The Railway Children by E. Nesbit (most important books of all time txt) 📖

shall always be friends with YOU, however nasty you are to us,” sniffed Phyllis, wildly.

“Be quiet,” said Peter, in a fierce aside.

“But before we go,” Bobbie went on desperately, “do let us show you the labels we wrote to put on the things.”

“I don’t want to see no labels,” said Perks, “except proper luggage ones in my own walk of life. Do you think I’ve kept respectable and outer debt on what I gets, and her having to take in washing, to be give away for a laughing-stock to all the neighbours?”

“Laughing?” said Peter; “you don’t know.”

“You’re a very hasty gentleman,” whined Phyllis; “you know you were wrong once before, about us not telling you the secret about the Russian. Do let Bobbie tell you about the labels!”

“Well. Go ahead!” said Perks, grudgingly.

“Well, then,” said Bobbie, fumbling miserably, yet not without hope, in her tightly stuffed pocket, “we wrote down all the things everybody said when they gave us the things, with the people’s names, because Mother said we ought to be careful—because—but I wrote down what she said—and you’ll see.”

But Bobbie could not read the labels just at once. She had to swallow once or twice before she could begin.

Mrs. Perks had been crying steadily ever since her husband had opened the wash-house door. Now she caught her breath, choked, and said:—

“Don’t you upset yourself, Missy. I know you meant it kind if he doesn’t.”

“May I read the labels?” said Bobbie, crying on to the slips as she tried to sort them. “Mother’s first. It says:—

“‘Little Clothes for Mrs. Perks’s children.’ Mother said, ‘I’ll find some of Phyllis’s things that she’s grown out of if you’re quite sure Mr. Perks wouldn’t be offended and think it’s meant for charity. I’d like to do some little thing for him, because he’s so kind to you. I can’t do much because we’re poor ourselves.’”

Bobbie paused.

“That’s all right,” said Perks, “your Ma’s a born lady. We’ll keep the little frocks, and what not, Nell.”

“Then there’s the perambulator and the gooseberries, and the sweets,” said Bobbie, “they’re from Mrs. Ransome. She said: ‘I dare say Mr. Perks’s children would like the sweets. And the perambulator was got for my Emmie’s first—it didn’t live but six months, and she’s never had but that one. I’d like Mrs. Perks to have it. It would be a help with her fine boy. I’d have given it before if I’d been sure she’d accept of it from me.’ She told me to tell you,” Bobbie added, “that it was her Emmie’s little one’s pram.”

“I can’t send that pram back, Bert,” said Mrs Perks, firmly, “and I won’t. So don’t you ask me—”

“I’m not a-asking anything,” said Perks, gruffly.

“Then the shovel,” said Bobbie. “Mr. James made it for you himself. And he said—where is it? Oh, yes, here! He said, ‘You tell Mr. Perks it’s a pleasure to make a little trifle for a man as is so much respected,’ and then he said he wished he could shoe your children and his own children, like they do the horses, because, well, he knew what shoe leather was.”

“James is a good enough chap,” said Perks.

“Then the honey,” said Bobbie, in haste, “and the bootlaces. HE said he respected a man that paid his way—and the butcher said the same. And the old turnpike woman said many was the time you’d lent her a hand with her garden when you were a lad—and things like that came home to roost—I don’t know what she meant. And everybody who gave anything said they liked you, and it was a very good idea of ours; and nobody said anything about charity or anything horrid like that. And the old gentleman gave Peter a gold pound for you, and said you were a man who knew your work. And I thought you’d LOVE to know how fond people are of you, and I never was so unhappy in my life. Good-bye. I hope you’ll forgive us some day—”

She could say no more, and she turned to go.

“Stop,” said Perks, still with his back to them; “I take back every word I’ve said contrary to what you’d wish. Nell, set on the kettle.”

“We’ll take the things away if you’re unhappy about them,” said Peter; “but I think everybody’ll be most awfully disappointed, as well as us.”

“I’m not unhappy about them,” said Perks; “I don’t know,” he added, suddenly wheeling the chair round and showing a very odd-looking screwed-up face, “I don’t know as ever I was better pleased. Not so much with the presents—though they’re an A1 collection—but the kind respect of our neighbours. That’s worth having, eh, Nell?”

“I think it’s all worth having,” said Mrs. Perks, “and you’ve made a most ridiculous fuss about nothing, Bert, if you ask me.”

“No, I ain’t,” said Perks, firmly; “if a man didn’t respect hisself, no one wouldn’t do it for him.”

“But everyone respects you,” said Bobbie; “they all said so.”

“I knew you’d like it when you really understood,” said Phyllis, brightly.

“Humph! You’ll stay to tea?” said Mr. Perks.

Later on Peter proposed Mr. Perks’s health. And Mr. Perks proposed a toast, also honoured in tea, and the toast was, “May the garland of friendship be ever green,” which was much more poetical than anyone had expected from him.

 

 

“Jolly good little kids, those,” said Mr. Perks to his wife as they went to bed.

