The Wouldbegoods Part 34

It was just after the business of the Benevolent Bar, and it was a wet day. It is not easy to amuse yourself indoors on a wet day as older people seem to think, especially when you are far removed from your own home, and haven't got all your own books and things. The girls were playing Halma--which is a beastly game--Noel was writing poetry, H. O.

was singing 'I don't know what to do' to the tune of 'Canaan's happy sh.o.r.e'. It goes like this, and is very tiresome to listen to--

'I don't know what to do--oo--oo--oo!

I don't know what to do--oo--oo!

It IS a beastly rainy day And I don't know what to do.'

The rest of us were trying to make him shut up. We put a carpet bag over his head, but he went on inside it; and then we sat on him, but he sang under us; we held him upside down and made him crawl head first under the sofa, but when, even there, he kept it up, we saw that nothing short of violence would induce him to silence, so we let him go. And then he said we had hurt him, and we said we were only in fun, and he said if we were he wasn't, and ill feeling might have grown up even out of a playful brotherly act like ours had been, only Alice chucked the Halma and said--

'Let dogs delight. Come on--let's play something.'

Then Dora said, 'Yes, but look here. Now we're together I do want to say something. What about the Wouldbegoods Society?'

Many of us groaned, and one said, 'Hear! hear!' I will not say which one, but it was not Oswald.

'No, but really,' Dora said, 'I don't want to be preachy--but you know we DID say we'd try to be good. And it says in a book I was reading only yesterday that NOT being naughty is not enough. You must BE good. And we've hardly done anything. The Golden Deed book's almost empty.'

'Couldn't we have a book of leaden deeds?' said Noel, coming out of his poetry, 'then there'd be plenty for Alice to write about if she wants to, or bra.s.s or zinc or aluminium deeds? We shan't ever fill the book with golden ones.'

H. O. had rolled himself in the red tablecloth and said Noel was only advising us to be naughty, and again peace waved in the balance. But Alice said, 'Oh, H. O., DON'T--he didn't mean that; but really and truly, I wish wrong things weren't so interesting. You begin to do a n.o.ble act, and then it gets so exciting, and before you know where you are you are doing something wrong as hard as you can lick.'

'And enjoying it too' d.i.c.k said.

'It's very curious,' Denny said, 'but you don't seem to be able to be certain inside yourself whether what you're doing is right if you happen to like doing it, but if you don't like doing it you know quite well. I only thought of that just now. I wish Noel would make a poem about it.'

'I am,' Noel said; 'it began about a crocodile but it is finis.h.i.+ng itself up quite different from what I meant it to at first. Just wait a minute.'

He wrote very hard while his kind brothers and sisters and his little friends waited the minute he had said, and then he read:

'The crocodile is very wise, He lives in the Nile with little eyes, He eats the hippopotamus too, And if he could he would eat up you.

'The lovely woods and starry skies He looks upon with glad surprise! He sees the riches of the east, And the tiger and lion, kings of beast.

'So let all be good and beware Of saying shan't and won't and don't care; For doing wrong is easier far Than any of the right things I know about are.

And I couldn't make it king of beasts because of it not rhyming with east, so I put the s off beasts on to king. It comes even in the end.'

We all said it was a very nice piece of poetry. Noel gets really ill if you don't like what he writes, and then he said, 'If it's trying that's wanted, I don't care how hard we TRY to be good, but we may as well do it some nice way. Let's be Pilgrim's Progress, like I wanted to at first.'

And we were all beginning to say we didn't want to, when suddenly Dora said, 'Oh, look here! I know. We'll be the Canterbury Pilgrims. People used to go pilgrimages to make themselves good.'

'With peas in their shoes,' the Dentist said. 'It's in a piece of poetry--only the man boiled his peas--which is quite unfair.'

'Oh, yes,' said H. O., 'and c.o.c.ked hats.'

'Not c.o.c.ked--c.o.c.kled'--it was Alice who said this. 'And they had staffs and scrips, and they told each other tales. We might as well.'

Oswald and Dora had been reading about the Canterbury Pilgrims in a book called A Short History of the English People. It is not at all short really--three fat volumes--but it has jolly good pictures. It was written by a gentleman named Green. So Oswald said--

'All right. I'll be the Knight.'

