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We all went to sleep in the afternoon, though. Quite without meaning to.
Oswald went up on the roof, before breakfast, to see if he could find the hole where the rain had come in. He did not find any hole, but he found the cricket-ball jammed in the top of a gutter-pipe, which he afterwards knew ran down inside the wall of the house and ran into the moat below. It seems a silly dodge, but so it was.
When the men went up after breakfast to see what had caused the flood they said there must have been a good half-foot of water on the leads the night before for it to have risen high enough to go above the edge of the lead, and of course when it got above the lead there was nothing to stop it running down under it, and soaking through the ceiling. The parapet and the roofs kept it from tumbling off down the sides of the house in the natural way. They said there must have been some obstruction in the pipe which ran down into the house, but whatever it was the water had washed it away, for they put wires down, and the pipe was quite clear.
While we were being told this Oswald's trembling fingers felt at the wet cricket-ball in his pocket. And he knew, but he could not tell. He heard them wondering what the obstruction could have been, and all the time he had the obstruction in his pocket, and never said a single word.
I do not seek to defend him. But it really was an awful thing to have been the cause of; and Mrs. Pettigrew is but harsh and hasty. But this, as Oswald knows too well, is no excuse for his silent conduct.
That night at tea Albert's uncle was rather silent too. At last he looked upon us with a glance full of intelligence, and said:
"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 then 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."
Alice, Dicky, and Noël began to cry at about this time.
"But you are not the wickedest children in the world by any means."
Then he stood up and straightened his collar, and put his hands in his pockets.
"You're very unhappy now," he said, "and you deserve to be. But I will say one thing to you."
Then he said a thing which Oswald at least will never forget (though but little he deserved it, with the obstruction in his pocket, unowned up to all the time).
He said, "I have known you all for four years—and you know as well as I do how many scrapes I've seen you in and out of—but I've never known one of you tell a lie, and I've never known one of you do a mean or dishonorable action. And when you have done wrong you are always sorry. Now this is something to stand firm on. You'll learn to be good in the other ways some day."
He took his hands out of his pockets, and his face looked different, so that three of the four guilty creatures knew he was no longer adamant, and they threw themselves into his arms. Dora, Denny, Daisy, and H. O., of course, were not in it, and I think they thanked their stars.
Oswald did not embrace Albert's uncle. He stood there and made up his mind he would go for a soldier. He gave the wet ball one last squeeze, and took his hand out of his pocket, and said a few words before going to enlist. He said:
"The others may deserve what you say. I hope they do, I'm sure. But I don't, because it was my rotten cricket-ball that stopped up the pipe and caused the midnight flood in our bedroom. And I knew it quite early this morning. And I didn't own up."
Oswald stood there covered with shame, and he could feel the hateful cricket-ball heavy and cold against the top of his leg, through the pocket.
Albert's uncle said—and his voice made Oswald hot all over, but not with shame—he said—
I shall not tell you what he said. It is no one's business but Oswald's; only I will own it made Oswald not quite so anxious to run away for a soldier as he had been before.
That owning up was the hardest thing I ever did. They did put that in the Book of Golden Deeds, though it was not a kind or generous act, and did no good to any one or anything except Oswald's own inside feelings. I must say I think they might have let it alone. Oswald would rather forget it. Especially as Dicky wrote it in and put this:
"Oswald acted a lie, which, he knows, is as bad as telling one. But he owned up when he needn't have, and this condones his sin. We think he was a thorough brick to do it."
Alice scratched this out afterwards and wrote the record of the incident in more flattering terms. But Dicky had used father's ink, and she used Mrs. Pettigrew's, so any one can read his underneath the scratching outs.
The others were awfully friendly to Oswald, to show they agreed with Albert's uncle in thinking I deserved as much share as any one in any praise there might be going.
It was Dora who said it all came from my quarrelling with Noël about that rotten cricket-ball; but Alice, gently yet firmly, made her shut up.
I let Noël have the ball. It had been thoroughly soaked, but it dried all right. But it could never be the same to me after what it had done and what I had done.
I hope you will try to agree with Albert's uncle and not think foul scorn of Oswald because of this story. Perhaps you have done things nearly as bad yourself sometimes. If you have, you will know how "owning up" soothes the savage breast and alleviates the gnawings of remorse.
If you have never done naughty acts, I expect it is only because you never had the sense to think of anything.
The Circus
The ones of us who had started the Society of the Wouldbegoods