The House in the Wood

by E. Nesbit

[Illustration: “There was a big branch in the way.”]

 

THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD.

BY E. NESBIT

Illustrated by A. E. Jackson.

WE live at the big red house in Yalding, and I should hate living anywhere else. It is not everywhere that there is a. house and garden like ours, and a stream to fish in, and the real river not a mile away. Besides the big garden with the red wall round that the peaches and nectarines grow on, and you are not allowed to pick them but only have them handed at dessert on Sundays, and then, of course, you ought to take the one next you, regardless of size or redness. I would rather have one peach that I picked myself, and with nobody to see you eat it, than two out of a dish and be told all the time what you're not to do with your dessert knife and fork. Our names are Clifford, Martin, Olive, Alan, Lottie, and Madeline, who is only a cousin, and not exactly like us, somehow. What the author is now about to narrate happened in the summer. A person called Miss Knox was staying with us. Father and we don't like her, but mother says she has seen better days, and we must be kind to her. We try to, but we cannot like her, whatever she may have seen. I should say, myself, the fairest sights were thrown away on Miss Knox. There is an inn on the Sevenoaks road called The Bald-faced Stag, and the painted sign hangs out in front, the baldest-faced stag you ever saw. Miss Knox is like that to look at. She always puts every one right, even mother. And as for us, she seems to contradict every single thing we say. When she has been staying in the house a little while every one gets restless; and you feel that it is silly to stay at home when there are so many other places in the world where Miss Knox isn't.

“It is rum,” said Clifford, who is often the one to begin to talk of new objects, “how you feel about things. The Knox is a vampire, I think.”

“What's a vampire?” Lotty asked.

Olive very quickly said, “A bat, dear,” and winked frownfully through the leaves. We were in the Blenheim orange tree—secure from any one creeping up behind. I do not mean to say the Knox means to be always behind you—but somehow she too often is.

“What I mean is,” said Clifford, “she sucks your patience out of you and lives on it. That's why people call her a sweet, patient, earnest worker. That beady lady who called yesterday in the brougham did.”

“It's not so much your patience—it's your temper that goes,” said Olive; and Martin owned that Miss Knox made him want to scream and go mad before her eyes. “I feel it most at meal-times,” he said darkly.

“Whatever's the use of jawing,” Alan said, “when you know we've just got to stick it? Let's go fishing.”

“Yes, let's,” said the others.

But Clifford did not. “I was thinking,” he said, “what if we could build a hut in the woods and spend our spare time in it like the Swiss Family Robinson?”

No one wanted to go fishing after that. There is something about a new house that is above rubies. Even a proper brick one, and even if you're not going to live in it yourself. But when it comes to a house in the woods that you're going to build yourself, rubies are simply not in it.

So we talked about it till tea and through tea and after tea, and then Clifford said he would be a deputation to father about it. He was. And father said All right, but where should we get the building materials? And I said the old chicken-house. And he said All right, but the boards were to be scrubbed, because hens are not so particular as they look outside their feathers, and William might do it. William is the under-gardener, and he said it wasn't his job. But he did do it. And then we went to look for a place in the woods.

Father owns about fifty acres wood and pasture, and he said we might make our house anywhere we liked. He is never one to do things by halves, and he went with me to Hillick's and bought us a hammer and a lot of nails and some screws and a screw-driver and a gimlet and an awl. They were A1, with shiny yellowy handles, and he cut K for Kiddies on the handles and filled it up with ink to show that they were our very own, Then he went to Ireland to fish. Mother said it was not because of Miss Knox. But perhaps mother does not know father quite as well as we do.

Even if we had never built our house we should have had a ripping time, for mother let us go out all day long and take lunch in the donkey and cart which are our own.

It was much more difficult than you would have thought to find exactly the right place for a house. There was a willow wood close by the river; but Olive thought it would be damp, although your boots only went in about an inch, and not right over your ankles as you would have thought to hear the way she went on about it. Clifford suggested a house on posts, like lake-dwellers, but we had to chuck it because the cart couldn't get through the wood unless we had cut it all down—and we did not want to waste time being wood-cutters or carrying the chicken-house planks one at a time like silly old beavers.

There was some idea of having the house up a tree; and we did actually begin in an oak, but there was a big branch in the way, and after a whole morning we hadn't got more than a couple of inches into it, and then the saw stuck—and Martin thought he could get it out and broke it. So we borrowed another saw and gave up the tree. Part of the saw is still embedded in that branch. Antiquarians in later years will find it and think it so interesting.

