Part 21 (1/2)
”You ought to be ashamed of yourselves,” said the voice of Martha, and they could tell by her voice that she was very angry indeed. ”I thought you couldn't last through the day without getting up to some mischief! A person can't take a breath of air on the front doorstep but you must be emptying the water jug on their heads! Off you go to bed, the lot of you, and try to get up better children in the morning. Now then--don't let me have to tell you twice. If I find any of you not in bed in ten minutes I'll let you know it, that's all! A new cap, and everything!”
She flounced out amid a disregarded chorus of regrets and apologies. The children were very sorry, but really it was not their faults.
You can't help it if you are pouring water on a besieging foe, and your castle suddenly changes into your house--and everything changes with it except the water, and that happens to fall on somebody else's clean cap.
”I don't know why the water didn't change into nothing, though,” said Cyril.
”Why should it?” asked Robert. ”Water's water all the world over.”
”I expect the castle well was the same as ours in the stable-yard,” said Jane. And that was really the case.
”I thought we couldn't get through a wish-day without a row,” said Cyril; ”it was much too good to be true. Come on, Bobs, my military hero. If we lick into bed sharp she won't be so furious, and perhaps she'll bring us up some supper. I'm jolly hungry! Good-night, kids.”
”Good-night. I hope the castle won't come creeping back in the night,”
said Jane.
”Of course it won't,” said Anthea briskly, ”but Martha will--not in the night, but in a minute. Here, turn round, I'll get that knot out of your pinafore strings.”
”Wouldn't it have been degrading for Sir Wulfric de Talbot,” said Jane dreamily, ”if he could have known that half the besieged garrison wore pinafores?”
”And the other half knickerbockers. Yes--frightfully. Do stand still--you're only tightening the knot,” said Anthea.
CHAPTER VIII
BIGGER THAN THE BAKER'S BOY
”Look here,” said Cyril. ”I've got an idea.”
”Does it hurt much?” said Robert sympathetically.
”Don't be a jackanape! I'm not humbugging.”
”Shut up, Bobs!” said Anthea.
”Silence for the Squirrel's oration,” said Robert.
Cyril balanced himself on the edge of the water-b.u.t.t in the backyard, where they all happened to be, and spoke.
”Friends, Romans, countrymen--and women--we found a Sammyadd. We have had wishes. We've had wings, and being beautiful as the day--ugh!--that was pretty jolly beastly if you like--and wealth and castles, and that rotten gipsy business with the Lamb. But we're no forrarder. We haven't really got anything worth having for our wishes.”
”We've had things happening,” said Robert; ”that's always something.”
”It's not enough, unless they're the right things,” said Cyril firmly.
”Now I've been thinking”--
”Not really?” whispered Robert.
”In the silent what's-its-names of the night. It's like suddenly being asked something out of history--the date of the Conquest or something; you know it all right all the time, but when you're asked it all goes out of your head. Ladies and gentlemen, you know jolly well that when we're all rotting about in the usual way heaps of things keep cropping up, and then real earnest wishes come into the heads of the beholder”--