Part 55

You know all this. But Kenneth did not. And still less did he know what were the sort of things which, in his cousins' house, led to disapproval, punishment, scoldings; in short, to catching it. So that that business of cousin Ethel's jewel-case, which is where this story ought to begin, was really not Kenneth's fault at all. Though for a time.... But I am getting on too fast.

Kenneth's cousins were four,--Conrad, Alison, George, and Ethel. The three first were natural sort of cousins somewhere near his own age, but Ethel was hardly like a cousin at all, more like an aunt. Because she was grown-up. She wore long dresses and all her hair on the top of her head, a mass of combs and hairpins; in fact she had just had her twenty-first birthday with iced cakes and a party and lots of presents, most of them jewelry. And that brings me again to that affair of the jewel-case, or would bring me if I were not determined to tell things in their proper order, which is the first duty of a story-teller.

Kenneth's home was in Kent, a wooden house among cherry orchards, and the nearest river five miles away. That was why he looked forward in such a very extra and excited way to his visit to his cousins. Their house was very old, red brick with ivy all over it. It had a secret staircase, only the secret was not kept any longer, and the housemaids carried pails and brooms up and down the staircase. And the house was surrounded by a real deep moat, with clear water in it, and long weeds and water-lilies and fish--the gold and the silver and the everyday kinds.

The first evening of Kenneth's visit passed uneventfully. His bedroom window looked over the moat, and early next morning he tried to catch fish with several pieces of string knotted together and a hairpin kindly lent to him by the parlourmaid. He did not catch any fish, partly because he baited the hairpin with brown windsor soap, and it washed off.

'Besides, fish hate soap,' Conrad told him, 'and that hook of yours would do for a whale perhaps. Only we don't stock our moat with whales. But I'll ask father to lend you his rod, it's a spiffing one, much jollier than ours. And I won't tell the kids because they'd never let it down on you. Fishing with a hairpin!'

'Thank you very much,' said Kenneth, feeling that his cousin was a man and a brother. The kids were only two or three years younger than he was, but that is a great deal when you are the elder; and besides, one of the kids was a girl.

'Alison's a bit of a sneak,' Conrad used to say when anger overcome politeness and brotherly feeling. Afterwards, when the anger was gone and the other things left, he would say, 'You see she went to a beastly school for a bit, at Brighton, for her health. And father says they must have bullied her. All girls are not like it, I believe.'

But her sneakish qualities, if they really existed, were generally hidden, and she was very clever at thinking of new games, and very kind if you got into a row over anything.

George was eight and stout. He was not a sneak, but concealment was foreign to his nature, so he never could keep a secret unless he forgot it. Which fortunately happened quite often.

The uncle very amiably lent Kenneth his fishing-rod, and provided real bait in the most thoughtful and generous manner. And the four children fished all the morning and all the afternoon. Conrad caught two roach and an eel. George caught nothing, and nothing was what the other two caught. But it was glorious sport. And the next day there was to be a picnic. Life to Kenneth seemed full of new and delicious excitement.

In the evening the aunt and the uncle went out to dinner, and Ethel, in her grown-up way, went with them, very grand in a blue silk dress and turquoises. So the children were left to themselves.

You know the empty hush which settles down on a house when the grown-ups have gone out to dinner and you have the whole evening to do what you like in. The children stood in the hall a moment after the carriage wheels had died away with the scrunching swish that the carriage wheels always made as they turned the corner by the lodge, where the gravel was extra thick and soft owing to the droppings from the trees. From the kitchen came the voices of the servants, laughing and talking.

'It's two hours at least to bedtime,' said Alison. 'What shall we do?' Alison always began by saying 'What shall we do?' and always ended by deciding what should be done. 'You all say what you think,' she went on, 'and then we'll vote about it. You first, Ken, because you're the visitor.'

'Fishing,' said Kenneth, because it was the only thing he could think of.

'Make toffee,' said Conrad.

'Build a great big house with all the bricks,' said George.

'We can't make toffee,' Alison explained gently but firmly, 'because you know what the pan was like last time, and cook said, "never again, not much." And it's no good building houses, Georgie, when you could be out of doors. And fishing's simply rotten when we've been at it all day. I've thought of something.'

So of course all the others said, 'What?'

'We'll have a pageant, a river pageant, on the moat. We'll all dress up and hang Chinese lanterns in the trees. I'll be the Sunflower lady that the Troubadour came all across the sea, because he loved her so, for, and one of you can be the Troubadour, and the others can be sailors or anything you like.'

'I shall be the Troubadour,' said Conrad with decision.

'I think you ought to let Kenneth because he's the visitor,' said George, who would have liked to be it immensely himself, or anyhow did not see why Conrad should be a troubadour if he couldn't.

Conrad said what manners required, which was:

'Oh! all right, I don't care about being the beastly Troubadour.'

'You might be the Princess's brother,' Alison suggested.

'Not me,' said Conrad scornfully, 'I'll be the captain of the ship.'

'In a turban the brother would be, with the Benares cloak, and the Persian dagger out of the cabinet in the drawing-room,' Alison went on unmoved.

'I'll be that,' said George.

'No, you won't, I shall, so there,' said Conrad. 'You can be the captain of the ship.'