Part 3

Thomasina and Selim played all day on the beach, and when they were tired then went into a cave, and found supper—salmon and cucumber, and welsh-rabbit and lemonade—and then they went to bed in a great heap of straw and grass and fern and dead leaves, and all the delightful things you have often wished to sleep in. Only you have never been allowed to.

In the morning there were plum-pudding for breakfast, and roast duck and lemon jelly, and the day passed like a happy dream, only broken by surprising and delightful meals. The Ball woke up and showed them how to play water-polo; and they bounced him on the sand, with shrieks of joy and pleasure. You know, a Ball likes to be bounced by people he is fond of—it is like slapping a friend on the shoulder.

There were no houses in “Whereyouwantogoto,” and no bathing machines or bands, no nursemaids or policemen or aunts or uncles. You could do exactly what you liked as long as you were good.

“What will happen if we’re naughty?” Selim asked. The Ball looked very grave, and answered—

“I must not tell you; and I very strongly advise you not to try to find out.”

“We won’t—indeed, we won’t,” said they, and went off to play rounders with the rabbits on the downs—who were friendly fellows, and very keen on the game.

On the third evening Thomasina was rather silent, and the Ball said, “What’s the matter, girl-bouncer? Out with it.”

So she said, “I was wondering how mother is, and whether she has one of her bad headaches.”

The Ball said, “Good little girl! Come with me and I’ll show you something.”

He bounced away, and they followed him, and he flopped into a rocky pool, frightening the limpets and sea-anemones dreadfully, though he did not mean to.

“Now look,” he called from under the water, and the children looked, and the pool was like a looking-glass, only it was not their own faces they saw in it.

They saw the drawing-room at home, and father and mother, who were both quite well, only they looked tired—and the aunt and uncle were there—and Uncle Thomas was saying, “What a blessing those children are away.”

“Then they know where we are?” said Selim to the Ball.

“They think they know,” said the Ball, “or you think they think they know. Anyway, they’re happy enough. Good-night.”

And he curled himself up like a ball in his favourite sleeping-place. The two children crept into their pleasant, soft, sweet nest of straw and leaves and fern and grass, and went to sleep. But Selim was vexed with Thomasina because she had thought of mother before he had, and he said she had taken all the fern—and they went to sleep rather cross. They woke crosser. So far they had both helped to make the bed every morning, but to-day neither wanted to.

“I don’t see why I should make the beds,” said he; “it’s a girl’s work, not a boy’s.”

“I don’t see why I should do it,” said Thomasina; “it’s a servant’s place, not a young lady’s.”

And then a very strange and terrible thing happened. Quite suddenly, out of nothing and out of nowhere, appeared a housemaid—large and stern and very neat indeed, and she said—

“You are quite right, miss; it is my place to make the beds. And I am instructed to see that you are both in bed by seven.”

Think how dreadful this must have been to children who had been going to bed just when they felt inclined. They went out on to the beach.

“You see what comes of being naughty,” said Thomasina; and Selim said, “Oh, shut up, do!”

They cheered up towards dinner-time—it was roast pigeons that day and bread sauce, and whitebait and syllabubs—and for the rest of the day they were as good as gold, and very polite to the Ball. Selim told it all about the dreadful apparition of the housemaid, and it shook its head (I know _you’ve_ never seen a ball do that, and very likely you never will) and said—

“My Bouncible Boy, you may be happy here for ever and ever if you’re contented and good. Otherwise—well, it’s a quarter to seven—you’ve got to go.”

And, sure enough, they had to. And the housemaid put them to bed, and washed them with yellow soap, and some of it got in their eyes. And she lit a night-light, and sat with them till they went to sleep, so that they couldn’t talk, and were ever so much longer getting to sleep than they would have been if she had not been there. And the beds were iron, with mattresses and hot, stuffy, fluffy sheets and many more new blankets than they wanted.

