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quite ordinary, and mother thought it was rather inconvenient, and was quite annoyed at there being no
shelves, to speak of, and hardly a cupboard in the place. Father used to say that the ironwork on the roof
and coping was like an architect's nightmare. But the house was deep in the country, with no other house
in sight, and the children had been in London for two years, without so much as once going to the seaside
even for a day by an excursion train, and so the White House seemed to them a sort of Fairy Palace set
down in an Earthly Paradise. For London is like prison for children, especially if their relations are not
rich.
Of course there are the shops and the theatres, and Maskelyne and Cook's, and things, but if your
people are rather poor you don't get taken to the theatres, and you can't buy things out of the shops; and
London has none of those nice things that children may play with without hurting the things or themselves
- such as trees and sand and woods and waters. And nearly everything in London is the wrong sort of
shape - all straight lines and flat streets, instead of being all sorts of odd shapes, like things are in the
country. Trees are all different, as you know, and I am sure some tiresome person must have told you
that there are no two blades of grass exactly alike. But in streets, where the blades of grass don't grow,
everything is like everything else. This is why so many children who live in towns are so extremely
naughty. They do not know what is the matter with them, and no more do their fathers and mothers,
aunts, uncles, cousins, tutors, governesses, and nurses; but I know. And so do you now. Children in the
country are naughty sometimes, too, but that is for quite different reasons.
The children had explored the gardens and the outhouses thoroughly before they were caught and
cleaned for tea, and they saw quite well that they were certain to be happy at the White House. They
thought so from the first moment, but when they found the back of the house covered with jasmine, an in
white flower, and smelling like a bottle of the most expensive scent that is ever given for a birthday
present; and when they had seen the lawn, all green and smooth, and quite different from the brown grass
in the gardens at Camden Town; and when they had found the stable with a loft over it and some old hay
still left, they were almost certain; and when Robert had found the broken swing and tumbled out of it
and got a lump on his head the size of an egg, and Cyril had nipped his finger in the door of a hutch that
seemed made to keep rabbits in, if you ever had any, they had no longer any doubts whatever.
The best part of it all was that there were no rules about not going to places and not doing things. In
London almost everything is labelled 'You mustn't touch,' and though the label is invisible, it's just as bad,
because you know it's there, or if you don't you jolly soon get told.
The White House was on the edge of a hill, with a wood behind it - and the chalk-quarry on one side
and the gravel-pit on the other. Down at the bottom of the hill was a level plain, with queer-shaped white
buildings where people burnt lime, and a big red brewery and other houses; and when the big chimneys
were smoking and the sun was setting, the valley looked as if it was filled with golden mist, and the
limekilns and oast-houses glimmered and glittered till they were like an enchanted city out of the Arabian
Nights.
Now that I have begun to tell you about the place, I feel that I could go on and make this into a most
interesting story about all the ordinary things that the children did - just the kind of things you do yourself,
you know - and you would believe every word of it; and when I told about the children's being tiresome,
as you are sometimes, your aunts would perhaps write in the margin of the story with a pencil, 'How
true!' or 'How like life!'and you would see it and very likely be annoyed. So I will only tell you the really
astonishing things that happened, and you may leave the book about quite safely, for no aunts and uncles
either are likely to write 'How true!' on the edge of the story. Grown-up people find it very difficult to
believe really wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof. But children will believe almost
anything, and grown-ups know this. That is why they tell you that the earth is round like an orange, when
you can see perfectly well that it is flat and lumpy; and why they say that the earth goes round the sun,
when you can see for yourself any day that the sun gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night like a
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good sun as it is, and the earth knows its place, and lies as still as a mouse. Yet I daresay you believe all
that about the earth and the sun, and if so you will find it quite easy to believe that before Anthea and
Cyril and the others had been a week in the country they had found a fairy. At least they called it that,
because that was what it called itself; and of course it knew best, but it was not at all like any fairy you
ever saw or heard of or read about.
It was at the gravel-pits. Father had to go away suddenly on business, and mother had gone away to
stay with Granny, who was not very well. They both went in a great hurry, and when they were gone the
house seemed dreadfully quiet and empty, and the children wandered from one room to another and
looked at the bits of paper and string on the floors left over from the packing, and not yet cleared up, and
wished they had something to do. It was Cyril who said:
'I say, let's take our Margate spades and go and dig in the gravel-pits. We can pretend it's seaside.'
'Father said it was once,' Anthea said; 'he says there are shells there thousands of years old.'
So they went. Of course they had been to the edge of the gravel-pit and looked over, but they had
not gone down into it for fear father should say they mustn't play there, and the same with the
chalk-quarry. The gravel-pit is not really dangerous if you don't try to climb down the edges, but go the
slow safe way round by the road, as if you were a cart.
Each of the children carried its own spade, and took it in turns to carry the Lamb. He was the baby,
and they called him that because 'Baa' was the first thing he ever said. They called Anthea 'Panther',
which seems silly when you read it, but when you say it it sounds a little like her name.
The gravel-pit is very large and wide, with grass growing round the edges at the top, and dry stringy
wildflowers, purple and yellow. It is like a giant's wash-hand basin. And there are mounds of gravel, and
holes in the sides of the basin where gravel has been taken out, and high up in the steep sides there are
the little holes that are the little front doors of the little sand-martins' little houses.
The children built a castle, of course, but castle-building is rather poor fun when you have no hope of
the swishing tide ever coming in to fill up the moat and wash away the drawbridge, and, at the happy last,
to wet everybody up to the waist at least. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]