And then, after three or four days of as first-class exploring as ever I wish to see, we found it. Not just the place for a house, but...

[Illustration: “We made a path over these prostrate infidels right up to the downstairs window, and looked in.”]

It was like this. Our noble steed was unharnessed and tethered in a grassy spot with a few nettles in reach, because we know donkeys like them, and though ours always eats grass instead, we never know when he may feel that he simply must have a nettle. The girls were arranging the lunch on another grassy vicinity. Alan had got hold of the “Swiss Family Robinson,” the only book we allowed on exploring expeditions, because when people get into books they can't be got out for work or play or anything else. So Martin and I just went for an explore on our own. And, unlike some other explorers I can think of, we really explored right slap-bang into something.

Deep in the heart of what appeared to be an enchanted wood, we came on a bit of paling—all grown over with briers and wild honeysuckle, but still a paling. With grim boots and undaunted hearts the young explorers followed its career, and so came out from behind an elder bush right on to a cleared space in the wood where there had been a garden and still was a house. The jolliest house you ever saw. It was quite little—not much bigger than a decent-sized summer-house, with a thatched roof and a real chimney, and lattice windows, and two stories, an upstairs and a downstairs. Nettles rose high and strong like a magic forest between us and it. And there was the paling too. But we found a gate in the paling and pressed forward through the nettles, trampling the fallen foes sideways. They were fine Saracens, and we cut off their heads with our good swords—which were sticks just before—shouting “St. George for Merrie England!” and so we made a path over these prostrate infidels right up to the downstairs window, and looked in.

“Oh, crikey!” said Martin.

So Clifford pulled him away and had a squint himself. Then he observed, “You may well say 'Crikey!'”

And indeed he might. Any one might have. There was another window besides the one we were squinting through, a fireplace with old ashes and half-burnt sticks in it, and daylight came down the chimney on to the ashes, showing that no evil bird had built its stuffy nest there.

There was a broken basket, and a coal-scuttle with a hole in it, and a fixed wooden seat by the fire something like the settle in our kitchen at home. And there was a broom, very nearly bald, but not quite, and two cupboards, and the beginnings of a flight of stairs that we felt sure led up to the first floor.

“Coo-ee!” shouted the others, meaning lunch. What a moment to choose for lunch! We took no notice, but looked at each other. Then we listened. The wood was very still.

“I don't care,” said Clifford. And he picked up a stone and broke one of the little diamond panes. (We mended it afterwards with oiled paper, like peasants in history.) It fell with a sweet tinkling sound like fairy bells leading us on. So Clifford put his hand through the hole and turned the catch and opened the window; and we got in. Clifford was first to set foot in that beautiful spot. We got the door open—it stuck a bit with damp and moss—and there were pale earwigs and woodlice, and a centipede that looked very unwell and I put it out of its misery. There was a broken plate in one of the cupboards and a rusty cake tin and two clothes-pegs in the other. And upstairs there were two little rooms, slopy about the roof, but otherwise fit for princes to sleep in. Not till we had explored every cupboard and sat on the little bench did we condescend to cry “Coo-ee” and to get back to the others and lunch.

I don't think I ever enjoyed a meal more. It was sausage-rolls—not those flimsy things you get in shops, but long solid ones with home-made sausage inside, and plenty of it—as well as jam tarts and gooseberries and ginger-beer. Beside this there was our secret. They say hunger is the best sauce, but I think a secret is better. Of course we didn't tell the others for quite a long time, though it is useless to say we did not let them see there was something up. When it came to the jam tarts they could bear it no longer, so we told.

The others were almost as pleased as the first adventurers, and it was very nice for them having us to show them everything and telling them where not to bump their heads and where not to walk on the rotten boards.

“We needn't build a house now,” said Olive.

“Whether we build or not,” said Alan, “we'd better cart the old hen-roost along; else William 'll begin asking questions about why he had to clean those boards if nobody wanted them.”

We saw this; and we got William to bring the boards to a vicinity spot in the luggage cart, and then we carried them ourselves with the donkey's help to the spot and stacked them against the wall. We got a penny tin of enamel and we painted the house's name on the door. We called it “Mon Abri,” which an aunt of ours calls her cottage at Cromer. It means “my refuge,” and after it we put F.M.K. to show who it was our refuge from. And we gathered a lot of sticks and made a fire. It didn't smoke so very much. “We must furnish it,” Olive said; “there's a bit of old carpet in the box-room.”

