Part 15 (2/2)

But on the third morning it came. It was quite a large parcel, and it was packed, as the advertis.e.m.e.nt said it would be, 'free from observation.' That means it was in a box; and inside the box was some stiff browny cardboard, crinkled like the galvanized iron on the tops of chicken-houses, and inside that was a lot of paper, some of it printed and some sc.r.a.ppy, and in the very middle of it all a bottle, not very large, and black, and sealed on the top of the cork with yellow sealing-wax.

We looked at it as it lay on the nursery table, and while all the others grabbed at the papers to see what the printing said, Oswald went to look for the corkscrew, so as to see what was inside the bottle. He found the corkscrew in the dresser drawer--it always gets there, though it is supposed to be in the sideboard drawer in the dining-room--and when he got back the others had read most of the printed papers.

'I don't think it's much good, and I don't think it's quite nice to sell wine,' Dora said 'and besides, it's not easy to suddenly begin to sell things when you aren't used to it.'

'I don't know,' said Alice; 'I believe I could.' They all looked rather down in the mouth, though, and Oswald asked how you were to make your two pounds a week.

'Why, you've got to get people to taste that stuff in the bottle. It's sherry--Castilian Amoroso its name is--and then you get them to buy it, and then you write to the people and tell them the other people want the wine, and then for every dozen you sell you get two s.h.i.+llings from the wine people, so if you sell twenty dozen a week you get your two pounds.

I don't think we shall sell as much as that,' said d.i.c.ky.

'We might not the first week,' Alice said, 'but when people found out how nice it was, they would want more and more. And if we only got ten s.h.i.+llings a week it would be something to begin with, wouldn't it?'

Oswald said he should jolly well think it would, and then d.i.c.ky took the cork out with the corkscrew. The cork broke a good deal, and some of the bits went into the bottle. Dora got the medicine gla.s.s that has the teaspoons and tablespoons marked on it, and we agreed to have a teaspoonful each, to see what it was like.

'No one must have more than that,' Dora said, 'however nice it is.'

Dora behaved rather as if it were her bottle. I suppose it was, because she had lent the money for it.

Then she measured out the teaspoonful, and she had first go, because of being the eldest. We asked at once what it was like, but Dora could not speak just then.

Then she said, 'It's like the tonic Noel had in the spring; but perhaps sherry ought to be like that.'

Then it was Oswald's turn. He thought it was very burny; but he said nothing. He wanted to see first what the others would say.

d.i.c.ky said his was simply beastly, and Alice said Noel could taste next if he liked.

Noel said it was the golden wine of the G.o.ds, but he had to put his handkerchief up to his mouth all the same, and I saw the face he made.

Then H. O. had his, and he spat it out in the fire, which was very rude and nasty, and we told him so.

Then it was Alice's turn. She said, 'Only half a teaspoonful for me, Dora. We mustn't use it all up.' And she tasted it and said nothing.

Then d.i.c.ky said: 'Look here, I chuck this. I'm not going to hawk round such beastly stuff. Any one who likes can have the bottle. Quis?'

And Alice got out 'Ego' before the rest of us. Then she said, 'I know what's the matter with it. It wants sugar.'

And at once we all saw that that was all there was the matter with the stuff. So we got two lumps of sugar and crushed it on the floor with one of the big wooden bricks till it was powdery, and mixed it with some of the wine up to the tablespoon mark, and it was quite different, and not nearly so nasty.

'You see it's all right when you get used to it,' d.i.c.ky said. I think he was sorry he had said 'Quis?' in such a hurry.

'Of course,' Alice said, 'it's rather dusty. We must crush the sugar carefully in clean paper before we put it in the bottle.'

Dora said she was afraid it would be cheating to make one bottle nicer than what people would get when they ordered a dozen bottles, but Alice said Dora always made a fuss about everything, and really it would be quite honest.

'You see,' she said, 'I shall just tell them, quite truthfully, what we have done to it, and when their dozens come they can do it for themselves.'

So then we crushed eight more lumps, very cleanly and carefully between newspapers, and shook it up well in the bottle, and corked it up with a screw of paper, brown and not news, for fear of the poisonous printing ink getting wet and dripping down into the wine and killing people. We made Pincher have a taste, and he sneezed for ever so long, and after that he used to go under the sofa whenever we showed him the bottle.

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