The Wonderful Garden or The Three Cs

‘Don’t!’ said the Uncle earnestly; ‘please don’t. I have said what I felt it my duty to say. But it is all over. I certainly have no intention of punishing you for what was a mistake. What I blame you for is – well, briefly, interference, and taking too much on yourselves.’

‘Shoving our oar in,’ sobbed Charlotte. ‘But we did so want Rupert to be better.’

‘He is better,’ said the Uncle. ‘Please don’t cry. It is over now. But I must ask for a promise.’

‘We did keep the other promise,’ Charles reminded him.

‘I know you did. This is more comprehensive as well as more definite. I want you to promise me that you will not only refrain from administering your remedies internally, but that you will not make any external application of them to any of your friends – or enemies,’ he added hastily.

‘Not put them on to people’s outsides? – yes,’ murmured Caroline.

‘Without consulting me. If you wish to try any more experiments, the simple presentation of a symbolic bouquet should be enough. It was enough in my case. You remember.’

‘Of course we promise,’ said every one.

‘Oh, uncle, you are kind not to be crosser!’

‘We don’t really mean to do wrong.’

‘But you can’t do right without it turning out wrong sometimes. You can’t just do nothing,’ said Caroline; ‘though really it’s the only safe way. Things do so turn out wrong that you didn’t think would.’

‘They do,’ said the Uncle. ‘Now dry your eyes and run out and play. And if you see your way to letting Mrs. Wilmington know that you’re sorry, it would perhaps be well.’

‘Of course we will if you want us to,’ they said; and Charlotte added:

‘It will be well. She always says it is.’

‘Always says what is what?’

‘She always says everything’s all very well when we say we’re sorry.’

Then they went round to the terraced garden and sat on the grass and talked it all over.

‘And if ever there was an angel uncle, ours is it,’ said Charlotte.

‘Yes,’ said Charles, ‘and Rupert is better. I’m glad we did it, aren’t you?’

‘I suppose so. Yes. No. Yes. I don’t know,’ said Caroline. ‘You see the spell worked. That’s a great thing to be sure of, anyhow.’

It was the one thing, however, that they couldn’t persuade Rupert to be sure of. He was certainly better, but, as he pointed out, he might have got better without the rose leaves.

‘Of course it was jolly decent of you to get them, and all that,’ he said; ‘but the medicine the doctor gave me cured me, I expect. I don’t want to be ungrateful, but what are doctors for, anyhow?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Charles, ‘but I know you jolly well tried fern-seed when you pretended to be invisible.’

‘I feel much older than I did then,’ said Rupert, biting ends of grass as he lay on the dry crisp turf. It was the first day of his being loosed from those bonds which hamper the movements of persons who have been ill. You know the sort of times when you feel perfectly well, and yet, merely because you have a cold or measles or something, you are kept in when you want to go out, and sent out (in what is called ‘the best of the day’) when you want to stay in, and little driblets of medicine are brought you when you feel least need of them, and glasses of hot milk and cups of beef-tea occur just when you are thinking fondly of roast beef and suet pudding, and you are assured that what you need is not heavy food like pudding and beef, but something light and at the same time nourishing. Also you have to go to bed earlier than the others and not to sit in draughts.

However, all this was now over for Rupert, and he was one of the others, on a natural meal-footing. His parents, by the way, had telegraphed thanking Uncle Charles very much, and accepting his invitation for Rupert to spend the rest of the holidays at the Manor House. They had also telegraphed to the Murdstone master telling him that Rupert would not return to him. So that now there seemed to be no bar to complete enjoyment, except that one little fact that Rupert wouldn’t believe in spells.

‘But the fern-seed acted,’ said Caroline, ‘and the secret rose acted, and the Rosicurian rose leaves acted.’

‘I don’t see how you can say the fern-seed acted. I wasn’t invisible, because you all saw me through the window.’

‘Oh, but,’ said Charlotte eagerly, ‘don’t you see? You wanted us to see you. You can’t expect a spell to act if you don’t want it to act. I wouldn’t myself, if I was a spell.’

‘It wasn’t that at all,’ said Caroline; ‘don’t you remember we chewed the fern-seed to make us see invisible things, and we saw you. And you were invisible, because you’d chewed fern-seed too. It came out just perfectly. Only you won’t see it. But let’s try it again if you like – the fern-seed, I mean.’

But Rupert wouldn’t. He preferred to read The Dog Crusoe, lying on his front upon the grass. The others also got books.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MINERAL WOMAN

Next day Rupert felt more alive, as he explained.

‘Now, look here,’ he said at breakfast, ‘suppose we go and discover the North Pole.’

‘That would be nice,’ said Caroline; ‘the attics? We’ve never explored them yet.’

‘No, attics are for wet days,’ said Rupert.

‘Not the real North Pole, you don’t mean?’ said Charles, quite ready to believe that Rupert might mean anything, however wonderful and adventurous.

‘No,’ said Rupert; ‘what I thought of was a via medias res.’

‘Latin,’ explained Charles to the girls.

‘It means a middle way. You ask your uncle to let us take our lunch out, bread and cheese and cake will do; and to not expect us till tea-time, and perhaps not then. We’ll just go where we think we will, and shut our eyes when we pass signposts and post-offices. We might get lost, you know, but I’d take care of you.’

‘We mustn’t disturb the Uncle,’ Caroline reminded them. ‘We promised. Not for a week.’

‘Write him a letter,’ said Rupert. And this is the letter they wrote. At least Caroline wrote it and they all signed their names.

‘Dearest Uncle’ (‘Dearest is rot,’ said Charles, looking at Rupert to be sure that he thought so too; ‘put Dear’).

‘But Dear is rottener,’ answered Caroline, going on; ‘it’s what you say to the butcher when you write about the ribs that ought to have been Sir Something. I know.’

Please may we go out for the day and take our lunch, bread and cheese and cake would do, Rupert says he will take care of us, and not expect us home till tea, and perhaps not then, with love

    Caroline
    Charlotte
    Charles.

‘Rupert can’t sign because he’s “he” in the letter. Only the “we’s” can sign,’ said Caroline. And Harriet took the letter to the Uncle, and the Uncle wrote back:

By all means. I am sure you will remember not to administer spells internally or externally to any one you may meet. Be home by half-past six. If anything should detain you, send a telegram. I enclose 2s. 6d. for incidental expenses. – Your dearest

    Uncle.