LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter XIV.

       The Divining-Rod

       Table of Contents

      You have no idea how uncomfortable the house was on the day when we sought for gold with the divining-rod. It was like a spring-cleaning in the winter-time. All the carpets were up, because Father had told Eliza to make the place decent as there was a gentleman coming to dinner the next day. So she got in a charwoman, and they slopped water about, and left brooms and brushes on the stairs for people to tumble over. H. O. got a big bump on his head in that way, and when he said it was too bad, Eliza said he should keep in the nursery then, and not be where he’d no business. We bandaged his head with a towel, and then he stopped crying and played at being England’s wounded hero dying in the cockpit, while every man was doing his duty, as the hero had told them to, and Alice was Hardy, and I was the doctor, and the others were the crew. Playing at Hardy made us think of our own dear robber, and we wished he was there, and wondered if we should ever see him any more.

      We were rather astonished at Father’s having anyone to dinner, because now he never seems to think of anything but business. Before Mother died people often came to dinner, and Father’s business did not take up so much of his time and was not the bother it is now. And we used to see who could go furthest down in our nightgowns and get nice things to eat, without being seen, out of the dishes as they came out of the dining-room. Eliza can’t cook very nice things. She told Father she was a good plain cook, but he says it was a fancy portrait. We stayed in the nursery till the charwoman came in and told us to be off — she was going to make one job of it, and have our carpet up as well as all the others, now the man was here to beat them. It came up, and it was very dusty — and under it we found my threepenny-bit that I lost ages ago, which shows what Eliza is. H. O. had got tired of being the wounded hero, and Dicky was so tired of doing nothing that Dora said she knew he’d begin to tease Noel in a minute; then of course Dicky said he wasn’t going to tease anybody — he was going out to the Heath. He said he’d heard that nagging women drove a man from his home, and now he found it was quite true. Oswald always tries to be a peacemaker, so he told Dicky to shut up and not make an ass of himself. And Alice said, ‘Well, Dora began’— And Dora tossed her chin up and said it wasn’t any business of Oswald’s any way, and no one asked Alice’s opinion. So we all felt very uncomfortable till Noel said, ‘Don’t let’s quarrel about nothing. You know let dogs delight — and I made up another piece while you were talking —

      Quarrelling is an evil thing,

       It fills with gall life’s cup;

       For when once you begin

       It takes such a long time to make it up.’

      We all laughed then and stopped jawing at each other. Noel is very funny with his poetry. But that piece happened to come out quite true. You begin to quarrel and then you can’t stop; often, long before the others are ready to cry and make it up, I see how silly it is, and I want to laugh; but it doesn’t do to say so — for it only makes the others crosser than they were before. I wonder why that is?

      Alice said Noel ought to be poet laureate, and she actually went out in the cold and got some laurel leaves — the spotted kind — out of the garden, and Dora made a crown and we put it on him. He was quite pleased; but the leaves made a mess, and Eliza said, ‘Don’t.’ I believe that’s a word grown-ups use more than any other. Then suddenly Alice thought of that old idea of hers for finding treasure, and she said —‘Do let’s try the divining-rod.’

      So Oswald said, ‘Fair priestess, we do greatly desire to find gold beneath our land, therefore we pray thee practise with the divining-rod, and tell us where we can find it.’

      ‘Do ye desire to fashion of it helms and hauberks?’ said Alice.

      ‘Yes,’ said Noel; ‘and chains and ouches.’

      ‘I bet you don’t know what an “ouch” is,’ said Dicky.

      ‘Yes I do, so there!’ said Noel. ‘It’s a carcanet. I looked it out in the dicker, now then!’ We asked him what a carcanet was, but he wouldn’t say.

      ‘And we want to make fair goblets of the gold,’ said Oswald.

      ‘Yes, to drink coconut milk out of,’ said H. O.

      ‘And we desire to build fair palaces of it,’ said Dicky.

      ‘And to buy things,’ said Dora; ‘a great many things. New Sunday frocks and hats and kid gloves and —’

      She would have gone on for ever so long only we reminded her that we hadn’t found the gold yet.

      By this Alice had put on the nursery tablecloth, which is green, and tied the old blue and yellow antimacassar over her head, and she said —

      ‘If your intentions are correct, fear nothing and follow me.’

      And she went down into the hall. We all followed chanting ‘Heroes.’ It is a gloomy thing the girls learnt at the High School, and we always use it when we want a priestly chant.

      Alice stopped short by the hat-stand, and held up her hands as well as she could for the tablecloth, and said —

      ‘Now, great altar of the golden idol, yield me the divining-rod that I may use it for the good of the suffering people.’

      The umbrella-stand was the altar of the golden idol, and it yielded her the old school umbrella. She carried it between her palms.

      ‘Now,’ she said, ‘I shall sing the magic chant. You mustn’t say anything, but just follow wherever I go — like follow my leader, you know — and when there is gold underneath the magic rod will twist in the hand of the priestess like a live thing that seeks to be free. Then you will dig, and the golden treasure will be revealed. H. O., if you make that clatter with your boots they’ll come and tell us not to. Now come on all of you.’

       WE FOLLOWED HER ON TIPTOE

      So she went upstairs and down and into every room. We followed her on tiptoe, and Alice sang as she went. What she sang is not out of a book — Noel made it up while she was dressing up for the priestess.

      Ashen rod cold

       That here I hold,

       Teach me where to find the gold.

      When we came to where Eliza was, she said, ‘Get along with you’; but Dora said it was only a game, and we wouldn’t touch anything, and our boots were quite clean, and Eliza might as well let us. So she did.

      It was all right for the priestess, but it was a little dull for the rest of us, because she wouldn’t let us sing, too; so we said we’d had enough of it, and if she couldn’t find the gold we’d leave off and play something else. The priestess said, ‘All right, wait a minute,’ and went on singing. Then we all followed her back into the nursery, where the carpet was up and the boards smelt of soft soap. Then she said, ‘It moves, it moves! Once more the choral hymn!’ So we sang ‘Heroes’ again, and in the middle the umbrella dropped from her hands.

      ‘The magic rod has spoken,’ said Alice; ‘dig here, and that with courage and despatch.’ We didn’t quite see how to dig, but we all began to scratch on the floor with our hands, but the priestess said, ‘Don’t be so silly! It’s the place where they come to do the gas. The board’s loose. Dig an you value your lives, for ere sundown the dragon who guards this spoil will return in his fiery fury and make you his unresisting prey.’

       ‘SEE THE RICH TREASURE—’

      So we dug — that is, we

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