The Wouldbegoods Part 38

'Work with a will,' d.i.c.ky said, yawning.

Alice said, 'I wish we were in a book. People in books never dig without finding something. I think I'd rather it was a secret pa.s.sage than anything.'

Oswald stopped to wipe his honest brow ere replying.

'A secret's nothing when you've found it out. Look at the secret staircase. It's no good, not even for hide-and-seek, because of its squeaking. I'd rather have the pot of gold we used to dig for when we were little.' It was really only last year, but you seem to grow old very quickly after you have once pa.s.sed the prime of your youth, which is at ten, I believe.

'How would you like to find the mouldering bones of Royalist soldiers foully done to death by nasty Ironsides?'Noel asked, with his mouth full of plum.

'If they were really dead it wouldn't matter,' Dora said. 'What I'm afraid of is a skeleton that can walk about and catch at your legs when you're going upstairs to bed.' 'Skeletons can't walk,' Alice said in a hurry; 'you know they can't, Dora.'

And she glared at Dora till she made her sorry she had said what she had. The things you are frightened of, or even those you would rather not meet in the dark, should never be mentioned before the little ones, or else they cry when it comes to bed-time, and say it was because of what you said.

'We shan't find anything. No jolly fear,' said d.i.c.ky.

And just then my spade I was digging with struck on something hard, and it felt hollow. I did really think for one joyful s.p.a.ce that we had found that pot of gold. But the thing, whatever it was, seemed to be longish; longer, that is, than a pot of gold would naturally be. And as I uncovered it I saw that it was not at all pot-of-gold-colour, but like a bone Pincher has buried. So Oswald said--

'It IS the skeleton.'

The girls all drew back, and Alice said, 'Oswald, I wish you wouldn't.'

A moment later the discovery was unearthed, and Oswald lifted it up, with both hands.

'It's a dragon's head,' Noel said, and it certainly looked like it.

It was long and narrowish and bony, and with great yellow teeth sticking in the jaw.

Bill came back just then and said it was a horse's head, but H. O. and Noel would not believe it, and Oswald owns that no horse he has ever seen had a head at all that shape.

But Oswald did not stop to argue, because he saw a keeper who showed me how to set snares going by, and he wanted to talk to him about ferrets, so he went off and d.i.c.ky and Denny and Alice with him. Also Daisy and Dora went off to finish reading Ministering Children. So H. O. and Noel were left with the bony head. They took it away.

The incident had quite faded from the mind of Oswald next day. But just before breakfast Noel and H. O. came in, looking hot and anxious. They had got up early and had not washed at all--not even their hands and faces. Noel made Oswald a secret signal. All the others saw it, and with proper delicate feeling pretended not to have.

When Oswald had gone out with Noel and H. O. in obedience to the secret signal, Noel said--

'You know that dragon's head yesterday?'

'Well?' Oswald said quickly, but not crossly--the two things are quite different.

'Well, you know what happened in Greek history when some chap sowed dragon's teeth?'

'They came up armed men,' said H. O., but Noel sternly bade him shut up, and Oswald said 'Well,' again. If he spoke impatiently it was because he smelt the bacon being taken in to breakfast.

'Well,' Noel went on, 'what do you suppose would have come up if we'd sowed those dragon's teeth we found yesterday?'

'Why, nothing, you young duffer,' said Oswald, who could now smell the coffee. 'All that isn't History it's Humbug. Come on in to brekker.'

'It's NOT humbug,' H. O. cried, 'it is history. We DID sow--'

'Shut up,' said Noel again. 'Look here, Oswald. We did sow those dragon's teeth in Randall's ten-acre meadow, and what do you think has come up?'

'Toadstools I should think,' was Oswald's contemptible rejoinder.

'They have come up a camp of soldiers,' said Noel--ARMED MEN. So you see it WAS history. We have sowed army-seed, just like Cadmus, and it has come up. It was a very wet night. I daresay that helped it along.'

Oswald could not decide which to disbelieve--his brother or his ears.

So, disguising his doubtful emotions without a word, he led the way to the bacon and the banqueting hall.

He said nothing about the army-seed then, neither did Noel and H. O. But after the bacon we went into the garden, and then the good elder brother said--

'Why don't you tell the others your c.o.c.k-and-bull story?'

So they did, and their story was received with warm expressions of doubt. It was d.i.c.ky who observed--

'Let's go and have a squint at Randall's ten-acre, anyhow. I saw a hare there the other day.'

We went. It is some little way, and as we went, disbelief reigned superb in every breast except Noel's and H. O.'s, so you will see that even the ready pen of the present author cannot be expected to describe to you his variable sensations when he got to the top of the hill and suddenly saw that his little brothers had spoken the truth. I do not mean that they generally tell lies, but people make mistakes sometimes, and the effect is the same as lies if you believe them.

There WAS a camp there with real tents and soldiers in grey and red tunics. I daresay the girls would have said coats. We stood in ambush, too astonished even to think of lying in it, though of course we know that this is customary. The ambush was the wood on top of the little hill, between Randall's ten-acre meadow and Sugden's Waste Wake pasture.

'There would be cover here for a couple of regiments,' whispered Oswald, who was, I think, gifted by Fate with the far-seeingness of a born general.

Alice merely said 'Hist', and we went down to mingle with the troops as though by accident, and seek for information.

The first man we came to at the edge of the camp was cleaning a sort of cauldron thing like witches brew bats in.

We went up to him and said, 'Who are you? Are you English, or are you the enemy?'

'We're the enemy,' he said, and he did not seem ashamed of being what he was. And he spoke English with quite a good accent for a foreigner.

'The enemy!' Oswald echoed in shocked tones. It is a terrible thing to a loyal and patriotic youth to see an enemy cleaning a pot in an English field, with English sand, and looking as much at home as if he was in his foreign fastnesses.

The enemy seemed to read Oswald's thoughts with deadly unerringness. He said--

'The English are somewhere over on the other side of the hill. They are trying to keep us out of Maidstone.'

After this our plan of mingling with the troops did not seem worth going on with. This soldier, in spite of his unerringness in reading Oswald's innermost heart, seemed not so very sharp in other things, or he would never have given away his secret plans like this, for he must have known from our accents that we were Britons to the backbone. Or perhaps (Oswald thought this, and it made his blood at once boil and freeze, which our uncle had told us was possible, but only in India), perhaps he thought that Maidstone was already as good as taken and it didn't matter what he said. While Oswald was debating within his intellect what to say next, and how to say it so as to discover as many as possible of the enemy's dark secrets, Noel said--

'How did you get here? You weren't here yesterday at tea-time.'

The soldier gave the pot another sandy rub, and said--

'I daresay it does seem quick work--the camp seems as if it had sprung up in the night, doesn't it?--like a mushroom.'

Alice and Oswald looked at each other, and then at the rest of us. The words 'sprung up in the night' seemed to touch a string in every heart.

'You see,' whispered Noel, 'he won't tell us how he came here. NOW, is it humbug or history?'

Oswald, after whisperedly requesting his young brother to dry up and not bother, remarked, 'Then you're an invading army?'