"A picnic!" fell in accents of joy from the lips of one and all.
"We"ll also boil the billy in the castle courtyard, and eat buns in the shadow of the keep."
"Tea as well?" said H.O., "with buns? You can"t be poor and needy any way, whatever your----"
We hastily hushed him, stifling his murmurs with sand.
"I always think," said Mrs. Bax dreamily, "that "the more the merrier,"
is peculiarly true of picnics. So I have arranged--always subject to your approval, of course--to meet your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Red House, there, and----"
We drowned her conclusive remarks with a cheer. And Oswald, always willing to be of use, offered to go to the "Ship" and see about the waggonette. I like horses and stable-yards, and the smell of hay and straw, and talking to ostlers and people like that.
There turned out to be two horses belonging to the best waggonette, or you could have a one-horse one, much smaller, with the blue cloth of the cushions rather frayed, and mended here and there, and green in patches from age and exposition to the weather.
Oswald told Mrs. Bax this, not concealing about how shabby the little one was, and she gloriously said--
"The pair by all means! We don"t kill a pig every day!"
"No, indeed," said Dora, but if "killing a pig" means having a lark, Mrs. Bax is as good a pig-killer as any I ever knew.
It was splendid to drive (Oswald, on the box beside the driver, who had his best coat with the bright b.u.t.tons) along the same roads that we had trodden as muddy pedestrinators, or travelled along behind Bates"s donkey.
It was a perfect day, as I said before. We were all clean and had our second-best things on. I think second-bests are much more comfy than first-bests. You feel equivalent to meeting any one, and have "a heart for any fate," as it says in the poetry-book, and yet you are not starched and booted and stiffened and tightened out of all human feelings.
Lynwood Castle is in a hollow in the hills. It has a moat all round it with water-lily leaves on it. I suppose there are lilies when in season. There is a bridge over the moat--not the draw kind of bridge.
And the castle has eight towers--four round and four square ones, and a courtyard in the middle, all green gra.s.s, and heaps of stones--stray bits of castle, I suppose they are--and a great white may-tree in the middle that Mrs. Bax said was hundreds of years old.
Mrs. Red House was sitting under the may-tree when we got there, nursing her baby, in a blue dress and looking exactly like a picture on the top of a chocolate-box.
The girls instantly wanted to nurse the baby so we let them. And we explored the castle. We had never happened to explore one thoroughly before. We did not find the deepest dungeon below the castle moat, though we looked everywhere for it, but we found everything else you can think of belonging to castles--even the holes they used to pour boiling lead through into the eyes of besiegers when they tried to squint up to see how strong the garrison was in the keep--and the little slits they shot arrows through, and the mouldering remains of the portcullis. We went up the eight towers, every single one of them, and some parts were jolly dangerous, I can tell you. d.i.c.ky and I would not let H.O. and Noel come up the dangerous parts. There was no lasting ill-feeling about this. By the time we had had a thorough good explore lunch was ready.
It was a glorious lunch--not too many meaty things, but all sorts of cakes and sweets, and grapes and figs and nuts.
We gazed at the feast, and Mrs. Bax said--
"There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread you"ve got."
"_They_ had currant wine," said Noel, who has only just read the book by Mr. Charles d.i.c.kens.
"Well, so have you," said Mrs. Bax. And we had. Two bottles of it.
"I never knew any one like you," said Noel to Mrs. Red House, dreamily with his mouth full, "for knowing the things people really like to eat, not the things that are good for them, but what they _like_, and Mrs.
Bax is just the same."
"It was one of the things they taught at our school," said Mrs. Bax. "Do you remember the Sat.u.r.day night feasts, Chloe, and how good the cocoanut ice tasted after extra strong peppermints?"
"Fancy you knowing _that_!" said H.O. "I thought it was us found _that_ out."
"I really know much more about things to eat than _she_ does," said Mrs.
Bax. "I was quite an old girl when she was a little thing in pinafores.
She was such a nice little girl."
"I shouldn"t wonder if she was always nice," said Noel, "even when she was a baby!"
Everybody laughed at this, except the existing baby, and it was asleep on the waggonette cushions, under the white may-tree, and perhaps if it had been awake it wouldn"t have laughed, for Oswald himself, though possessing a keen sense of humour, did not see anything to laugh at.
Mr. Red House made a speech after dinner, and said drink to the health of everybody, one after the other, in currant wine, which was done, beginning with Mrs. Bax and ending with H.O.
Then he said--
"Somnus, avaunt! What shall we play at?" and n.o.body, as so often happens, had any idea ready. Then suddenly Mrs. Red House said--
"Good gracious, look there!" and we looked there, and where we were to look was the lowest piece of the castle wall, just beside the keep that the bridge led over to, and what we were to look at was a strange blobbiness of k.n.o.bbly b.u.mps along the top, that looked exactly like human heads.
It turned out, when we had talked about cannibals and New Guinea, that human heads were just exactly what they were. Not loose heads, stuck on pikes or things like that, such as there often must have been while the castle stayed in the olden times it was built in and belonged to, but real live heads with their bodies still in attendance on them.
They were, in fact, the village children.
"Poor little Lazaruses!" said Mr. Red House.
"There"s not such a bad slice of Dives" feast left," said Mrs. Bax.
"Shall we----?"
So Mr. Red House went out by the keep and called the heads in (with the bodies they were connected with, of course), and they came and ate up all that was left of the lunch. Not the buns, of course, for those were sacred to tea-time, but all the other things, even the nuts and figs, and we were quite glad that they should have them--really and truly we were, even H.O.!
They did not seem to be very clever children, or just the sort you would choose for your friends, but I suppose you like to play, however little you are other people"s sort. So, after they had eaten all there was, when Mrs. Red House invited them all to join in games with us we knew we ought to be pleased. But village children are not taught rounders, and though we wondered at first why their teachers had not seen to this, we understood presently. Because it is most awfully difficult to make them understand the very simplest thing.
But they could play all the ring games, and "Nuts and May," and "There Came Three Knights"--and another one we had never heard of before. The singing part begins:--
"Up and down the green gra.s.s, This and that and thus, Come along, my pretty maid, And take a walk with us.
You shall have a duck, my dear, And you shall have a drake, And you shall have a handsome man For your father"s sake."
I forget the rest, and if anybody who reads this knows it, and will write and tell me, the author will not have laboured in vain.
The grown-ups played with all their heart and soul--I expect it is but seldom they are able to play, and they enjoy the novel excitement. And when we"d been at it some time we saw there was another head looking over the wall.
"Hullo!" said Mrs. Bax, "here"s another of them, run along and ask it to come and join in."
She spoke to the village children, but n.o.body ran.
"Here, you go," she said, pointing at a girl in red plaits tied with dirty sky-blue ribbon.
"Please, miss, I"d leifer not," replied the red-haired. "Mother says we ain"t to play along of him."
"Why, what"s the matter with him?" asked Mrs. Red House.
"His father"s in jail, miss, along of snares and night lines, and no one won"t give his mother any work, so my mother says we ain"t to demean ourselves to speak to him."