“And some chairs,” said Alan.

“And a towel-horse,” said Lotty.

Mother let us have all the things we wanted. She didn't even say, “Hadn't you better get your house built first?” which was what we rather feared. It is a great gift when a chap has a brick for his mother. And all the things she gave us William carried for us in the luggage-cart to that vicinity spot I told you about.

It is impossible to carry much furniture through the wood without making a path. We did not want a path. Paths lead to discovery—or to secret houses, which is just as bad. We tried to coax the ferns and bushes and things back over the path we had not been able to help making.

In three days our house was furnished. The girls made curtains for the windows out of an old red-and-white quilt mother gave us. There was a carpet and a table; it had only two legs, but we nailed boards on it and it stood quite nicely, and when there was a table-cloth on it you hardly noticed the flatness of two of its legs. There were two chairs, one without a back, but that only made it a stool—more suitable for a cottage in a wood, and cups and saucers and plates we bought ourselves at Killick's: mauvy blobs on white, very cottagy. So was the blue-and-red table-cover. We bought that ourselves, too. We had a kettle and two teaspoons, and a crockery dog, and a geranium in a pot on the window-ledge. It was as beautiful as a Christmas-card, and all our own. And then Madeline, who is our cousin and a little different from us, somehow, said she didn't think it was nearly as comfortable as the Red House at Yalding. Comfortable! As if the Source of the Nile, or the North Pole, or Robinson Crusoe, or anything really worth having, ever came of being comfortable.

However, we forbore to chide; and when she had a newspaper cape and apron and was a Puritan maiden, and we were Royalists in despair, she liked it better.

Of course “Mon Abri” was ripping for all sorts of games. Sieges or children of the New Forest, and everything that you can think of. There were green wooden shutters outside the windows that fastened with a hook inside and also with a hook outside. Thus you could make the house almost dark even on the brightest day, but some light always came down the chimney.

It was a ripping place to read aloud in. We got heaps of books down there quite soon. And we kept grub there. It was a jolly house.

“I wonder,” Clifford once pensively said, “how such a house could be deserted?”

“Damp, I expect,” Olive said, so quickly that I knew she was thinking of ghosts.

“I'd be afraid to sleep here, I know,” Madeline said, who never notices hints and little things like that.

“I expect it's too small really,” said Olive in haste, “but it's just the right size for us, isn't it?”

It was.

Besides our own books we sometimes had father's. And it was father's “Hereward the Wake,” in the tree-calf binding, which really we oughtn't to have taken without asking, that got left down there one day, and Clifford never thought of it till eight o'clock, and father was coming home that night. So Clifford, ever a slave to duty—and besides it was his fault it was taken down there at all, and he would have caught it hot if discovered—said he'd go and get it; and Martin said he'd come too. Clifford owns he was not sorry. He is not afraid of the dark, any more than you are, but woods are very lonely at night, if you are alone in them. And they are dark, too.

We got down to the house, and Clifford collared the book—he knew just where to lay his hand on it—and he and Martin were just going out, when there was a step outside. Clifford thought it was the others trying to take a rise out of us, so he said “Hist!” and pulled Martin into the corner cupboard, and we held our breaths there, intending to jump out on the others if they were trying to frighten us, but otherwise just to emerge gently and reasonably with biscuits in our hands,

Judge of our horror and dismay when we heard through the dark the deep bass voice of a perfect stranger.

“Why, 'ere is a key, and the door's open,” it said in hoarse tones, that must have convicted the least observing hearer of his being a criminal.

Now Clifford is very observing. Martin is too, of course. So they held each other—and their breaths—in the cupboard till I thought we should have burst.

“Strike a light, Bill,” the voice now said.

“Not till we've got the shutters to,” said another bass voice—Bill, I suppose. “I said there was shutters.” They blundered out again, and I said to Martin, “Fly!”

Because I knew they must be tramps, even if they weren't the criminals I was sure they were. And anyhow you never know.

But before we could get to the door to begin our flying, they were back, and they came in and shut the door—and we went on holding our breaths in the cupboard. It made me think of the master genius of Mr. Paul Neuman, who wrote “The Villain of Parts,” and I tell you I did not half like it. I hadn't a geological hammer, or any means of self-defence except fists; and we knew by the voices that we should not be up to their weight.

“'E said upstairs,” said one of the men, and then it came to Clifford in a flash what they were after. “Light up, can't ye?”

There was no doubt in Clifford's mind that these criminals had come to the deserted cottage after booty, the fruit of some crime committed by one of their pals—most likely the one they meant when they said “'E.”

