Part 21 (1/2)

We wrote the fifteen letters, disguising our handwritings as much as we could. It was not easy. Oswald tried to write one of them with his left hand, but the consequences were almost totally unreadable. Besides, if any one could have read it, they would only have thought it was written in an asylum for the insane, the writing was so delirious. So he chucked it.

Noel was only allowed to write one poem. It began--

”Oh, Geraldine! Oh, Geraldine!

You are the loveliest heroine!

I never read about one before That made me want to write more Poetry. And your Venetian eyes, They must have been an awful size; And black and blue, and like your hair, And your nose and chin were a perfect pair.”

and so on for ages.

The other letters were all saying what a beautiful chapter ”Beneath the Doge's Home” was, and how we liked it better than the other chapters before, and how we hoped the next would be like it. We found out when all too late that H.O. had called it the ”Dog's Home.” But we hoped this would pa.s.s unnoticed among all the others. We read the reviews of books in the old _Spectators_ and _Athenaeums_, and put in the words they say there about other people's books. We said we thought that chapter about Geraldine and the garters was ”subtle” and ”masterly” and ”inevitable”--that it had an ”old-world charm,” and was ”redolent of the soil.” We said, too, that we had ”read it with breathless interest from cover to cover,” and that it had ”poignant pathos and a convincing realism,” and the ”fine flower of delicate sentiment,” besides much other rot that the author can't remember.

When all the letters were done we addressed them and stamped them and licked them down, and then we got different people to post them. Our under-gardener, who lives in Greenwich, and the other under-gardener, who lives in Lewisham, and the servants on their evenings out, which they spend in distant spots like Plaistow and Grove Park--each had a letter to post. The piano-tuner was a great catch--he lived in Highgate; and the electric-bell man was Lambeth. So we got rid of all the letters, and watched the post for a reply. We watched for a week, but no answer came.

You think, perhaps, that we were duffers to watch for a reply when we had signed all the letters with fancy names like Daisy Dolman, Everard St. Maur, and Sir Cholmondely Marjoribanks, and put fancy addresses on them, like Chatsworth House, Loampit Vale, and The Bungalow, Eaton Square. But we were not such idiots as you think, dear reader, and you are not so extra clever as you think, either. We had written _one_ letter (it had the grandest _Spectator_ words in it) on our own letter-paper, with the address on the top and the uncle's coat-of-arms outside the envelope. Oswald's real own name was signed to this letter, and this was the one we looked for the answer to. See?

But that answer did not come. And when three long days had pa.s.sed away we all felt most awfully stale about it. Knowing the great good we had done for Albert's uncle made our interior feelings very little better, if at all.

And on the fourth day Oswald spoke up and said what was in everybody's inside heart. He said--

”This is futile rot. I vote we write and ask that editor why he doesn't answer letters.”

”He wouldn't answer that one any more than he did the other,” said Noel.

”Why should he? He knows you can't do anything to him for not.”

”Why shouldn't we go and ask him?” H.O. said. ”He couldn't not answer us if we was all there, staring him in the face.”

”I don't suppose he'd see you,” said Dora; ”and it's 'were,' not 'was.'”

”The other editor did when I got the guinea for my beautiful poems,”

Noel reminded us.

”Yes,” said the thoughtful Oswald; ”but then it doesn't matter how young you are when you're just a poetry-seller. But we're the discerning public now, and he'd think we ought to be grown up. I say, Dora, suppose you rigged yourself up in old Blakie's things. You'd look quite twenty or thirty.”

Dora looked frightened, and said she thought we'd better not.

But Alice said, ”Well, I will, then. I don't care. I'm as tall as Dora.

But I won't go alone. Oswald, you'll have to dress up old and come too.

It's not much to do for Albert's uncle's sake.”

”You know you'll enjoy it,” said Dora, and she may have wished that she did not so often think that we had better not. However, the dye was now cast, and the remainder of this adventure was doomed to be coloured by the dye we now prepared. (This is an allegory. It means we had burned our boats. And that is another.)

We decided to do the deed next day, and during the evening d.i.c.ky and Oswald went out and bought a grey beard and moustache, which was the only thing we could think of to disguise the manly and youthful form of the bold Oswald into the mature shape of a grown-up and discerning public character.

Meanwhile, the girls made tiptoe and brigand-like excursions into Miss Blake's room (she is the housekeeper) and got several things. Among others, a sort of undecided thing like part of a wig, which Miss Blake wears on Sundays. Jane, our housemaid, says it is called a ”transformation,” and that d.u.c.h.esses wear them.

We had to be very secret about the dressing-up that night, and to put Blakie's things all back when they had been tried on.

Dora did Alice's hair. She twisted up what little hair Alice has got by natural means, and tied on a long tail of hair that was Miss Blake's too. Then she twisted that up, bun-like, with many hairpins. Then the wiglet, or transformation, was plastered over the front part, and Miss Blake's Sunday hat, which is of a very brisk character, with half a blue bird in it, was placed on top of everything. There were several petticoats used, and a brown dress and some stockings and hankies to stuff it out where it was too big. A black jacket and crimson tie completed the picture. We thought Alice would do.