‘There was a queer thing happened yesterday. You know there was an angling competition. The pen was kept full on purpose. Some mischievous busybody went and opened the sluices and let all the water out. The anglers’ holiday was spoiled. No, the rain wouldn’t have spoiled it anyhow, Alice; anglers LIKE rain. The ‘Rose and Crown’ dinner was half of it wasted because the anglers were so furious that a lot of them took the next train to town. And this is the worst of all—a barge, that was on the mud in the pen below, was lifted and jammed across the river and the water tilted her over, and her cargo is on the river bottom. It was coals.’
During this speech there were four of us who knew not where to turn our agitated glances. Some of us tried bread-and-butter, but it seemed dry and difficult, and those who tried tea choked and spluttered and were sorry they had not let it alone. When the speech stopped Alice said, ‘It was us.’
And with deepest feelings she and the rest of us told all about it.
Oswald did not say much. He was turning the obstruction round and round in his pocket, and wishing with all his sentiments that he had owned up like a man when Albert’s uncle asked him before tea to tell him all about what had happened during the night.
When they had told all, Albert’s uncle told us four still more plainly, and exactly, what we had done, and how much pleasure we had spoiled, and how much of my father’s money we had wasted—because he would have to pay for the coals being got up from the bottom of the river, if they could be, and if not, for the price of the coals. And we saw it ALL.
And when he had done Alice burst out crying over her plate and said—
‘It’s no use! We HAVE tried to be good since we’ve been down here.
You don’t know how we’ve tried! And it’s all no use. I believe we are the wickedest children in the whole world, and I wish we were all dead!’
This was a dreadful thing to say, and of course the rest of us were all very shocked. But Oswald could not help looking at Albert’s uncle to see how he would take it.
He said very gravely, ‘My dear kiddie, you ought to be sorry, and I wish you to be sorry for what you’ve done. And you will be punished for it.’ (We were; our pocket-money was stopped and we were forbidden to go near the river, besides impositions miles long.) ‘But,’ he went on, ‘you mustn’t give up trying to be good. You are extremely naughty and tiresome, as you know very well.’