The next day they got out as early as they could and played water football with the seal and the Bouncible Ball, and when dinner-time came it was lobster and ices. But Thomasina was in a bad temper. She said, “I wish it was duck.” And before the words had left her lips it was cold mutton and rice-pudding, and they had to sit up to table and eat it properly too, and the housemaid came round to see that they didn’t leave any bits on the edges of their plates, or talk with their mouths full.

There were no more really nice meals after that, only the sort of things you get at home. But it is possible to be happy even without really nice meals. But you have to be very careful. The days went by pleasantly enough. All the sea and land creatures were most kind and attentive. The seal taught them all it knew, and was always ready to play with them. The star-fish taught them astronomy, and the jelly-fish taught them fancy cooking. The limpets taught them dancing as well as they could for their lameness. The sea-birds taught them to make nests—a knowledge they have never needed to apply—and if the oysters did not teach them anything it was only because oysters are so very stupid, and not from any lack of friendly feeling.

The children bathed every day in the sea, and if they had only been content with this all would have been well. But they weren’t.

“Let’s dig a bath,” said Selim, “and the sea will come in and fill it, and then we can bathe in it.”

So they fetched their spades and dug—and there was no harm in that, as you very properly remark.

But when the hole was finished, and the sea came creep, creep, creeping up—and at last a big wave thundered up the sand and swirled into the hole, Thomasina and Selim were struggling on the edge, fighting which should go in first, and the wave drew sandily back into the sea, and neither of them had bathed in the new bath. And now it was all wet and sandy, and its nice sharp edges rounded off, and much shallower. And as they looked at it angrily, the sandy bottom of the bath stirred and shifted and rose up, as if some great sea-beast were heaving underneath with his broad back. The wet sand slipped back in slabs at each side, and a long pointed thing like a thin cow’s back came slowly up. It showed broader and broader, and presently the flakes of wet sand were dropping heavily off the top of a brand-new bathing machine that stood on the sand over where their bath had been.

“Well,” said Selim, “we’ve done it this time.”

They certainly had, for on the door of the bathing machine was painted: “You must not bathe any more except through me.”

So there was no more running into the sea just when and how they liked. They had to use the bathing machine, and it smelt of stale salt water and other people’s wet towels.

After this the children did not seem to care so much about the seaside, and they played more on the downs, where the rabbits were very kind and hospitable, and in the woods, where all sorts of beautiful flowers grew wild—and there was nobody to say “Don’t” when you picked them. The children thought of what Uncle Thomas would have said if he had been there, and they were very, very happy.

But one day Thomasina had pulled a lot of white convolvulus and some pink geraniums and calceolarias—the kind you are never allowed to pick at home—and she had made a wreath of them and put it on her head.

Then Selim said, “You _are_ silly! You look like a Bank Holiday.”

And his sister said, “I can’t help it. They’d look lovely on a hat, if they were only artificial. I wish I had a hat.”

And she had. A large stiff hat that hurt her head just where the elastic was sewn on, and she had her stiff white frock that scratched, her tiresome underclothing, all of it, and stockings and heavy boots; and Selim had his sailor suit—the every-day one that was too tight in the arms; and they had to wear them always, and their fur coats were taken away.

They went sadly, all stiff and uncomfortable, and told the Bouncible Ball. It looked very grave, and great tears of salt water rolled down its red and green cheeks as it sat by the wet, seaweed-covered rock.

“Oh, you silly children,” it said, “haven’t you been warned enough? You’ve everything a reasonable child could wish for. Can’t you be contented?”

“Of course we can,” they said—and so they were—for a day and a half. And then it wasn’t exactly discontent but real naughtiness that brought them to grief.

They were playing on the downs by the edge of the wood under the heliotrope tree. A hedge of camellia bushes cast a pleasant shadow, and out in the open sunlight on the downs the orchids grew like daisies, and the carnations like buttercups. All about was that kind of turf on which the gardener does not like you to play, and they had pulled armfuls of lemon verbena and made a bed of it. But Selim’s blouse was tight under the arms. So when Thomasina said—

“Oh, Silly dear, how beautiful it is, just like fairyland,” he said—

“Silly yourself. There’s no such thing as fairyland.”

