New Treasure Seekers; Or, The Bastable Children in Search of a FortuneNesbit, E. (Edith)
General
New Treasure Seekers; Or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune
Nesbit, E. (Edith)
Family -- England -- Juvenile fiction; Siblings -- Juvenile fiction
FATHER knows a man called Eustace Sandal. I do not know how to express
his inside soul, but I have heard Father say he means well. He is a
vegetarian and a Primitive Social Something, and an all-wooler, and
things like that, and he is really as good as he can stick, only most
awfully dull. I believe he eats bread and milk from choice. Well, he has
great magnificent dreams about all the things you can do for other
people, and he wants to distill cultivatedness into the sort of people
who live in Model Workmen's Dwellings, and teach them to live up to
better things. This is what he says. So he gives concerts in Camberwell,
and places like that, and curates come from far and near, to sing about
Bold Bandaleros and the Song of the Bow, and people who have escaped
being curates give comic recitings, and he is sure that it does every
one good, and "gives them glimpses of the Life Beautiful." He said that.
Oswald heard him with his own trustworthy ears. Anyway the people enjoy
the concerts no end, and that's the great thing.
Well, he came one night, with a lot of tickets he wanted to sell, and
Father bought some for the servants, and Dora happened to go in to get
the gum for a kite we were making, and Mr. Sandal said, "Well, my little
maiden, would you not like to come on Thursday evening, and share in the
task of raising our poor brothers and sisters to the higher levels of
culture?" So of course Dora said she would, very much. Then he explained
about the concert, calling her "My little one," and "dear child," which
Alice never would have borne, but Dora is not of a sensitive nature, and
hardly minds what she is called, so long as it is not names, which she
does not deem "dear child" and cetera to be, though Oswald would.
Dora was quite excited about it, and the stranger so worked upon her
feelings that she accepted the deep responsibility of selling tickets,
and for a week there was no bearing her. I believe she did sell nine, to
people in Lewisham and New Cross who knew no better. And Father bought
tickets for all of us, and when the eventful evening dawned we went to
Camberwell by train and tram _via_ Miss Blake (that means we shouldn't
have been allowed to go without her).
The tram ride was rather jolly, but when we got out and walked we felt
like "Alone in London," or "Jessica's First Prayer," because Camberwell
is a devastating region that makes you think of rickety attics with the
wind whistling through them, or miserable cellars where forsaken
children do wonders by pawning their relations' clothes and looking
after the baby. It was a dampish night, and we walked on greasy mud. And
as we walked along Alice kicked against something on the pavement, and
it chinked, and when she picked it up it was five bob rolled up in
newspaper.
"I expect it's somebody's little all," said Alice, "and the cup was
dashed from their lips just when they were going to joyfully spend it.
We ought to give it to the police."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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