The House of Arden by E. Nesbit (first ebook reader .txt) 📕

This was two years ago; but the children had never got used to the lodgers. They hated them. At first they had tried to be friendly with the lodgers’ children, but they soon found that the lodgers’ children considered Edred and Elfrida very much beneath them, and looked down on them accordingly. And very often the lodgers’ children were the sort of children on whom anybody might have looked down, if it were right and kind to look down on anyone. And when Master Reginald Potts, of Peckham, puts his tongue out at you on the parade and says, right before everybody, “Lodgings! Yah!” it is hard to feel quite the same to him as you did before.

When there were lodgers⁠—and there nearly always were, for the house was comfortable, and people who had been once came again⁠—the children and their aunt had to live in the very top and the very bottom of the house⁠—in the attics and the basement, in fact.

When there were no lodgers they used all the rooms in turn, to keep them aired. But the children liked the big basement parlour room best, because there all the furniture had belonged to dead-and-gone Ardens, and all the pictures on the walls were of Ardens dead and gone. The rooms that the lodgers had were furnished with a new sort of furniture that had no stories belonging to it such as belonged to the old polished oak tables and bureaux that were in the basement parlour.

Edred and Elfrida went to school every day and learned reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, spelling, and useful knowledge, all of which they hated quite impartially, which means they hated the whole lot⁠—one thing as much as another.

The only part of lessons they liked was the homework, when, if Aunt Edith had time to help them, geography became like adventures, history like storybooks, and even arithmetic suddenly seemed to mean something.

“I wish you could teach us always,” said Edred, very inky, and interested for the first time in the exports of China; “it does seem so silly trying to learn things that are only words in books.”

“I wish I could,” said Aunt Edith, “but I can’t do twenty-nine thousand and seventeen things all at once, and⁠—” A bell jangled. “That’s the seventh time since tea.” She got up and went into the kitchen. “There’s the bell again, my poor Eliza. Never mind; answer the bell, but don’t answer them, whatever they say. It doesn’t do a bit of good, and it sometimes prevents their giving you half-crowns when they leave.”

“I do love it when they go,” said Elfrida.

“Yes,” said her aunt. “A cab top-heavy with luggage, the horse’s nose turned stationward, it’s a heavenly sight⁠—when the bill is paid and⁠—But, then, I’m just as glad to see the luggage coming. Chickens! when my ship comes home we’ll go and live on a desert island where there aren’t any cabs, and we won’t have any lodgers in our cave.”

“When I grow up,” said Edred, “I shall go across the sea and look for your ship and bring it home. I shall take a steam-tug and steer it myself.”

“Then I shall be captain,” said Elfrida.

“No, I shall be captain.”

“You can’t if you steer.”

“Yes, I can!”

“No, you can’t!”

“Yes, I can!”

“Well, do, then!” said Elfrida; “and while you’re doing it⁠—I know you can’t⁠—I shall dig in the garden and find a goldmine, and Aunt Edith will be rolling in money when you come back, and she won’t want your silly old ship.”

“Spelling next,” said Aunt Edith. “How do you spell ‘disagreeable’?”

“Which of us?” asked Edred acutely.

“Both,” said Aunt Edith, trying to look very severe.

When you are a child you always dream of your ship coming home⁠—of having a hundred pounds, or a thousand, or a million pounds to spend as you like. My favourite dream, I remember, was a thousand pounds and an express understanding that I was not to spend it on anything useful. And when you have dreamed of your million pounds, or your thousand, or your hundred, you spend happy hour on hour in deciding what presents you will buy for each of the people you are fond of, and in picturing their surprise and delight at your beautiful presents and your wonderful generosity. I think very few of us spend our dream fortunes entirely on ourselves. Of course, we buy ourselves a motor-bicycle straight away, and footballs and bats⁠—and dolls with real hair, and real china tea-sets, and large boxes of mixed chocolates, and Treasure Island, and all the books that Mrs. Ewing ever wrote, but when we have done that we begin to buy things for other people. It is a beautiful dream, but too often, by the time it comes true⁠—up to a hundred pounds or a thousand⁠—we forget what we used to mean to do with our money, and spend it all in stocks and shares, and eligible building sites, and fat cigars and fur coats. If I were young again I would sit down and write a list of all the kind things I meant to do when my ship came home, and if my ship ever did come home I would read that list, and⁠—But the parlour bell is ringing for the eighth time, and the front-door bell is ringing too, and the first-floor is ringing also, and so is the second-floor, and Eliza is trying to answer four bells at once⁠—always a most difficult thing to do.

The front-door bell was rung by the postman; he brought three letters. The first was a bill for mending the lid of the cistern, on which Edred had recently lighted a fire, fortified by an impression that wood could not burn if there were water on the other side⁠—a totally false impression, as the charred cistern lid proved. The second was an inquiry whether Miss Arden would take a clergyman in at half the usual price, because he had a very large family