indeed.
This sounded so much righter than Noel’s poetry generally does, that Oswald said so, and Noel explained that Denny had helped him.
‘He seems to know the right length for lines of poetry. I suppose it comes of learning so much at school,’ Noel said.
Then Oswald proposed that anybody should be allowed to write in the book if they found out anything good that anyone else had done, but not things that were public acts;and nobody was to write about themselves, or anything other people told them, only what they found out.
After a brief jaw the others agreed, and Oswald felt, not for the first time in his young life, that he would have made a good diplomatic hero to carry despatches and outwit the other side. For now he had put it out of the minute book’s power to be the kind of thing readers of
Ministering Children
would have wished.
‘And if anyone tells other people any good thing he’s done he is to go to Coventry for the rest of the day.’
And Denny remarked, ‘We shall do good by stealth, and blush to find it shame.’
After that nothing was written in the book for some time. I looked about, and so did the others, but I never caught anyone in the act of doing anything extra; though several of the others have told me since of things they did at this time, and really wondered nobody had noticed.
I think I said before that when you tell a story you cannot tell everything. It would be silly to do it. Because ordinary kinds of play are dull to read about; and the only other thing is meals, and to dwell on what you eat is greedy and not like a hero at all. A hero is always contented with a venison pasty and a horn of sack. All the same, the meals were very interesting; with things you do not get at home – Lent pies with custard and currants in them, sausage rolls and fiede cakes, and raisin cakes and apple turnovers, and honeycomb and syllabubs, besides as much new milk as you cared about, and cream now and then, and cheese always on the table for tea. Father told Mrs Pettigrew to get what meals she liked, and she got these strange but attractive foods.
In a story about Wouldbegoods it is not proper to tell of times when only some of us were naughty, so I will pass lightly over the time when Noel got up the kitchen chimney and brought three bricks and an old starling’s nest and about a ton of soot down with him when he fell. They never use the big chimney in the summer, but cook in the wash-house. Nor do I wish to dwell on what H.O. did when he went into the dairy. I do not know what his motive was. But Mrs Pettigrew said
she
knew; and she locked him in, and said if it was cream he wanted he should have enough, and she wouldn’t let him out till teatime. The cat had also got into the dairy for some reason of her own, and when H.O. was tired of whatever he went in for he poured all the milk into the churn and tried to teach the cat to swim in it. He must have been desperate. The cat did not even try to learn, and H.O. had the scars on his hands for weeks. I do not wish to tell tales of H.O., for he is very young, and whatever he does he always catches it for; but I will just allude to our being told not to eat the greengages in the garden. And we did not. And whatever H.O. did was Noel’s fault – for Noel told H.O. that greengages would grow again all right if you did not bite as far as the stone, just as wounds are not mortal except when you are pierced through the heart. So the two of them bit bites out of every greengage they could reach. And of course the pieces did not grow again.
Oswald did not do things like these, but then he is older than his brothers. The only thing he did just about then was making a booby-trap for Mrs Pettigrew when she had locked H.O. up in the dairy, and unfortunately it was the day she was going out in her best things, andpart of the trap was a can of water. Oswald was not willingly vicious; it was but a light and thoughtless act which he had every reason to be
This sounded so much righter than Noel’s poetry generally does, that Oswald said so, and Noel explained that Denny had helped him.
‘He seems to know the right length for lines of poetry. I suppose it comes of learning so much at school,’ Noel said.
Then Oswald proposed that anybody should be allowed to write in the book if they found out anything good that anyone else had done, but not things that were public acts;and nobody was to write about themselves, or anything other people told them, only what they found out.
After a brief jaw the others agreed, and Oswald felt, not for the first time in his young life, that he would have made a good diplomatic hero to carry despatches and outwit the other side. For now he had put it out of the minute book’s power to be the kind of thing readers of
Ministering Children
would have wished.
‘And if anyone tells other people any good thing he’s done he is to go to Coventry for the rest of the day.’
And Denny remarked, ‘We shall do good by stealth, and blush to find it shame.’
After that nothing was written in the book for some time. I looked about, and so did the others, but I never caught anyone in the act of doing anything extra; though several of the others have told me since of things they did at this time, and really wondered nobody had noticed.
I think I said before that when you tell a story you cannot tell everything. It would be silly to do it. Because ordinary kinds of play are dull to read about; and the only other thing is meals, and to dwell on what you eat is greedy and not like a hero at all. A hero is always contented with a venison pasty and a horn of sack. All the same, the meals were very interesting; with things you do not get at home – Lent pies with custard and currants in them, sausage rolls and fiede cakes, and raisin cakes and apple turnovers, and honeycomb and syllabubs, besides as much new milk as you cared about, and cream now and then, and cheese always on the table for tea. Father told Mrs Pettigrew to get what meals she liked, and she got these strange but attractive foods.
In a story about Wouldbegoods it is not proper to tell of times when only some of us were naughty, so I will pass lightly over the time when Noel got up the kitchen chimney and brought three bricks and an old starling’s nest and about a ton of soot down with him when he fell. They never use the big chimney in the summer, but cook in the wash-house. Nor do I wish to dwell on what H.O. did when he went into the dairy. I do not know what his motive was. But Mrs Pettigrew said
she
knew; and she locked him in, and said if it was cream he wanted he should have enough, and she wouldn’t let him out till teatime. The cat had also got into the dairy for some reason of her own, and when H.O. was tired of whatever he went in for he poured all the milk into the churn and tried to teach the cat to swim in it. He must have been desperate. The cat did not even try to learn, and H.O. had the scars on his hands for weeks. I do not wish to tell tales of H.O., for he is very young, and whatever he does he always catches it for; but I will just allude to our being told not to eat the greengages in the garden. And we did not. And whatever H.O. did was Noel’s fault – for Noel told H.O. that greengages would grow again all right if you did not bite as far as the stone, just as wounds are not mortal except when you are pierced through the heart. So the two of them bit bites out of every greengage they could reach. And of course the pieces did not grow again.
Oswald did not do things like these, but then he is older than his brothers. The only thing he did just about then was making a booby-trap for Mrs Pettigrew when she had locked H.O. up in the dairy, and unfortunately it was the day she was going out in her best things, andpart of the trap was a can of water. Oswald was not willingly vicious; it was but a light and thoughtless act which he had every reason to be
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