The Wonderful Garden or The Three Cs

‘You began,’ said Charlotte truthfully.

‘I didn’t,’ said Caroline; ‘and if I did, you put it all on to me, and I didn’t know what I was saying or doing. Come on down. We mustn’t let him think it over by himself too long.’

Over tea, for which nobody felt very hungry, the Uncle asked many questions, and heard the full story of the escape and the Royal Order of the Secret Rose.

‘And don’t blame William, will you?’ Charlotte begged; ‘because he’s done nothing but say tell you ever since it began.’

‘I shall not blame William,’ said the Uncle.

‘I wanted to tell you,’ said Caroline; ‘at least next day I did, but it wasn’t my secret. And Rupert agreed for us to tell now.’

Tea was over and there was a silence. Uncle Charles was looking from one to another of the children.

‘And you really believed,’ he said slowly, ‘that putting that abominable stuff in my tea would make me agree to keep your runaway boy?’

‘There was the fern-seed, you know,’ said Charlotte; ‘and it said in the book that the decoction of balsam would make you grant our desire, and calceolaria’s as good as balsam any day.’

‘And you really thought it would?’

‘Won’t it?’ asked Caroline, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, uncle, if you only knew how I hated giving you that horrid stuff instead of your nice tea. It hurt me far more than it did you.’

The Uncle laughed faintly, but he did laugh.

‘Then you will grant our desire,’ cried Charlotte. ‘You couldn’t laugh if you weren’t going to. So you see the herbs did do the magic.’

‘Something seems to have done it,’ said the Uncle. ‘You had better give me a red rose and two buds and enrol me as a member of your Royal Order of the Secret Rose.’ He found himself suddenly involved in a violent threefold embrace.

‘I will give you a word of advice,’ he said, settling his neck-tie when it was over. ‘Never try to administer philtres or potions inwardly. Outward application is quite as efficacious. Indeed I am not sure but what your bouquet was in itself enough to work the spell. Something has certainly worked it. For I may now tell you that Mrs. Wilmington had her suspicions, and by a stratagem surprised the secret this afternoon. She told me and wished to send for the Police. But I heard William’s story, and decided not to send for the Police till after tea. But now Mrs. Wilmington has seen the boy, you may as well make her a Royal Rose too. She will not betray you.’

The children looked at each other amazed.

Mrs. Wilmington? It was unbelievable.

‘The doctor is coming at once,’ said the Uncle. ‘I hope it isn’t measles.’

‘Then, if we hadn’t spelled you, should you have given him up to the Police?’ Caroline asked.

‘Your telling me, or the spell, or something has stopped that. Now run away and play in the park. If the illness is not infectious you shall see your little friend later.’

‘Oh, uncle,’ said Charlotte in heartfelt tones, ‘it’s a long lane that never rejoices. We have been so sick about it. And now it’s all right. And you are a dear.’

‘The dearest dear,’ corrected Caroline.

‘I call him a brick,’ said Charles, with the air of a man of the world.

‘There’s only one thing more,’ said the Uncle; ‘go and get me that red rose, and then I shall know that you’ll let me into the next really important secret you have.’

They ran to get it, and the Uncle took it and the petition bouquet away with him to his study.

When the doctor had paid his visit they were allowed to see Rupert for a few minutes before bedtime – not in the straw-loft as they had expected, but in the blue room, which is hung with tapestry, and has blue silk curtains to windows and four-poster.

‘They brought me in at tea-time,’ Rupert told them. ‘That Mrs. Wilmington of yours is first-class. I don’t know what you meant by saying she was a rotter. And your uncle – isn’t he a brick?’

Charles was glad he had thought of that word himself, Rupert’s using it showed it was the correct thing to say.

‘I’m jolly glad you told him,’ Rupert went on. ‘Of course we couldn’t have gone on the other way. And he’s sent a telegram a mile long to my people in India to ask whether I mayn’t stay on here till school begins again.’

‘How splendid,’ said Charlotte, awe-struck; ‘how awfully splendid! I didn’t think uncles could be like that.’

‘Uncles are all right,’ said Rupert, ‘if you treat them properly.’

Then he began to cough, and Mrs. Wilmington came in with lemonade and honey, and told the others that they were tiring him, and it was bedtime anyhow.

‘If you treat them properly,’ said Charlotte dreamily, as she brushed her hair, ‘uncles are all right. Do you think he would have been all right if we hadn’t treated him just as we did?’

‘No,’ said Caroline. ‘Just unhook me, will you, Char? I don’t. I think it was the spell.’

‘So do I,’ said Charlotte. ‘Stand still or I can’t unhook you. What the eye doesn’t see, the hook doesn’t come out of. I expect the tea was like what Miss Peckitt’s sister’s mistress had when their house was burglared – nervous shock. I expect that is the same as electric shocks making people walk that couldn’t before. I expect the nervous shock made that part of uncle that grants favours wake up and walk, don’t you?’

‘You make haste into bed,’ said Caroline. ‘What’s the good of talking all round it? We did what it said in the book, and it happened like it said in the book it would happen. I believe you could manage everything with spells if you only knew the proper ones. When I grow up I shall be a professoress of magic spells and have my business office in a beautiful palace, and kings and queens will come in their golden chariots to ask me what spells they ought to do to make their subjects happy and not poor, and for everybody to have a chicken in the pot, and – ’

‘Talk about talking!’ said Charlotte. ‘Come along to bed; do.’

CHAPTER XI

THE ROSICURIANS

The door of the drawing-room at the Manor House was kept locked, and Mrs. Wilmington dusted the room herself and carried its key in her pocket. After the Uncle had said that about Mrs. Wilmington having expected the children to break everything in the house, the three C.’s began to wonder whether the drawing-room had always been kept in this locked-up state, or whether it was only done on their account.

‘Out of compliment to us,’ as Charles put it.

‘I almost think it must be that,’ Caroline said; ‘because of course drawing-rooms are for people to sit in, and the Wilmington must expect some one to sit in it or she wouldn’t dust it so carefully.’

‘I looked in the other day when she was dusting,’ said Charlotte. ‘I couldn’t see much just a bit of the carpet, pink and grey and pretty, and the corner of a black cupboard-thing with trees and birds and gold Chinamen on it, and a table with a soup tureen with red rabbits’ heads for handles, and a round looking-glass that you could see some more of the room in, all tiny and all drawn wrong somehow – you know the sort; convict mirrors, Harriet says they are. I asked her.’

‘When?’ said Charles.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Just after. And Harriet goes in to sweep it. She says its full of lovelies.’

‘Why don’t you ask her if it was shut up out of compliment to us?’ Charles asked.

‘Because I wasn’t going to put ideas into Harriet’s head, of course.’

And Caroline agreed that such a question would have been simply giving themselves away.

Each of the three C.’s had turned the handle of the drawing-room door many times to see whether by chance Mrs. Wilmington had just this once not remembered to lock it. But she always had. And their interest in the room had steadily grown. And now here was another wet day, just the day for examining golden Chinamen and looking at yourself in convex mirrors; and the room was locked up so that no one could enjoy these advantages.

Rupert was still in bed, the doctor had decided against measles; but the feverish cold which had given rise to the measle idea was still too bad for Rupert to be anywhere but where he was. And the others were only allowed to see him for a few minutes at a time. Mrs. Wilmington had, so Harriet explained, ‘taken to the new young gentleman in a way you’d hardly believe,’ and was spending the afternoon reading Masterman Ready to him after a baffled attempt to read him Eric, or Little by Little, which she fetched from her own room on purpose, and which Rupert stopped his ears with his fingers rather than listen to.