while he talked to us. He gave us a lot of good advice about not going into business too young, and about doing our lessons — just swatting a bit, on our own hook, so as not to be put in a low form when we went back to school. And all the time he was stroking the sovereign and looking at it as if he thought it very beautiful. And so it was, for it was a new one. Then at last he held it out to Dicky, and when Dicky put out his hand for it the G. B. suddenly put the sovereign back in his pocket.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I won’t give you the sovereign. I’ll give you fifteen shillings, and this nice bottle of scent. It’s worth far more than the five shillings I’m charging you for it. And, when you can, you shall pay me back the pound, and sixty per cent interest — sixty per cent, sixty per cent.’
‘What’s that?’ said H. O.
The G. B. said he’d tell us that when we paid back the sovereign, but sixty per cent was nothing to be afraid of. He gave Dicky the money. And the boy was made to call a cab, and the G. B. put us in and shook hands with us all, and asked Alice to give him a kiss, so she did, and H. O. would do it too, though his face was dirtier than ever. The G. B. paid the cabman and told him what station to go to, and so we went home.
That evening Father had a letter by the seven-o’clock post. And when he had read it he came up into the nursery. He did not look quite so unhappy as usual, but he looked grave.
‘You’ve been to Mr Rosenbaum’s,’ he said.
So we told him all about it. It took a long time, and Father sat in the armchair. It was jolly. He doesn’t often come and talk to us now. He has to spend all his time thinking about his business. And when we’d told him all about it he said —
‘You haven’t done any harm this time, children; rather good than harm, indeed. Mr Rosenbaum has written me a very kind letter.’
‘Is he a friend of yours, Father?’ Oswald asked. ‘He is an acquaintance,’ said my father, frowning a little, ‘we have done some business together. And this letter —’ he stopped and then said: ‘No; you didn’t do any harm today; but I want you for the future not to do anything so serious as to try to buy a partnership without consulting me, that’s all. I don’t want to interfere with your plays and pleasures; but you will consult me about business matters, won’t you?’
Of course we said we should be delighted, but then Alice, who was sitting on his knee, said, ‘We didn’t like to bother you.’
Father said, ‘I haven’t much time to be with you, for my business takes most of my time. It is an anxious business — but I can’t bear to think of your being left all alone like this.’
He looked so sad we all said we liked being alone. And then he looked sadder than ever.
Then Alice said, ‘We don’t mean that exactly, Father. It is rather lonely sometimes, since Mother died.’
Then we were all quiet a little while. Father stayed with us till we went to bed, and when he said good night he looked quite cheerful. So we told him so, and he said —
‘Well, the fact is, that letter took a weight off my mind.’ I can’t think what he meant — but I am sure the G. B. would be pleased if he could know he had taken a weight off somebody’s mind. He is that sort of man, I think.
We gave the scent to Dora. It is not quite such good scent as we thought it would be, but we had fifteen shillings — and they were all good, so is the G. B.
And until those fifteen shillings were spent we felt almost as jolly as though our fortunes had been properly restored. You do not notice your general fortune so much, as long as you have money in your pocket. This is why so many children with regular pocket-money have never felt it their duty to seek for treasure. So, perhaps, our not having pocket-money was a blessing in disguise. But the disguise was quite impenetrable, like the villains’ in the books; and it seemed still more so when the fifteen shillings were all spent. Then at last the others agreed to let Oswald try his way of seeking for treasure, but they were not at all keen about it, and many a boy less firm than Oswald would have chucked the whole thing. But Oswald knew that a hero must rely on himself alone. So he stuck to it, and presently the others saw their duty, and backed him up.
Chapter X.
Lord Tottenham
Oswald is a boy of firm and unswerving character, and he had never wavered from his first idea. He felt quite certain that the books were right, and that the best way to restore fallen fortunes was to rescue an old gentleman in distress. Then he brings you up as his own son: but if you preferred to go on being your own father’s son I expect the old gentleman would make it up to you some other way. In the books the least thing does it — you put up the railway carriage window — or you pick up his purse when he drops it — or you say a hymn when he suddenly asks you to, and then your fortune is made.
The others, as I said, were very slack about it, and did not seem to care much about trying the rescue. They said there wasn’t any deadly peril, and we should have to make one before we could rescue the old gentleman from it, but Oswald didn’t see that that mattered. However, he thought he would try some of the easier ways first, by himself.
So he waited about the station, pulling up railway carriage windows for old gentlemen who looked likely — but nothing happened, and at last the porters said he was a nuisance. So that was no go. No one ever asked him to say a hymn, though he had learned a nice short one, beginning ‘New every morning’— and when an old gentleman did drop a two-shilling piece just by Ellis’s the hairdresser’s, and Oswald picked it up, and was just thinking what he should say when he returned it, the old gentleman caught him by the collar and called him a young thief. It would have been very unpleasant for Oswald if he hadn’t happened to be a very brave boy, and knew the policeman on that beat very well indeed. So the policeman backed him up, and the old gentleman said he was sorry, and offered Oswald sixpence. Oswald refused it with polite disdain, and nothing more happened at all.
When Oswald had tried by himself and it had not come off, he said to the others, ‘We’re wasting our time, not trying to rescue the old gentleman in deadly peril. Come — buck up! Do let’s do something!’
It was dinner-time, and Pincher was going round getting the bits off the plates. There were plenty because it was cold-mutton day. And Alice said —
‘It’s only fair to try Oswald’s way — he has tried all the things the others thought of. Why couldn’t we rescue Lord Tottenham?’
Lord Tottenham is the old gentleman who walks over the Heath every day in a paper collar at three o’clock — and when he gets halfway, if there is no one about, he changes his collar and throws the dirty one into the furze-bushes.
Dicky said, ‘Lord Tottenham’s all right — but where’s the deadly peril?’
And we couldn’t think of any. There are no highwaymen on Blackheath now, I am sorry to say. And though Oswald said half of us could be highwaymen and the other half rescue party, Dora kept on saying it would be wrong to be a highwayman — and so we had to give that up.
Then Alice said, ‘What about Pincher?’
And we all saw at once that it could be done.
Pincher is very well bred, and he does know one or two things, though we never could teach him to beg. But if you tell him to hold on — he will do it, even if you only say ‘Seize him!’ in a whisper.
So we arranged it all. Dora said she wouldn’t play; she said she thought it was wrong, and she knew it was silly