to see if Mrs. Beale would come and take care of us while she was away. Then she kissed us all and went off very unhappy. We heard afterwards that poor, worthy Mr. Sandal had climbed a scaffolding to give a workman a tract about drink, and he didn't know the proper part of the scaffolding to stand on (the workman did, of course) so he fetched down half a dozen planks and the workman, and if a dust-cart hadn't happened to be pa.s.sing just under so that they fell into it their lives would not have been spared. As it was Mr. Sandal broke his arm and his head. The workman escaped unscathed but furious. The workman was a teetotaler.

Mrs. Beale came, and the first thing she did was to buy a leg of mutton and cook it. It was the first meat we had had since arriving at Lymchurch.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE FETCHED DOWN HALF A DOZEN PLANKS AND THE WORKMAN.]

"I 'spect she can't afford good butcher's meat," said Mrs. Beale; "but your pa, I expect he pays for you, and I lay he'd like you to have your fill of something as'll lay acrost your chesties." So she made a Yorkshire pudding as well. It was good.

After dinner we sat on the sea-wall, feeling more like after dinner than we had felt for days, and Dora said--

"Poor Miss Sandal! I never thought about her being hard-up, somehow. I wish we could do something to help her."

"We might go out street-singing," Noel said. But that was no good, because there is only one street in the village, and the people there are much too poor for one to be able to ask them for anything. And all round it is fields with only sheep, who have nothing to give except their wool, and when it comes to taking that, they are never asked.

Dora thought we might get Father to give her money, but Oswald knew this would never do.

Then suddenly a thought struck some one--I will not say who--and that some one said--

"She ought to let lodgings, like all the other people do in Lymchurch."

That was the beginning of it. The end--for that day--was our getting the top of a cardboard box and printing on it the following lines in as many different coloured chalks as we happened to have with us.

LODGINGS TO LET.

ENQUIRE INSIDE.

We ruled s.p.a.ces for the letters to go in, and did it very neatly. When we went to bed we stuck it in our bedroom window with stamp-paper.

In the morning when Oswald drew up his blind there was quite a crowd of kids looking at the card. Mrs. Beale came out and shoo-ed them away as if they were hens. And we did not have to explain the card to her at all. She never said anything about it. I never knew such a woman as Mrs.

Beale for minding her own business. She said afterwards she supposed Miss Sandal had told us to put up the card.

Well, two or three days went by, and nothing happened, only we had a letter from Miss Sandal, telling us how the poor sufferer was groaning, and one from Father telling us to be good children, and not get into sc.r.a.pes. And people who drove by used to look at the card and laugh.

And then one day a carriage came driving up with a gentleman in it, and he saw the rainbow beauty of our chalked card, and he got out and came up the path. He had a pale face, and white hair and very bright eyes that moved about quickly like a bird's, and he was dressed in a quite new tweed suit that did not fit him very well.

Dora and Alice answered the door before any one had time to knock, and the author has reason to believe their hearts were beating wildly.

"How much?" said the gentleman shortly.

Alice and Dora were so surprised by his suddenness that they could only reply--

"Er--er----"

"Just so," said the gentleman briskly as Oswald stepped modestly forward and said--

"Won't you come inside?"

"The very thing," said he, and came in.

We showed him into the dining-room and asked him to excuse us a minute, and then held a breathless council outside the door.

"It depends how many rooms he wants," said Dora.

"Let's say so much a room," said d.i.c.ky, "and extra if he wants Mrs.