After tea Father came in, and he played ‘Letters’ with them and the girls, and it was a little better; but while late dinner was going on--I shall never forget it. Oswald felt like the hero of a book--‘almost at the end of his resources’. I don’t think I was ever glad of bedtime before, but that time I was.
When they had gone to bed (Daisy had to have all her strings and buttons undone for her, Dora told me, though she is nearly ten, and Denny said he couldn’t sleep without the gas being left a little bit on) we held a council in the girls’ room. We all sat on the bed--it is a mahogany fourposter with green curtains very good for tents, only the housekeeper doesn’t allow it, and Oswald said--
‘They’ll be better to-morrow,’ Alice said, ‘they’re only shy.’
Dicky said shy was all very well, but you needn’t behave like a perfect idiot.
‘They’re frightened. You see we’re all strange to them,’ Dora said.
‘We’re not wild beasts or Indians; we shan’t eat them. What have they got to be frightened of?’ Dicky said this.
Noel told us he thought they were an enchanted prince and princess who’d been turned into white rabbits, and their bodies had got changed back but not their insides.
‘It’s no use making things up about them,’ he said. ‘The thing is: what are we going to DO? We can’t have our holidays spoiled by these snivelling kids.’
‘No,’ Alice said, ‘but they can’t possibly go on snivelling for ever. Perhaps they’ve got into the habit of it with that Murdstone aunt. She’s enough to make anyone snivel.’
‘All the same,’ said Oswald, ‘we jolly well aren’t going to have another day like today. We must do something to rouse them from their snivelling leth--what’s its name?--something sudden and--what is it?--decisive.’
‘A booby trap,’ said H. O., ‘the first thing when they get up, and an apple-pie bed at night.’
But Dora would not hear of it, and I own she was right.
‘Suppose,’ she said, ‘we could get up a good play--like we did when we were Treasure Seekers.’
‘It ought to be a good long thing--to last all day,’ Dicky said, ‘and if they like they can play, and if they don’t--’
‘If they don’t, I’ll read to them,’ Alice said.
But we all said ‘No, you don’t--if you begin that way you’ll have to go on.’