The Wouldbegoods by E. Nesbit Read Free Book Online

thought of pike, which are large and very angry always, and I caught hold of Dora. She screamed without stopping. I shoved her along to where there was a ledge of brickwork, and shoved her up, till she could sit on it, then she got her foot out of the water, still screaming.
    It was indeed terrible. The thing she thought was a shark came up with her foot, and it was a horrid, jagged, old meat-tin, and she had put her foot right into it. Oswald got it off, and directly he did so blood began to pour from the wounds. The tin edges had cut it in several spots. It was very pale blood, because her foot was wet, of course.
    She stopped screaming, and turned green, and I thought she was going to faint, like Daisy did on the jungle day.
    Oswald held her up as well as he could, but it really was one of the least agreeable moments in his life. For the raft was gone, and she couldn’t have waded back anyway, and we didn’t know how deep the moat might be in other places.
    But Mrs Pettigrew had not been idle. She is not a bad sort really.
    Just as Oswald was wondering whether he could swim after the raft and get it back, a boat’s nose shot out from under a dark archway a little further up under the house. It was the boathouse, and Albert’s uncle had got the punt and took us back in it. When we had regained the dark arch where the boat lives we had to go up the cellar stairs. Dora had to be carried.
    There was but little said to us that day. We were sent to bed – those who had not been on the raft the sameas the others, for they owned up all right, and Albert’s uncle is the soul of justice.
    Next day but one was Saturday. Father gave us a talking to – with other things.
    The worst was when Dora couldn’t get her shoe on, so they sent for the doctor, and Dora had to lie down for ever so long. It was indeed poor luck.
    When the doctor had gone Alice said to me –
    ‘It
is
hard lines, but Dora’s very jolly about it. Daisy’s been telling her about how we should all go to her with our little joys and sorrows and things, and about the sweet influence from a sickbed that can be felt all over the house, like in
What Katy Did
, and Dora said she hoped she might prove a blessing to us all while she’s laid up.’
    Oswald said he hoped so, but he was not pleased. Because this sort of jaw was exactly the sort of thing he and Dicky didn’t want to have happen.
    The thing we got it hottest for was those little tubs off the garden railings. They turned out to be butter-tubs that had been put out there ‘to sweeten’.
    But as Denny said, ‘After the mud in that moat not all the perfumes of somewhere or other could make them fit to use for butter again.’
    I own this was rather a bad business. Yet we did not do it to please ourselves, but because it was our duty. But that made no difference to our punishment when Father came down. I have known this mistake occur before.

chapter three

bill’s tombstone
    There were soldiers riding down the road, on horses two and two. That is the horses were two and two, and the men not. Because each man was riding one horse and leading another. To exercise them. They came from Chatham Barracks. We all drew up in a line outside the churchyard wall, and saluted as they went by, though we had not read
Toady Lion
then. We have since. It is the only decent book I have ever read written by
Toady Lion
’s author. The others are mere piffle. But many people like them. In
Sir Toady Lion
the officer salutes the child.
    There was only a lieutenant with those soldiers, and he did not salute me. He kissed his hand to the girls; and a lot of the soldiers behind kissed theirs too. We waved ours back.
    Next day we made a Union Jack out of pocket-handkerchiefs and part of a red flannel petticoat of the White Mouse’s, which she did not want just then, and some blue ribbon we got at the village shop.
    Then we watched for the soldiers, and after three days they went by again, by twos and twos as before.