The Wouldbegoods by E. Nesbit Read Free Book Online Page A

It was A1.
    We waved our flag, and we shouted. We gave them three cheers. Oswald can shout loudest. So as soon asthe first man was level with us (not the advance guard, but the first of the battery) – he shouted –
    â€˜Three cheers for the Queen and the British Army!’ And then we waved the flag, and bellowed. Oswald stood on the wall to bellow better, and Denny waved the flag because he was a visitor, and so politeness made us let him enjoy the fat of whatever there was going.
    The soldiers did not cheer that day; they only grinned and kissed their hands.
    The next day we all got up as much like soldiers as we could. H.O. and Noel had tin swords, and we asked Albert’s uncle to let us wear some of the real arms that are on the wall in the dining room.
    And he said, ‘Yes’, if we would clean them up afterwards. But we jolly well cleaned them up first with Brooke’s soap and brick dust and vinegar, and the knife polish (invented by the great and immortal Duke of Wellington in his spare time when he was not conquering Napoleon. Three cheers for our Iron Duke!), and with emery paper and wash leather and whitening. Oswald wore a cavalry sabre in its sheath. Alice and the Mouse had pistols in their belts, large old flint-locks, with bits of red flannel behind the flints. Denny had a naval cutlass, a very beautiful blade, and old enough to have been at Trafalgar. I hope it was. The others had French sword-bayonets that were used in the Franco–German war. They are very bright when you get them bright, but the sheaths are hard to polish. Each sword-bayonet has the name on the blade of the warrior who once wielded it. I wonder where they are now. Perhaps some of them died in the war. Poor chaps! But it is a very long time ago.
    I should like to be a soldier. It is better than going to the best schools, and to Oxford afterwards, even if it is Balliol you go to. Oswald wanted to go to South Africa for a bugler, but Father would not let him. And it is true that Oswald does not yet know how to bugle, though he can play the infantry ‘advance’, and the ‘charge’ and the ‘halt’ on a penny whistle. Alice taught them to him with the piano, out of the red book Father’s cousin had when he was in the Fighting Fifth. Oswald cannot play the ‘retire’, and he would scorn to do so. But I suppose a bugler has to play what he is told, no matter how galling to the young boy’s proud spirit.
    The next day, being thoroughly armed, we put on everything red, white and blue that we could think of – nightshirts are good for white, and you don’t know what you can do with red socks and blue jerseys till you try – and we waited by the churchyard wall for the soldiers. When the advance guard (or whatever you call it of artillery – it’s that for infantry, I know) came by, we got ready, and when the first man of the first battery was level with us Oswald played on his penny whistle the ‘advance’ and the ‘charge’ – and then shouted –
    â€˜Three cheers for the Queen and the British Army!’ This time they had the guns with them. And every man of the battery cheered too. It was glorious. It made you tremble all over. The girls said it made them want to cry – but no boy would own to this, even if it were true. It is babyish to cry. But it was glorious, and Oswald felt differently to what he ever did before.
    Then suddenly the officer in front said, ‘Battery! Halt!’ and all the soldiers pulled their horses up, andthe great guns stopped too. Then the officer said, ‘Sit at ease,’ and something else, and the sergeant repeated it, and some of the men got off their horses and lit their pipes, and some sat down on the grass edge of the road, holding their horses’ bridles.
    We could see all the arms and accoutrements as plain as plain.
    Then the officer came up to us. We were all standing on the wall that