Just then a fairy, with little bright wings the colour of a peacock’s tail, fluttered across the path, and settled on a magnolia flower.

“Oh! Silly darling,” cried Thomasina, “it _is_ fairyland, and there’s a fairy, such a beautiful dear. Look—there she goes.”

But Selim would not look—he turned over and hid his eyes.

“There’s no such thing as fairyland, I tell you,” he grunted, “and I don’t believe in fairies.”

And then, quite suddenly and very horribly the fairy turned into a policeman—because every one knows there are such things as policemen, and any one can believe in _them_.

And all the rare and beautiful flowers withered up and disappeared, and only thorns and thistles were left, and the misty, twiny trim little grass path that led along the top of the cliffs turned into a parade, and the policeman walked up and down it incessantly, and watched the children at their play, and you know how difficult it is to play when any one is watching you, especially a policeman. Selim was extremely vexed: that was why, he said, there couldn’t possibly be glow-worms as big as bicycle lamps, which, of course, there were in “Whereyouwantogoto.” It was after that that the gas-lamps were put all along the parade, and a pier sprang up on purpose to be lighted with electricity, and a band played, because it is nonsense to have a pier without a band.

“Oh, you naughty, silly children,” said the Bouncible Ball, turning red with anger, except in the part where he was green with disgust; “it makes me bounce with rage to see how you’ve thrown away your chances, and what a seaside resort you’re making of ‘Whereyouwantogoto.’”

And he did bounce, angrily, up and down the beach till the housemaid looked out of the cave and told the children not to be so noisy, and the policeman called out—

“Now then, move along there, move along. You’re obstructing of the traffic.”

And now I have something to tell you which you will find it hard to make any excuses for. I can’t make any myself. I can only ask you to remember how hard it is to be even moderately good, and how easy it is to be extremely naughty.

When the Bouncible Ball stopped bouncing, Selim said—

“I wonder what makes him bounce.”

“Oh no, _don’t!_” cried Thomasina, for she had heard her brother wonder that about balls before, and she knew all too well what it ended in.

“Oh, _don’t_,” she said, “oh, Silly, he brought us here, he’s been so kind.” But Selim said, “Nonsense; balls can’t feel, and it will be almost as good to play with after I’ve looked inside it.”

And then, before Thomasina could prevent him, he pulled out the knife Uncle Reggy gave him last holiday but one, and catching the Ball up, he plunged the knife into its side. The Bouncible Ball uttered one whiffing squeak of pain and grief, then with a low, hissing sigh its kindly spirit fled, and it lay, a lifeless mass of paint and india-rubber in the hands of its assassin. Thomasina burst into tears—but the heartless Selim tore open the Ball, and looked inside. You know well enough what he found there. Emptiness; the little square patch of india-rubber that makes the hard lump on the outside of the ball which you feel with your fingers when the ball is alive and his own happy, bouncing, cheerful self.

The children stood looking at each other.

“I—I almost wish I hadn’t,” said Selim at last; but before Thomasina could answer he had caught her hand.

“Oh, look,” he cried, “look at the sea.”

It was, indeed, a dreadful sight. The beautiful dancing, sparkling blue sea was drying up before their eyes—in less than a moment it was quite flat and dusty. It hurriedly laid down a couple of railway lines, ran up a signal-box and telegraph-poles, and became the railway at the back of their house at home.

The children, gasping with horror, turned to the downs. From them tall, yellow brick houses were rising, as if drawn up by an invisible hand. Just as treacle does in cold weather if you put your five fingers in and pulled them up. But, of course, you are never allowed to do this. The beach got hard—it was a pavement. The green downs turned grey—they were slate roofs—and Thomasina and Selim found themselves at the iron gate of their own number in the terrace—and there was Uncle Thomas at the window knocking for them to come in, and Aunt Selina calling out to them how far from respectable it was to play in the streets.

