surface—the shrimping nets were full and fluffy as, once they and sand and water had met, they never could be again. The pails and spades and nets formed the topmost layer of a pile of luggage—you know the sort of thing, with the big boxes at the bottom; and the carryall bulging with its wraps and mackers; the old portmanteau that shows its striped lining through the crack and is so useful for putting boots in; and the sponge bag, and all the little things that get left out. You can almost always squeeze a ball or a paint box or a box of chalks or any of those things—which grown-ups say you won’t really want till you come back—into that old portmanteau—and then when it’s being unpacked at the journey’s end the most that can happen will be that someone will say, “I thought I told you not to bring that,” and if you don’t answer back, that will be all. But most likely in the agitation of unpacking and settling in, your tennis ball, or pencil box, or whatever it is, will pass unnoticed. Of course, you can’t shove an aquarium into the old portmanteau—nor a pair of rabbits, nor a hedgehog—but anything in reason you can.
The luggage that goes in the van is not much trouble—of course, it has to be packed and to be strapped, and labeled and looked after at the junction, but apart from that the big luggage behaves itself, keeps itself to itself, and like your elder brothers at college never occasions its friends a moment’s anxiety. It is the younger fry of the luggage family, the things you have with you in the carriage that are troublesome—the bundle of umbrellas and walking sticks, the golf clubs, the rugs, the greatcoats, the basket of things to eat, the books you are going to read in the train and as often as not you never look at them, the newspapers that the grown-ups are tired of and yet don’t want to throw away, their little bags or dispatch cases and suitcases and card cases, and scarfs and gloves—
The children were traveling under the care of Aunt Enid, who always had far more of these tiresome odds and ends than Mother had—and it was at the last moment, when the cab was almost to be expected to be there, that Aunt Enid rushed out to the corner shop and returned with four new spades, four new pails, and four new shrimping nets, and presented them to the children just in time for them to be added to the heap of odds and ends with which the cab was filled up.
“I hope it’s not ungrateful,” said Mavis at the station as they stood waiting by the luggage mound while Aunt Enid went to take the tickets—“but why couldn’t she have bought them at Beachfield?”
“Makes us look such babies,” said Francis, who would not be above using a wooden spade at the proper time and place but did not care to be branded in the face of all Waterloo Junction as one of those kids off to the seaside with little spades and pails.
Kathleen and Bernard were, however, young enough to derive a certain pleasure from stroking the smooth, curved surface of the spades till Aunt Enid came fussing back with the tickets and told them to put their gloves on for goodness’ sake and try not to look like street children.
I am sorry that the first thing you should hear about the children should be that they did not care about their Aunt Enid, but this was unfortunately the case. And if you think this was not nice of them I can only remind you that you do not know their Aunt Enid.
There was a short, sharp struggle with the porter, a flustered passage along the platform and the children were safe in the carriage marked “Reserved”—thrown into it, as it were, with all that small fry of luggage which I have just described. Then Aunt Enid fussed off again to exchange a few last home truths with the porter, and the children were left.
“We breathe again,” said Mavis.
“Not yet we don’t,” said Francis, “there’ll be some more fuss as soon as she comes back. I’d almost as soon not go to the sea as go with her.”
“But you’ve never seen the sea,” Mavis reminded him.
“I know,” said Francis, morosely, “but look at all this—” he indicated the tangle of their possessions which littered seats and rack—“I do wish—”
He stopped, for a head appeared in the open doorway—in a round hat very like Aunt Enid’s—but it was not Aunt Enid’s. The face under the hat was a much younger, kinder one.
“I’m afraid this carriage is reserved,” said the voice that belonged to the face.
“Yes,” said Kathleen, “but there’s lots of room if you like to come too.”
“I don’t know if the aunt we’re with would like it,” said the more cautious Mavis. “We should, of course,” she added to meet the kind smiling eyes that looked from under the hat that was like Aunt Enid’s.
The lady said: “I’m an aunt too—I’m going to meet my nephew at the junction. The train’s frightfully crowded.... If I were to talk to your aunt ... perhaps on the strength of our common aunthood. The train will start in a minute. I haven’t any luggage to be a bother—nothing but one paper.”—she had indeed a folded newspaper in her hands.
“Oh, do get in,” said Kathleen, dancing with anxiety, “I’m sure Aunt Enid won’t mind,”—Kathleen was always hopeful—“suppose the train were to start or anything!”
“Well, if you think I may,” said the lady, and tossed her paper into the corner in a lighthearted way which the children found charming. Her pleasant face was rising in the oblong of the carriage doorway, her foot was on the carriage step, when suddenly she retreated back and down. It was almost as though someone pulled her off the carriage step.
“Excuse me,” said a voice, “this carriage is reserved.” The pleasant face of the lady disappeared and the—well, the face of Aunt Enid took its place. The lady vanished. Aunt Enid trod on Kathleen’s foot, pushed against Bernard’s waistcoat, sat down, partly on Mavis and partly on Francis and said—“Of all the impertinence!” Then someone banged the door—the train shivered and trembled and pulled itself together in the way we all know so well—grunted, snorted, screamed, and was off. Aunt Enid stood up arranging things on the rack, so that the children could not even see if the nice lady had found a seat in the train.
“Well—I do think—” Francis could not help saying.
“Oh—do you?” said Aunt Enid, “I should never have thought it of you.”
When she had arranged the things in the rack to her satisfaction she pointed out a few little faults that she had noticed in the children and settled down to read a book by Miss Marie Corelli. The children looked miserably at each other. They could not understand why Mother had placed them under the control of this most unpleasant mock aunt.
There was a reason for it, of course. If your parents, who are generally so kind and jolly, suddenly do a thing that you can’t understand and can hardly bear, you may be quite sure they have a good reason for it. The reason in this case was that Aunt Enid was the only person who offered to take charge of the children at a time when all the nice people who usually did it were having influenza. Also she was an old friend of Granny’s. Granny’s taste in friends must have been very odd, Francis decided, or else Aunt Enid must have changed a good deal since she was young. And there she sat reading her dull book. The children also had been provided with books—Eric, or Little by Little; Elsie, or Like a Little Candle; Brave Bessie and Ingenious Isabel had been dealt out as though they were cards for a game, before leaving home. They had been a great bother to carry, and they were impossible to read. Kathleen and Bernard presently preferred looking out of the windows, and the two elder ones tried to read the paper left by the lady, “looking over.”
Now, that is just where it was, and really what all that has been written before is about. If that lady hadn’t happened to look in at their door, and if she hadn’t happened to leave the paper they would never have seen it, because they weren’t the sort of children who read papers except under extreme provocation.
You will not find it easy to believe, and I myself can’t see why it should have happened, but the very first word they saw in that newspaper was Beachfield, and the second was On, and the third was Sea, and the fifth was Mermaid. The fourth which came between Sea and Mermaid was Alleged.
“I