A match was struck, we heard it, but it was as they went upstairs. There was no furniture upstairs, you remember. “Hope 'e wasn't kiddin' of us,” the bassest one said. We both heard that.

“Fly!” I said.

And Martin flew (or is it fled?).

Now, it is an odd thing that the burglars, for such there seemed to be no doubt they were, came in in the dark and couldn't have known all about the furniture, yet they never knocked against a single thing. Yet Martin, who knew in daylight where every chair and table was, went blundering into the settle with his boots, with a noise like the thunders of Jove, and knocked a chair over with a noise words fail the author about. The present writer owns that, having caused these rash acts, he showed the greatest presence of mind. Instead of considering concealment to be at an end, as too many boys would have done, and cutting off with noise of boots and a yell, he stole out of the house on tiptoe, and, in a perfectly noiseless manner, crept round the house and concealed himself under the lean-to shed, formed by the boards of the chicken-house that we had piled up against the side of the house in the wood. Of course I only knew this afterwards.

Clifford did not follow him, because the noise of Martin and the furniture fetched the burglars down like winking.

They struck a match and saw the overturned chair.

“We'd best be making a bunk,” said the bassest.

“Sst! Listen,” said the one who was not so bass.

They listened, and, owing to Clifford's holding his breath almost unbearably in the cupboard, and Martin's masterly and silent retreat, not a sound was heard.

“'Twasn't nothing,” said he whom I will now call Mr. Bass.

“What about that, then?” asked Mr. Other, as we will now term him. And the match went out as he pointed to the fallen chair.

“A fox. You may lay to it it was an ole fox,” said Mr. Bass, “come in for shelter like—and smelt human flesh and went out again.”

“Good thing 'e didn't go for us, then,” said Mr. Other; “my father's cousin was bit by a wild cat once, something chronic.”

“We won't 'ave any more of these 'ere foxes, any'ow,” said Mr. Bass, and he bolted the door. More, he bolted it at the top—it is a bolt we never use because it is very rusty and it sticks, so that human aid is despaired of and you have to use the hammer to it.

Then they went upstairs, and I heard them grunting and moving about.

Now, gentle reader, what would you have done if you had been Martin? And what would you have done if you had been me?

I never was one of those who called Martin a sneak because he did the only sensible thing and bunked off home to fetch help. Nor was I one of those who considered it cowardly of Clifford to seek escape from his desperate situation by the only means possible. And before you begin to be down on people for things, you should consider what you would do yourself if it had happened to happen to you.

Clifford was perfectly sick of holding his breath in that beastly cupboard. It was very stuffy, besides, with smells of paraffin and putty, and the herring we had meant to toast for tea the Thursday before last and then forgotten all about it. Clifford remembered the herring now, enough to make up for all the forgettings of all of us.

He listened. Dead silence reigned above. He lit a match and cautiously lighted a candle-end that he knew was on the shelf somewhere. He had to feel among the herring for it—but no matter. Then very cautiously—like a spy or a gentleman-adventurer, and not in the least like a sneak—he crept across the room and examined the door.

[Illustration: “He sat astride of the roof, with the ends of the thatch pricking his stockinged feet, and that fatal brick collar holding his young throat in its heavy embrace.”]

Too true. The top bolt was shot home with all the brutal force of a strong man's arm. The windows were all shuttered fast, and the shutters only undid from the outside.

“Shades of heroes,” he said, or would have said if there had been any one to say it to—“Shades of heroes, what on earth am I to do?”

He looked around for means of egressing himself. He had not the least idea what Martin was doing. Martin might be just waiting outside, or he might have gone to fetch help. Even if the latter, help might not come for ages, and Clifford felt that he simply could not go on holding his breath for ever.

He saw quite plainly that these men were desperate characters; they had come to this house to search for something which a third man had said was there—upstairs.

“It might be almost anything,” Clifford told himself—“a missing will or a hoard of jewels, a pot of gold or kegs of smuggled tobacco.”

You may blame Clifford; you may think he ought boldly to have gone up those stairs in the dark and asked the Basses what they were doing, and defied the false traitors in- their teeth. All I can say is, I wish it had been you there instead of Clifford.

What he did do required all the courage of our boy hero. He very quietly picked up the fallen chair and set it near the door without making the slightest noise. Then he took off his boots. Then he mounted, sock-footed, up on the chair and tried the bolt earnestly. It wasn't the least good; he had known it wouldn't be.