They were sent to bed at once—that was Aunt Selina’s suggestion—and Uncle Thomas arranged that they should have only dry bread for tea.

Selim and Thomasina have never seen “Whereyouwantogoto” again, nor the Bouncible Ball—not even his poor body—and they don’t deserve to either. Of course, Thomasina was not so much to blame as Selim, but she was punished just the same. I can’t help that. This is really the worst of being naughty. You not only have to suffer for it yourself, but some one else always has to suffer too, generally the person who loves you best.

You are intelligent children, and I will not insult you with a moral. I am not Uncle Thomas. Nor will I ask you to remember what I have told you. I am not Aunt Selina.

THE BLUE MOUNTAIN

TONY was young Tony, and old Tony was his grandfather. This story is about young Tony, and no human being believes a word of it, unless young Tony does.

Tony was born in the town of Antioch. This is not the same Antioch that you read about in history, but quite a different place. It was a place where nearly every one was very dark as to the complexion, and rather short as to the temper and figure. People who were fair in the face and easy in the temper were not thought much of in Antioch. When Tony’s mother saw that her baby was as fair as a daffodil and as good as gold, and laughed all day, she said, “Oh dear, oh dear, I suppose he takes after his grandfather, he is not in the least like _my_ family,” and the matter annoyed her so much that she died.

Then there was only old Tony left to look after young Tony, because his father had been killed in the wars—-only a few weeks before.

The people of Antioch were always fighting the neighbouring tribes, red-faced savages who deserved no better fate than to be killed, only, of course, sometimes a few Antiochians had to be killed too, because that is part of the game, and if there were no danger there would be no glory, would there?

Little Tony’s hair remained yellow, and his habit of laughing grew with his years, and he learned his lessons and he learned his play. He was excellent company, and if it had not been for the yellowness of his hair and the gentleness of his nature, he would have been quite popular among his schoolmates.

His grandfather called him “gentle,” but the people of Antioch called him “lazy,” for they, as I said, were very black, and generally angry. They scurried up and down in their rocky little city, and always they seemed to be driven by most urgent affairs, hurrying to keep important appointments. They ran about all day long, attending to their business, and hardly stopping even for their dinner or their tea, and no one ever saw any of them asleep.

“Why is it, Grandfather?” young Tony asked one day, “what is it all about? why do they never sit down quietly like you and me?”

“It is the great heart of the Nation, my boy,” said old Tony, “it cannot be still; it is in the breed, you know, they can’t help it. They are all alike too, except you and me. Why, bless your heart, look at the King, he is more in a hurry than all the rest, and more—and more noble and active, bless him.”

The old man ended his speech in quite a different voice from the one he had begun with. This was because he suddenly caught the glitter of the King’s crown as the Monarch popped round the corner.

The King of Antioch was always in a hurry, always running somewhere or other, consequently he was seldom on his throne, and his loyal subjects had to look out very sharply, for he was always sure to be where they least expected him. You may think that they could have got over this little difficulty by always looking for the King where they least expected him, but if you try this simple experiment for yourself with your governess or tutor, or even your nurse, I think you will find that it is not so easy as it looks.

“Ha!” said the King, standing in the doorway and laughing cheerfully, “talking treason, eh? well, you know what the punishment for that is. Pinching with black pincers, you know, till—well—till you don’t feel the pinching any more.”

“Aha! your Majesty always has such a pleasant way with you,” said old Tony politely; and young Tony decided that when he grew up he would try not to have any pleasant ways at all.

The King rustled quickly round the little house, and looked at everything—dresser, chairs, plates and pots. He was sorry that there was nothing that he could find fault with, so he said, “Beware of Luxury,” and hurried off to make his presence felt in some other humble home. There was no pride about King Anthony XXIII. He just dropped in without an invitation and took his subjects as he found them.

“King Anthony XXIII. is the noblest of monarchs,” said old Tony, as he and his grandson sat down to their plain supper.

