"Do you ever feel shy," she asked suddenly. "I do, dreadfully, with new people."
We liked her for saying that, and Alice replied that she hoped she would not feel shy with us.
"I hope not," she said. "Do you know, there was such a funny woman in the train? She had seventeen different parcels, and she kept counting them, and one of them was a kitten, and it was always under the seat when she began to count, so she always got the number wrong."
We should have liked to hear about that kitten—especially what colour it was and how old—but Oswald felt that Mrs. Bax was only trying to talk for our sakes, so that we shouldn't feel shy, so he simply said, "Will you have some more cake?" and nothing more was said about the kitten.
Mrs. Bax seemed very noble. She kept trying to talk to us about Pincher, and trains and Australia, but we were determined she should be quiet, as she wished it so much, and we restrained our brimming curiosity about opossums up gum-trees, and about emus and kangaroos and wattles, and only said "Yes" or "No," or, more often, nothing at all.
When tea was over we melted away, "like snow-wreaths in Thawjean," and went out on the beach and had a yelling match. Our throats felt as though they were full of wool, from the hushed tones we had used in talking to Mrs. Bax. Oswald won the match. Next day we kept carefully out of the way, except for meals. Mrs. Bax tried talking again at breakfast-time, but we checked our wish to listen, and passed the pepper, salt, mustard, bread, toast, butter, marmalade, and even the cayenne, vinegar, and oil, with such politeness that she gave up.
We took it in turns to watch the house and drive away organ-grinders. We told them they must not play in front of that house, because there was an Australian lady who had to be kept quiet. And they went at once. This cost us expense, because an organ-grinder will never consent to fly the spot under twopence a flight.
We went to bed early. We were quite weary with being so calm and still. But we knew it was our duty, and we liked the feel of having done it.
The day after was the day Jake Lee got hurt. Jake is the man who drives about the country in a covered cart, with pins and needles, and combs and frying-pans, and all the sort of things that farmers' wives are likely to want in a hurry, and no shops for miles. I have always thought Jake's was a beautiful life. I should like to do it myself. Well, this particular day he had got his cart all ready to start and had got his foot on the wheel to get up, when a motor-car went by puffing and hooting. I always think motor-cars seem so rude somehow. And the horse was frightened; and no wonder. It shied, and poor Jake was thrown violently to the ground, and hurt so much that they had to send for the doctor. Of course we went and asked Mrs. Jake if we could do anything—such as take the cart out and sell the things to the farmers' wives.
But she thought not.
It was after this that Dicky said—
"Why shouldn't we get things of our own and go and sell them—with Bates' donkey?"
Oswald was thinking the same thing, but he wishes to be fair, so he owns that Dicky spoke first. We all saw at once that the idea was a good one.
"Shall we dress up for it?" H.O. asked. We thought not. It is always good sport to dress up, but I have never heard of people selling things to farmers' wives in really beautiful disguises.
"We ought to go as shabby as we can," said Alice; "but somehow that always seems to come natural to your clothes when you've done a few interesting things in them. We have plenty of clothes that look poor but deserving. What shall we buy to sell?"
"Pins and needles, and tape and bodkins," said Dora.
"Butter," said Noël; "it is terrible when there is no butter."
"Honey is nice," said H.O., "and so are sausages."
"Jake has ready-made shirts and corduroy trousers. I suppose a farmer's shirt and trousers may give at any moment," said Alice, "and if he can't get new ones he has to go to bed till they are mended."
Oswald thought tin-tacks, and glue, and string must often be needed to mend barns and farm tools with if they broke suddenly. And Dicky said—
"I think the pictures of ladies hanging on to crosses in foaming seas are good. Jake told me he sold more of them than anything. I suppose people suddenly break the old ones, and home isn't home without a lady holding on to a cross."
We went to Munn's shop, and we bought needles and pins, and tapes and bodkins, a pound of butter, a pot of honey and one of marmalade, and tin-tacks, string, and glue. But we could not get any ladies with crosses, and the shirts and trousers were too expensive for us to dare to risk it. Instead, we bought a head-stall for eighteenpence, because how providential we should be to a farmer whose favourite horse had escaped and he had nothing to catch it with; and three tin-openers, in case of a distant farm subsisting entirely on tinned things, and the only opener for miles lost down the well or something. We also bought several other thoughtful and far-sighted things.
That night at supper we told Mrs. Bax we wanted to go out for the day. She had hardly said anything that supper-time, and now she said—
"Where are you going? Teaching Sunday school?"
As it was Monday, we felt her poor brain was wandering—most likely for want of quiet. And the room smelt of tobacco smoke, so we thought some one had been to see her and perhaps been too noisy for her. So Oswald said gently—
"No, we are not going to teach Sunday school."
Mrs. Bax sighed. Then she said—
"I am going out myself to-morrow—for the day."
"I hope it will not tire you too much," said Dora, with soft-voiced and cautious politeness. "If you want anything bought we could do it for you, with pleasure, and you could have a nice, quiet day at home."
"Thank you," said Mrs. Bax shortly; and we saw she would do what she chose, whether it was really for her own good or not.
She started before we did next morning, and we were careful to be mouse-quiet till the "Ship's" fly which contained her was out of hearing. Then we had another yelling competition, and Noël won with that new shriek of his that is like railway engines in distress; and then we went and fetched Bates' donkey and cart and packed our bales in it and started, some riding and some running behind.
Any faint distant traces of respectableness that were left to our clothes were soon covered up by the dust of the road and by some of the ginger-beer bursting through the violence of the cart, which had no springs.
The first farm we stopped at the woman really did want some pins, for though a very stupid person, she was making a pink blouse, and we said—
"Do have some tape! You never know when you may want it."
"I believe in buttons," she said. "No strings for me, thank you."
But when Oswald said, "What about pudding-strings? You can't button up puddings as if they were pillows!" she consented to listen to reason. But it was only twopence altogether.
But at the next place the woman said we were "mummickers," and told us to "get along, do." And she set her dog at us; but when Pincher sprang from the inmost recesses of the cart she called her dog off. But too late, for it and Pincher were locked in the barking, scuffling, growling embrace of deadly combat. When we had separated the dogs she went into her house and banged the door, and we went on through the green flat marshes, among the buttercups and may-bushes.
"I wonder what she meant by 'mummickers'?" said H.O.
"She meant she saw our high-born airs through our shabby clothes," said Alice. "It's always happening, especially to princes. There's nothing so hard to conceal as a really high-bred air."
"I've been thinking," said Dicky, "whether honesty wouldn't perhaps be the best policy—not always, of course; but just this once. If people knew what we were doing it for they might be glad to help on the good work—— What?"
So at the next farm, which was half hidden by trees,