'I'll be the wife of Bath,' Dora said. 'What will you be, d.i.c.ky?'

'Oh, I don't care, I'll be Mr Bath if you like.'

'We don't know much about the people,' Alice said. 'How many were there?'

'Thirty,' Oswald replied, 'but we needn't be all of them. There's a Nun-Priest.'

'Is that a man or a woman?'

Oswald said he could not be sure by the picture, but Alice and Noel could be it between them. So that was settled. Then we got the book and looked at the dresses to see if we could make up dresses for the parts.

At first we thought we would, because it would be something to do, and it was a very wet day; but they looked difficult, especially the Miller's. Denny wanted to be the Miller, but in the end he was the Doctor, because it was next door to Dentist, which is what we call him for short. Daisy was to be the Prioress--because she is good, and has 'a soft little red mouth', and H. O. WOULD be the Manciple (I don't know what that is), because the picture of him is bigger than most of the others, and he said Manciple was a nice portmanteau word--half mandarin and half disciple.

'Let's get the easiest parts of the dresses ready first.' Alice said--'the pilgrims' staffs and hats and the c.o.c.kles.'

So Oswald and d.i.c.ky braved the fury of the elements and went into the wood beyond the orchard to cut ash-sticks. We got eight jolly good long ones. Then we took them home, and the girls bothered till we changed our clothes, which were indeed sopping with the elements we had faced.

Then we peeled the sticks. They were nice and white at first, but they soon got dirty when we carried them. It is a curious thing: however often you wash your hands they always seem to come off on anything white. And we nailed paper rosettes to the tops of them. That was the nearest we could get to c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.ls.

'And we may as well have them there as on our hats,' Alice said. 'And let's call each other by our right names to-day, just to get into it.

Don't you think so, Knight?'

'Yea, Nun-Priest,' Oswald was replying, but Noel said she was only half the Nun-Priest, and again a threat of unpleasantness darkened the air.

But Alice said--

'Don't be a piggy-wiggy, Noel, dear; you can have it all, I don't want it. I'll just be a plain pilgrim, or Henry who killed Becket.'

So she was called the Plain Pilgrim, and she did not mind.

We thought of c.o.c.ked hats, but they are warm to wear, and the big garden hats that make you look like pictures on the covers of plantation songs did beautifully. We put c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.ls on them. Sandals we did try, with pieces of oil-cloth cut the shape of soles and fastened with tape, but the dust gets into your toes so, and we decided boots were better for such a long walk. Some of the pilgrims who were very earnest decided to tie their boots with white tape crossed outside to pretend sandals.

Denny was one of these earnest palmers. As for dresses, there was no time to make them properly, and at first we thought of nightgowns; but we decided not to, in case people in Canterbury were not used to that sort of pilgrim nowadays. We made up our minds to go as we were--or as we might happen to be next day.

You will be ready to believe we hoped next day would be fine. It was.

Fair was the morn when the pilgrims arose and went down to breakfast.

Albert's uncle had had brekker early and was hard at work in his study.

We heard his quill pen squeaking when we listened at the door. It is not wrong to listen at doors when there is only one person inside, because n.o.body would tell itself secrets aloud when it was alone.

We got lunch from the housekeeper, Mrs Pettigrew. She seems almost to LIKE us all to go out and take our lunch with us. Though I should think it must be very dull for her all alone. I remember, though, that Eliza, our late general at Lewisham, was just the same. We took the dear dogs of course. Since the Tower of Mystery happened we are not allowed to go anywhere without the escort of these faithful friends of man. We did not take Martha, because bull-dogs do not like walks. Remember this if you ever have one of those valuable animals.

When we were all ready, with our big hats and c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.ls, and our staves and our tape sandals, the pilgrims looked very nice.

'Only we haven't any scrips,' Dora said. 'What is a scrip?'

'I think it's something to read. A roll of parchment or something.'

So we had old newspapers rolled up, and carried them in our hands. We took the Globe and the Westminster Gazette because they are pink and green. The Dentist wore his white sandshoes, sandalled with black tape, and bare legs. They really looked almost as good as bare feet.