Then the great idea came to him. He remembered how the light had come down the chimney, and how he and the others had squinted up and seen quite a large hole at the top where a lamented chimney-pot had fallen off and now lay among the nettles on the estate below. I once got up the hall-chimney at home after a cricket-ball that had happened to go slick down when we were playing catch on the roof. The ball had stuck on a ledge, and I got it all right. But that was by daylight, with the sympathising others below, and not, as now, with burglars of the deepest dye within a yard or two of the bold climber.

But Clifford did it. He went up that chimney, knees and elbows, and he got to the top with no noise at all, I am certain. And it was a tight fit, but just not too tight. But-when the dauntless climber (braver, believe me, than many a roped guide on an Alp that so much fuss is made about in the papers) got to the part of the chimney where it gets narrow, he found that though his head went through easily enough, his shoulders refused to follow. At least his shoulders did their best, but the masonry stood firm. So he tried to get his head back, and it wouldn't come, twist and turn as he would—and he was afraid to twist and turn too generously for fear his feet should give way and him be left hanging by his head in the chimney, a fate that all, I am sure, would shun. But he didn't lose his head, even when he found he couldn't get his head back. He simply decided that he must follow it at any cost. So he got his foot on a brick and shoved for all he was worth. He felt something giving, and shoved harder; and next moment his shoulders shot up out of the chimney. But an awful weight on them made him put his hand up as soon as he could get it clear. And he found that the weight was bricks. The top course had come away with his shoving, and there he was with a solid collar of bricks round his neck, and a noise of falling mortar rustling down the thatch and bumping on the planks below with a row that would have betrayed his presence even to the deafest—unless, of course, stone. And under the thatch he heard movements and voices.

“They shan't get my legs, anyway,” he said, and drew them up—and got out into the open air which was very dark and cool and quiet in the wood and the night.

Clifford now cautiously endeavoured, by every means in his power, to remove his collar. This is very difficult when the collar is of brick. Also it hurt. And anyhow his efforts were quite vain. He sat astride of the roof, with the ends of the thatch pricking his stockinged feet and that fatal brick collar holding his young throat in its heavy embrace, and wondered what would happen next. He could still hear from under the thatch the stealthy murmurings and movings of the two desperate characters from which he was seeking to escape. All too well he knew that such characters stick at nothing.

He turned on the roof ridge, as well as he could for the weight of the collar, and wondered if it would break his neck if he slid down that part of the roof which reaches nearly to the ground. He could not decide the question, and it was as he sat irresolute that he heard: the terrible sound of the key turning in the door. And he thought he had left the key outside when he went in. A slight rustling sound below, and next moment a dark head appeared above the bottom line of the thatch.

Clifford is glad that he was not able to loosen his brick collar. He tried to, fervently, and if success had crowned his efforts he would certainly have let it slide down the roof on to that approaching head and perhaps been a brothericide. For next moment the head said, “Hullo,” in a mysterious whisper, and began climbing up the thatch. And it was Martin. The collar remained firm.

Clifford was never so glad to see any one before; though if it had been Martin with bricks round his neck I do not suppose Clifford would have choked with laughter and nearly fallen off the roof on account of it, even if the moon did choose that moment for coming out and illuminating the brick collar with Dianitic splendours.

“Shut up, you duffer!” whispered Clifford, with his stiff neck. “Have you fetched any one?”

“I met William—I told him—he's gone to fetch the policeman. They'll be here in a sec.”

“Did you come back alone?”

“Yes,” whispered Martin. “I thought if I could get you out we could lock them in, and when I heard all that row and saw you on the roof I just turned the key. And we've got 'em, old chap, we've got 'em!”

Clifford could not help thinking that it was jolly decent of Martin to come back like that, all on his own. Many boys would not have. And as Clifford has an open, generous nature he told Martin what he thought of him. And there are boys who would not have done that either. And through the woods in the dark, too! The more Clifford thought of it afterwards, the more he thought of it. That looks like nonsense, doesn't it? But it's all right really if you think a bit.

So there we were hanging on to that roof beneath which the baffling criminals surged.

“Remember the first-floor windows have all got bars,” Martin said, and I am almost sure he winked, though you can't be quite so certain by moonlight.

“Rather,” Clifford responded.

And then there were voices and lanterns, and the rescue party arrived. There was William and Bilson, who is our coachman, and the police, whose private name is Jackson. the police had got his truncheon, and William had got an old gun that hadn't been let off for twenty years—for he told me afterwards, and Bilson had got father's revolver out of his shaving-stand drawer; and behind them came the person who had given him the revolver, and this person was a woman. And the woman was Miss Knox.

