On the Tuesday we went down to look at the Roman place where the Antiquities were going to dig. We sat on the Roman wall and ate nuts. And as we sat there, we saw coming through the beet-field two labourers with picks and shovels, and a very young man with thin legs and a bicycle. It turned out afterwards to be a free-wheel, the first we had ever seen.
They stopped at a mound inside the Roman wall, and the men took their coats off and spat on their hands.
We went down at once, of course. The thin-legged bicyclist explained his machine to us very fully and carefully when we asked him, and then we saw the men were cutting turfs and turning them over and rolling them up and putting them in a heap. So we asked the gentleman with the thin legs what they were doing. He said--'They are beginning the preliminary excavation in readiness for to-morrow.'
'What's up to-morrow?' H. O. asked.
'To-morrow we propose to open this barrow and examine it.'
'Then YOU'RE the Antiquities?' said H. O.
'I'm the secretary,' said the gentleman, smiling, but narrowly.
'Oh, you're all coming to tea with us,' Dora said, and added anxiously, 'how many of you do you think there'll be?'
'Oh, not more than eighty or ninety, I should think,' replied the gentleman.
This took our breath away and we went home. As we went, Oswald, who notices many things that would pass unobserved by the light and careless, saw Denny frowning hard. So he said, 'What's up?'
'I've got an idea,' the Dentist said. 'Let's call a council.' The Dentist had grown quite used to our ways now. We had called him Dentist ever since the fox-hunt day. He called a council as if he had been used to calling such things all his life, and having them come, too; whereas we all know that his former existing was that of a white mouse in a trap, with that cat of a Murdstone aunt watching him through the bars.
(That is what is called a figure of speech. Albert's uncle told me.)
Councils are held in the straw-loft. As soon as we were all there, and the straw had stopped rustling after our sitting down, Dicky said--'I hope it's nothing to do with the Wouldbegoods?'
'No,' said Denny in a hurry: 'quite the opposite.'
'I hope it's nothing wrong,' said Dora and Daisy together.
'It's--it's "Hail to thee, blithe spirit--bird thou never wert",' said Denny. 'I mean, I think it's what is called a lark.'
'You never know your luck. Go on, Dentist,' said Dicky.
'Well, then, do you know a book called The Daisy Chain?'
We didn't.
'It's by Miss Charlotte M. Yonge,' Daisy interrupted, 'and it's about a family of poor motherless children who tried so hard to be good, and they were confirmed, and had a bazaar, and went to church at the Minster, and one of them got married and wore black watered silk and silver ornaments. So her baby died, and then she was sorry she had not been a good mother to it. And--'
Here Dicky got up and said he'd got some snares to attend to, and he'd receive a report of the Council after it was over. But he only got as far as the trap-door, and then Oswald, the fleet of foot, closed with him, and they rolled together on the floor, while all the others called out 'Come back! Come back!' like guinea-hens on a fence.
Through the rustle and bustle and hustle of the struggle with Dicky, Oswald heard the voice of Denny murmuring one of his everlasting quotations--'"Come back, come back!" he cried in Greek, "Across the stormy water, And I'll forgive your Highland cheek, My daughter, O my daughter!"'
When quiet was restored and Dicky had agreed to go through with the Council, Denny said--'The Daisy Chain is not a bit like that really. It's a ripping book. One of the boys dresses up like a lady and comes to call, and another tries to hit his little sister with a hoe. It's jolly fine, I tell you.'
Denny is learning to say what he thinks, just like other boys. He would never have learnt such words as 'ripping' and 'jolly fine' while under the auntal tyranny.
Since then I have read The Daisy Chain. It is a first-rate book for girls and little boys.
But we did not want to talk about The Daisy Chain just then, so Oswald said--'But what's your lark?'Denny got pale pink and said--'Don't hurry me. I'll tell you directly. Let me think a minute.'
Then he shut his pale pink eyelids a moment in thought, and then opened them and stood up on the straw and said very fast--'Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears, or if not ears, pots. You know Albert's uncle said they were going to open the barrow, to look for Roman remains to-morrow. Don't you think it seems a pity they shouldn't find any?'
'Perhaps they will,' Dora said.
But Oswald saw, and he said 'Primus! Go ahead, old man.'
The Dentist went ahead.
'In The Daisy Chain,' he said, 'they dug in a Roman encampment and the children went first and put some pottery there they'd made themselves, and Harry's old medal of the Duke of Wellington. The doctor helped them to some stuff to partly efface the inscription, and all the grown-ups were sold. I thought we might--'You may break, you may shatter The vase if you will;But the scent of the Romans Will cling round it still.'
Denny sat down amid applause. It really was a great idea, at least for HIM. It seemed to add just what was wanted to the visit of the Maidstone Antiquities. To sell the Antiquities thoroughly would be indeed splendiferous. Of course Dora made haste to point out that we had not got an old medal of the Duke of Wellington, and that we hadn't any doctor who would 'help us to stuff to efface', and etcetera; but we sternly bade her stow it. We weren't going to do EXACTLY like those Daisy Chain kids.