“Oh, they’re all right, bless their hearts,” said his wife; “it’s you that’s the aggravatingest old thing that ever was. I was ashamed of you—I tell you—”

“You didn’t need to be, old gal. I climbed down handsome soon as I understood it wasn’t charity. But charity’s what I never did abide, and won’t neither.”

 

 

All sorts of people were made happy by that birthday party. Mr. Perks and Mrs. Perks and the little Perkses by all the nice things and by the kind thoughts of their neighbours; the Three Chimneys children by the success, undoubted though unexpectedly delayed, of their plan; and Mrs. Ransome every time she saw the fat Perks baby in the perambulator. Mrs. Perks made quite a round of visits to thank people for their kind birthday presents, and after each visit felt that she had a better friend than she had thought.

“Yes,” said Perks, reflectively, “it’s not so much what you does as what you means; that’s what I say. Now if it had been charity—”

“Oh, drat charity,” said Mrs. Perks; “nobody won’t offer you charity, Bert, however much you was to want it, I lay. That was just friendliness, that was.”

When the clergyman called on Mrs. Perks, she told him all about it. “It WAS friendliness, wasn’t it, Sir?” said she.

“I think,” said the clergyman, “it was what is sometimes called loving-kindness.”

So you see it was all right in the end. But if one does that sort of thing, one has to be careful to do it in the right way. For, as Mr. Perks said, when he had time to think it over, it’s not so much what you do, as what you mean.

 

Chapter X. The terrible secret.

 

When they first went to live at Three Chimneys, the children had talked a great deal about their Father, and had asked a great many questions about him, and what he was doing and where he was and when he would come home. Mother always answered their questions as well as she could. But as the time went on they grew to speak less of him. Bobbie had felt almost from the first that for some strange miserable reason these questions hurt Mother and made her sad. And little by little the others came to have this feeling, too, though they could not have put it into words.

One day, when Mother was working so hard that she could not leave off even for ten minutes, Bobbie carried up her tea to the big bare room that they called Mother’s workshop. It had hardly any furniture. Just a table and a chair and a rug. But always big pots of flowers on the window-sills and on the mantelpiece. The children saw to that. And from the three long uncurtained windows the beautiful stretch of meadow and moorland, the far violet of the hills, and the unchanging changefulness of cloud and sky.

“Here’s your tea, Mother-love,” said Bobbie; “do drink it while it’s hot.”

Mother laid down her pen among the pages that were scattered all over the table, pages covered with her writing, which was almost as plain as print, and much prettier. She ran her hands into her hair, as if she were going to pull it out by handfuls.

“Poor dear head,” said Bobbie, “does it ache?”

“No—yes—not much,” said Mother. “Bobbie, do you think Peter and Phil are FORGETTING Father?”

“NO,” said Bobbie, indignantly. “Why?”

“You none of you ever speak of him now.”

Bobbie stood first on one leg and then on the other.

“We often talk about him when we’re by ourselves,” she said.

“But not to me,” said Mother. “Why?”

Bobbie did not find it easy to say why.

“I—you—” she said and stopped. She went over to the window and looked out.

“Bobbie, come here,” said her Mother, and Bobbie came.

“Now,” said Mother, putting her arm round Bobbie and laying her ruffled head against Bobbie’s shoulder, “try to tell me, dear.”

Bobbie fidgeted.

“Tell Mother.”

“Well, then,” said Bobbie, “I thought you were so unhappy about Daddy not being here, it made you worse when I talked about him. So I stopped doing it.”

“And the others?”

“I don’t know about the others,” said Bobbie. “I never said anything about THAT to them. But I expect they felt the same about it as me.”

“Bobbie dear,” said Mother, still leaning her head against her, “I’ll tell you. Besides parting from Father, he and I have had a great sorrow—oh, terrible—worse than anything you can think of, and at first it did hurt to hear you all talking of him as if everything were just the same. But it would be much more terrible if you were to forget him. That would be worse than anything.”

“The trouble,” said Bobbie, in a very little voice—“I promised I would never ask you any questions, and I never have, have I? But— the trouble—it won’t last always?”

“No,” said Mother, “the worst will be over when Father comes home to us.”

“I wish I could comfort you,” said Bobbie.

“Oh, my dear, do you suppose you don’t? Do you think I haven’t noticed how good you’ve all been, not quarrelling nearly as much as you used to—and all the little kind things you do for me—the flowers, and cleaning my shoes, and tearing up to make my bed before I get time to do it myself?”

Bobbie HAD sometimes wondered whether Mother noticed these things.

“That’s nothing,” she said, “to what—”

“I MUST get on with my work,” said Mother, giving Bobbie one last squeeze. “Don’t say anything to the others.”

That evening in the hour before bedtime instead of reading to the children Mother told them stories of the games she and Father used to have when they were children and lived near each other in the country—tales of the adventures of Father with Mother’s brothers when they were all boys together. Very funny stories they were, and the children laughed as they listened.

“Uncle Edward died before he was grown up, didn’t he?” said Phyllis, as Mother lighted the bedroom candles.

“Yes, dear,” said Mother, “you would have loved him. He was such a brave boy, and so adventurous.