The only part of lessons they liked was the home-work, when, if Aunt Edith had time to help them, geography became like adventures, history like story-books, and even arithmetic suddenly seemed to mean something.
‘I wish you could teach us always,’ said Edred, very inky, and interested for the first time in the exports of China; ‘it does seem so silly trying to learn things that are only words in books.’
‘I wish I could,’ said Aunt Edith, ‘but I can’t do twenty-nine thousand and seventeen things all at once, and—’ A bell jangled. ‘That’s the seventh time since tea.’ She got up and went into the kitchen. ‘There’s the bell again, my poor Eliza. Never mind; answer the bell, but don’t answer them, whatever they say. It doesn’t do a bit of good, and it sometimes prevents their giving you half-crowns when they leave.’
‘I do love it when they go,’ said Elfrida.
‘Yes,’ said her aunt. ‘A cab top-heavy with luggage, the horse’s nose turned stationward, it’s a heavenly sight – when the bill is paid and – But, then, I’m just as glad to see the luggage coming. Chickens! when my ship comes home we’ll go and live on a desert island where there aren’t any cabs, and we won’t have any lodgers in our cave.’
‘When I grow up,’ said Edred, ‘I shall go across the sea and look for your ship and bring it home. I shall take a steam-tug and steer it myself.’
‘Then I shall be captain,’ said Elfrida.
‘No, I shall be captain.’
You can’t if you steer.’
‘Yes, I can!’
‘No, you can’t!’
‘Yes, I can!’
‘Well, do, then!’ said Elfrida; ‘and while you’re doing it – I know you can’t – I shall dig in the garden and find a gold-mine, and Aunt Edith will be rolling in money when you come back, and she won’t want your silly old ship.’
‘Spelling next,’ said Aunt Edith. ‘How do you spell “disagreeable”?’
‘Which of us?’ asked Edred acutely.
‘Both,’ said Aunt Edith, trying to look very severe.
When you are a child you always dream of your ship coming home – of having a hundred pounds, or a thousand, or a million pounds to spend as you like. My favourite dream, I remember, was a thousand pounds and an express understanding that I was not to spend it on anything useful. And when you have dreamed of your million pounds, or your thousand, or your hundred, you spend happy hour on hour in deciding what presents you will buy for each of the people you are fond of, and in picturing their surprise and delight at your beautiful presents and your wonderful generosity. I think very few of us spend our dream fortunes entirely on ourselves. Of course, we buy ourselves a motor-bicycle straight away, and footballs and bats – and dolls with real hair, and real china tea-sets, and large boxes of mixed chocolates, and ‘Treasure Island,’ and all the books that Mrs. Ewing ever wrote, but, when we have done that we begin to buy things for other people. It is a beautiful dream, but too often, by the time it comes true – up to a hundred pounds or a thousand – we forget what we used to mean to do with our money, and spend it all in stocks and shares, and eligible building sites, and fat cigars and fur coats. If I were young again I would sit down and write a list of all the kind things I meant to do when my ship came home, and if my ship ever did come home I would read that list, and – But the parlour bell is ringing for the eighth time, and the front-door bell is ringing too, and the first-floor is ringing also, and so is the second-floor, and Eliza is trying to answer four bells at once – always a most difficult thing to do.
The front-door bell was rung by the postman; he brought three letters. The first was a bill for mending the lid of the cistern, on which Edred had recently lighted a fire, fortified by an impression that wood could not burn if there were water on the other side – a totally false impression, as the charred cistern lid proved. The second was an inquiry whether Miss Arden would take a clergyman in at half the usual price, because he had a very large family which had all just had measles. And the third was THE letter, which is really the seed, and beginning, and backbone, and rhyme, and reason of this story.
Edred had got the letters from the postman, and he stood and waited while Aunt Edith read them. He collected postmarks, and had not been able to make out by the thick half-light of the hall gas whether any of these were valuable.
The third letter had a very odd effect on Aunt Edith. She read it once, and rubbed her hand across her eyes. Then she got up and stood under the chandelier, which wanted new burners badly, and so burned with a very unlighting light, and read it again. Then she read it a third time, and then she said, ‘Oh!’
‘What is it, auntie?’ Elfrida asked anxiously; ‘is it the taxes?’ It had been the taxes once, and Elfrida had never forgotten. (If you don’t understand what this means ask your poorest relations, who are also likely to be your nicest and if they don’t know, ask the washerwoman.)
‘No; it’s not the taxes, darling,’ said Aunt Edith; ‘on the contrary.’
I don’t know what the contrary (or opposite) of taxes is, any more than the children did – but I am sure it is something quite nice – and so were they.
‘Oh, auntie, I am so glad,’ they both said, and said it several times before they asked again, ‘What is it?’
‘I think – I’m not quite sure – but I think it’s a ship come home – oh, just a quite tiny little bit of a ship – a toy boat – hardly more than that. But I must go up to London tomorrow the first thing, and see if it really is a ship, and, if so, what sort of ship it is. Mrs. Blake shall come in, and you’ll be good as gold, children, won’t you?’
‘Yes – oh, yes,’ said the two.
‘And not make booby traps for the butcher, or go on the roof in your nightgowns, or play Red Indians in the dust-bin, or make apple-pie beds for the lodgers?’ Aunt Edith asked, hastily mentioning a few of the little amusements which had lately enlivened the spare time of her nephew and niece.
‘No, we really won’t,’ said Edred; ‘and we’ll truly try not to think of anything new and amusing,’ he added, with real self-sacrifice.
‘I must go by the eight-thirty train. I wish I could think of some way of – of amusing you,’ she ended, for she was too kind to say ‘of keeping you out of mischief for the day,’ which was what she really thought. ‘I’ll bring you something jolly for your birthday, Edred. Wouldn’t you like to spend the day with nice Mrs. Hammond?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Edred; and added, on the inspiration of the moment, ‘Why mayn’t we have a picnic – just Elf and me – on the downs, to keep my birthday? It doesn’t matter it being the day before, does it? You said we were too little last summer, and we should this, and now it is this and I have grown two inches and Elf’s grown three, so we’re five inches taller than when you said we weren’t big enough.’
‘Now you see how useful arithmetic is,’ said the aunt. ‘Very well, you shall. Only wear your old clothes, and always keep in sight of the road. Yes; you can have a whole holiday. And now to bed. Oh, there’s that bell again! Poor, dear Eliza.’
A Clapham cub, belonging to one of the lodgers, happened to be going up to bed just as Edred and Elfrida came through the baize door that shut off the basement from the rest of the house. He put his tongue out through the banisters at the children of the house and said, ‘Little slaveys.’ The cub thought he could get up the stairs before the two got round the end of the banisters, but he had not counted on the long arm of Elfrida, whose hand shot through the banisters and caught the cub’s leg and held on to it till Edred had time to get round. The two boys struggled up the stairs together and then rolled together from top to bottom, where they were picked up and disentangled