“Jolly plucky of her too, I call it,” Martin murmured; and then Clifford called out, with presence of mind: “Don't shoot—it's us up here, Clifford and Martin.”

So they didn't shoot, but halted on the side of the house where there were no windows.

“The criminals are safe inside,” said Clifford, calm on the roof-ridge, as Lord Nelson on the soon-to-be-blood-stained deck of the Victory.

“All shutters and doors fastened outside. I wish some one would come up here first and get these bricks off my neck.”

“Terrible!” cried the voice of Miss Knox; “they've tied bricks round the dear child's neck. Thank Heaven we're in time! In another moment they might have drowned the darling in a pond, as they do with puppies.”

Have you ever been called a dear child and a darling by a person you don't like? And in public? The present author has been. He knows.

“Assist the poor dear,” cried Miss Knox, who would come out with them, William told me afterwards. “Nothin' short of laying her out would 'a' stopped her,” he said; but her words were needless, as so often happens to be.

Already William was up the thatch and Jackson after him. And when they saw the brick collar round Clifford's neck they laughed: with criminals eminent below, and Clifford having gone through what he had, they could laugh! Such, alas! is poor human nature. But they got the bricks off all right, and then we all got down—on the windowless side, and then Bilson said, “Now for these 'ere criminals. Surrender, or I fire!” The revolver was not loaded, some people think, but strict truth is wasted on the truly vicious.

“Criminal yourself,” was the unexpected reply from inside the house. “'Ere, you, let us out and 'a' done with it!”

“Not much, we don't,” William answered, keeping well against the wall; and Miss Knox screamed, “Oh! don't let them out! For my sake don't let them out!”

“What are you doing here?” the police said; and the astonishing answer was:

“I've 'ad my fill of Charry Table gents to last me all my time, so I 'as. Let us out, guv'nor.”

“There's a large body of persons here,” said Bilson, “and all highly armed”—I don't know how he could. “Do you surrender?”

“'Course we do if you will 'ave it. Hannythink you likes. Let us out o' this.”

“How did you get into that?” said the thin voice of Miss Knox.

“You breast make a clean best of it,” said William muddlingly.

“There ain't nothing to breast about, you silly cuckoo,” said the bass voice from inside of our house. “Your parson, we asked 'im for fourpence for a doss—and you can lag us for begging, so you can, and do it and be blessed to you. And 'e give us this 'ere key—an' he says, 'You'll find two rugs under the loose board number four from the window in the front room upstairs,' 'e says—'and welcome,' says 'e. 'Good-night, brothers, and bring back the key in the morning,' 'e says; 'I've lent that there key a-many times, and it allus comes 'ome to roost as reg'lar as the milk in the morning,' 'e says. And now look at you,” said the bass voice, getting angrier. “First foxes in the furniture, and then ghosties round the walls with howls in the chimbley to follow, toppin' up with hostriches roostin' on the roof and spittin' out the stones what they eats all down the thatch. And then you!”

“If what you're saying's correct, you come along of us to the parson—and you best come quiet,” said the police.

Then they unlocked the door, and two men came out. They were quite small, not much bigger than Martin, and if you had measured Clifford against the taller of them I know which I think would have made the best show. Just poor little tramps they were, for all the bassness of their voices, and everything they said was true.

It turned out that our cottage wasn't ours at all. It wasn't even on my father's land. It was in the strip of land that goes with the Rectory—the Parson's Shave, they call it. And the parson, being a good old sort, used to let tramps sleep there. He kept two blankets hidden under a board, and none of the tramps—who seem to have been good sorts too—ever stole either of the blankets. He wanted the two basses to go back and sleep there that night, but they said they'd had jolly well enough and wouldn't.

The rector, who is what I said, was most awfully decent about it when we went and explained, and said we might use the downstairs part for our very own in the daytime if we cleared out by six and didn't go before ten. He came to tea with us, and said, “Your domestic appointments are magnificent,” and drank from cups besides cakes and biscuits.

It was Miss Knox who was the tragedy; the unfortunate adventure left us a helpless prey to that kind and detestable lady. After that she used to come every day almost, and bring her work and sit in the porch of our cottage, and call out every now and then, “I hear you! That's right, dears! enjoy yourselves!”

All I can say is that Miss Knox is a tragedy.

Copyright 1909 by E. Nesbit Bland.