“It’s all right, grandfather, he has quite gone, he’s not listening—for a wonder!” said young Tony.

Meantime the King was hurrying in and out and up and down the crowded streets of his city, picking up little bits of information, and making his subjects feel that his kingship was not a mere matter of form, but that he was really interested in the most humble life among his people.

It was a strange town, all up-hill and down-hill, with steep rocks and precipices all mixed up with the public streets. The people, for all their busy habits, had no trade, or rather they did not manufacture anything. They built houses, and brought up their families. They wrapped their children up very snugly and carried them about at an earlier age than we consider safe, and they milked their cows, which were large and green and had wings, and they drank the milk, and they gathered the fruit of the trees that grew on the plain below the town, and they got on very well indeed. There was only one drawback to life in Antioch, and that was its uncertainty. At any moment an earthquake might occur, then down would go half the town, and the busy citizens had it all to build again. They soon did it, for they were nothing if not industrious. A much more awful thing was the storm of hot rain that now and then fell on the town, a blighting rain that killed all it touched. This was more dreaded than even the earthquakes, but fortunately it very seldom happened.

Old Tony was beadle and sexton and keeper of the town records; and very nicely he kept them too. There was not a speck of dirt on one of them. He used to spend hours and hours polishing the records, and he scoured the tombstones till they shone again; and he had most of the inscriptions by heart. After an earthquake he was always most careful to put the tombstones back in their proper places, and one day, when he was doing this, he came on a stone he did not remember to have seen before. He called to young Tony, who had had a Board School education, to see if he could read the bits of words that were carved upon it.

“It seems like a foreign language,” said he.

“I can’t make it out,” said young Tony, “it is not carved, it is in the stone somehow. Looks as if it were coming through from the other side.”

He turned the stone over, and there, on the other side, was an inscription which both of them had read a hundred times.

“HERE LIES HENRY BIRKBECK, MAGICIAN TO THE INSTITUTE,

However humble he seems to you, His last foretelling is going to come true.

P.S.—You see if it doesn’t.”

“Dear me,” said old Tony. “Poor old Henry Birkbeck, it seems like yesterday; yes, he was very respectable, but only in a small way of business. A magician he was by trade, but no one thought much of him, except perhaps the King, and _he_ never gave him a lift. He used to do things with eggs and a hat. He broke the eggs as often as not. And the goldfish and handkerchief he hardly ever brought off.”

Old Tony began to lay down the tombstone, but young Tony held it up with one hand and tried to scrape the back of it with the other.

“There’s something here,” he said, “let’s set it upright instead of laying it down, and I will scrub it and see what the letters are. Poor old Mr. Birkbeck, I wonder what his last foretelling was. Was he good at prophesying, grandfather?”

“Not a bit,” said the sexton, “and to do him justice he almost gave it up in his later years. You see people laughed at him so, because the things that he foretold never happened. Towards the end he grew very feeble—hardly prophesied a single prophecy from one year’s end to another. Sometimes he would say, ‘I should not wonder if it rained before Sunday,’ but then he never wondered at anything. He was a calm old man, was poor Henry. It took a good deal to astonish him.”

Young Tony tried to interest his boy friends in the back of poor old Henry Birkbeck’s tombstone, but nobody cared. They were all in too much of a hurry to care for an occupation so slow as cleaning tombstones, but Tony worked away perseveringly. He cleaned it with soap, and he cleaned it with soda, with brickdust and vinegar, with rotten stone and washleather, with patience and elbow grease, and the last two, as you know, will clean almost anything. So after a time a few letters began to show distinctly here and there, and presently Tony found he could read whole words.

There was “milk” and “mountain,” and a word that looked like “Jilk,” only of course it could not be that. And the last word of all was “reign,” and the second word of all was “Tony.”

“It must be something to do with me,” said young Tony, “because of my name being in it.”

“It must have something to do with the King,” said old Tony, “because it says ‘reign,’ so you’d better cut off to the Palace, and look sharp about it, or His Majesty will know the reason why.”