LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter VII.

       Mews From Persia

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      When you hear that the four children found themselves at Waterloo Station quite un-taken-care-of, and with no one to meet them, it may make you think that their parents were neither kind nor careful. But if you think this you will be wrong. The fact is, Mother arranged with Aunt Emma that she was to meet the children at Waterloo, when they went back from their Christmas holiday at Lyndhurst. The train was fixed, but not the day. Then Mother wrote to Aunt Emma, giving her careful instructions about the day and the hour, and about luggage and cabs and things, and gave the letter to Robert to post. But the hounds happened to meet near Rufus Stone that morning, and what is more, on the way to the meet they met Robert, and Robert met them, and instantly forgot all about posting Aunt Emma’s letter, and never thought of it again until he and the others had wandered three times up and down the platform at Waterloo – which makes six in all – and had bumped against old gentlemen, and stared in the faces of ladies, and been shoved by people in a hurry, and ‘by-your-leaved’ by porters with trucks, and were quite, quite sure that Aunt Emma was not there.

      Then suddenly the true truth of what he had forgotten to do came home to Robert, and he said, ‘Oh, crikey!’ and stood still with his mouth open, and let a porter with a Gladstone bag in each hand and a bundle of umbrellas under one arm blunder heavily into him, and never so much as said, ‘Where are you shoving to now?’ or, ‘Look out where you’re going, can’t you?’ The heavier bag smote him at the knee, and he staggered, but he said nothing.

      When the others understood what was the matter I think they told Robert what they thought of him.

      ‘We must take the train to Croydon,’ said Anthea, ‘and find Aunt Emma.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Cyril, ‘and precious pleased those Jevonses would be to see us and our traps.’

      Aunt Emma, indeed, was staying with some Jevonses – very prim people. They were middle-aged and wore very smart blouses, and they were fond of matinées and shopping, and they did not care about children.

      ‘I know Mother would be pleased to see us if we went back,’ said Jane.

      ‘Yes, she would, but she’d think it was not right to show she was pleased, because it’s Bob’s fault we’re not met. Don’t I know the sort of thing?’ said Cyril. ‘Besides, we’ve no tin. No; we’ve got enough for a growler among us, but not enough for tickets to the New Forest. We must just go home. They won’t be so savage when they find we’ve really got home all right. You know auntie was only going to take us home in a cab.’

      ‘I believe we ought to go to Croydon,’ Anthea insisted.

      ‘Aunt Emma would be out to a dead cert,’ said Robert. ‘Those Jevonses go to the theatre every afternoon, I believe. Besides, there’s the Phoenix at home, and the carpet. I votes we call a four-wheeled cabman.’

      A four-wheeled cabman was called – his cab was one of the old-fashioned kind with straw in the bottom – and he was asked by Anthea to drive them very carefully to their address. This he did, and the price he asked for doing so was exactly the value of the gold coin grandpapa had given Cyril for Christmas. This cast a gloom; but Cyril would never have stooped to argue about a cab-fare, for fear the cabman should think he was not accustomed to take cabs whenever he wanted them. For a reason that was something like this he told the cabman to put the luggage on the steps, and waited till the wheels of the growler had grittily retired before he rang the bell.

      ‘You see,’ he said, with his hand on the handle, ‘we don’t want cook and Eliza asking us before him how it is we’ve come home alone, as if we were babies.’

      Here he rang the bell; and the moment its answering clang was heard, everyone felt that it would be some time before that bell was answered. The sound of a bell is quite different, somehow, when there is anyone inside the house who hears it. I can’t tell you why that is – but so it is.

      ‘I expect they’re changing their dresses,’ said Jane.

      ‘Too late,’ said Anthea, ‘it must be past five. I expect Eliza’s gone to post a letter, and cook’s gone to see the time.’

      Cyril rang again. And the bell did its best to inform the listening children that there was really no one human in the house. They rang again and listened intently. The hearts of all sank low. It is a terrible thing to be locked out of your own house, on a dark, muggy January evening.

      ‘There is no gas on anywhere,’ said Jane, in a broken voice.

      ‘I expect they’ve left the gas on once too often, and the draught blew it out, and they’re suffocated in their beds. Father always said they would some day,’ said Robert cheerfully.

      ‘Let’s go and fetch a policeman,’ said Anthea, trembling.

      ‘And be taken up for trying to be burglars – no, thank you,’ said Cyril. ‘I heard Father read out of the paper about a young man who got into his own mother’s house, and they got him made a burglar only the other day.’

      ‘I only hope the gas hasn’t hurt the Phoenix,’ said Anthea. ‘It said it wanted to stay in the bathroom cupboard, and I thought it would be all right, because the servants never clean that out. But if it’s gone and got out and been choked by gas – And besides, directly we open the door we shall be choked, too. I knew we ought to have gone to Aunt Emma, at Croydon. Oh, Squirrel, I wish we had. Let’s go now.’

      ‘Shut up,’ said her brother, briefly. ‘There’s someone rattling the latch inside.’

      Everyone listened with all its ears, and everyone stood back as far from the door as the steps would allow.

      The latch rattled, and clicked. Then the flap of the letter-box lifted itself – everyone saw it by the flickering light of the gas-lamp that shone through the leafless lime-tree by the gate – a golden eye seemed to wink at them through the letter-slit, and a cautious beak whispered:

      ‘Are you alone?’

      ‘It’s the Phoenix,’ said everyone, in a voice so joyous, and so full of relief, as to be a sort of whispered shout.

      ‘Hush!’ said the voice from the letter-box slit. ‘Your slaves have gone a-merry-making. The latch of this portal is too stiff for my beak. But at the side – the little window above the shelf whereon your bread lies – it is not fastened.’

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