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      The Canterbury Pilgrims

       Table of Contents

      The author of these few lines really does hope to goodness that no one will be such an owl as to think from the number of things we did when we were in the country, that we were wretched, neglected little children, whose grown-up relations sparkled in the bright haunts of pleasure, and whirled in the giddy what's-its-name of fashion, while we were left to weep forsaken at home. It was nothing of the kind, and I wish you to know that my father was with us a good deal—and Albert's uncle gave up a good many of his valuable hours to us. And the father of Denny and Daisy came now and then, and other people, quite as many as we wished to see. And we had some very decent times with them; and enjoyed ourselves very much indeed, thank you. In some ways the good times you have with grown-ups are better than the ones you have by yourselves. At any rate, they are safer. It is almost impossible, then, to do anything fatal without being pulled up short by a grown-up ere yet the deed is done. And, if you are careful, anything that goes wrong can be looked on as the grown-up's fault. But these secure pleasures are not so interesting to tell about as the things you do when there is no one to stop you on the edge of the rash act.

      It is curious, too, that many of our most interesting games happened when grown-ups were far away. For instance, when we were pilgrims.

      It was just after the business of the benevolent bar, and it was a wet day. It is not so easy to amuse yourself indoors on a wet day as older people seem to think, especially when you are far removed from your own home, and haven't got all your own books and things. The girls were playing Halma—which is a beastly game—Noël was writing poetry, H. O. was singing "I don't know what to do" to the tune of "Canaan's Happy Shore." It goes like this, and is very tiresome to listen to:

      "I don't know what to do—oo—oo—oo!

       I don't know what to do—oo—oo!

       It is a beastly rainy day

       And I don't know what to do."

      The rest of us were trying to make him shut up. We put a carpet-bag over his head, but he went on inside it; and then we sat on him, but he sang under us; we held him upside down and made him crawl head first under the sofa, but when, even there, he kept it up, we saw that nothing short of violence would induce him to silence, so we let him go. And then he said we had hurt him, and we said we were only in fun, and he said if we were he wasn't, and ill feeling might have grown up even out of a playful brotherly act like ours had been, only Alice chucked the Halma and said:

      "Let dogs delight. Come on—let's play something."

      Then Dora said, "Yes, but look here. Now we're all together, I do want to say something. What about the Wouldbegoods Society?"

      Many of us groaned, and one said, "Hear! hear!" I will not say which one, but it was not Oswald.

      "No, but really," Dora said, "I don't want to be preachy—but you know we did say we'd try to be good. And it says in a book I was reading only yesterday that not being naughty is not enough. You must be good. And we've hardly done anything. The Golden Deed book's almost empty."

      "Couldn't we have a book of leaden deeds," said Noël, coming out of his poetry, "then there'd be plenty for Alice to write about if she wants to, or brass or zinc or aluminium deeds? We sha'n't ever fill the book with golden ones."

      H. O. had rolled himself in the red table-cloth, and said Noël was only advising us to be naughty, and again peace waved in the balance. But Alice said, "Oh, H. O., don't—he didn't mean that; but really and truly, I wish wrong things weren't so interesting. You begin to do a noble act, and then it gets so exciting, and before you know where you are you are doing something wrong as hard as you can lick."

      "And enjoying it too," Dicky said.

      "It's very curious," Denny said, "but you don't seem to be able to be certain inside yourself whether what you're doing is right if you happen to like doing it, but if you don't like doing it you know quite well. I only thought of that just now. I wish Noël would make a poem about it."

      "I am," Noël said; "it began about a crocodile, but it is finishing itself up quite different from what I meant it to at first. Just wait a minute."

      He wrote very hard while his kind brothers and sisters and his little friends waited the minute he had said, and then he read:

      "The crocodile is very wise,

       He lives in the Nile with little eyes,

       He eats the hippopotamus too,

       And if he could he would eat up you.

      "The lovely woods and starry skies

       He looks upon with glad surprise;

       He sees the riches of the east,

       And the tiger and lion, kings of beast.

      "So let all be good and beware

       Of saying sha'n't and won't and don't care;

       For doing wrong is easier far

       Than any of the right things I know about are.

      And I couldn't make it king of beasts because of it not rhyming with east, so I put the s off beasts on to king. It comes even in the end."

      We all said it was a very nice piece of poetry. Noël gets really ill if you don't like what he writes, and then he said, "If it's trying that's wanted, I don't care how hard we try to be good, but we may as well do it some nice way. Let's be Pilgrim's Progress, like I wanted to at first."

      And we were all beginning to say we didn't want to, when suddenly Dora said, "Oh, look here! I know. We'll be the Canterbury Pilgrims. People used to go pilgrimages to make themselves good."

      "With pease in their shoes," the Dentist said. "It's in a piece of poetry—only the man boiled his pease—which is quite unfair."

      "Oh yes," said H. O., "and cocked hats."

      "Not cocked—cockled"—it was Alice who said this. "And they had staffs and scrips, and they told each other tales. We might as well."

      Oswald and Dora had been reading about the Canterbury Pilgrims in a book called A Short History of the English People. It is not at all short really—three fat volumes—but it has jolly good pictures. It was written by a gentleman named Green. So Oswald said:

      "All right. I'll be the Knight."

      "I'll be the wife of Bath," Dora said. "What will you be, Dicky?"

      "Oh, I don't care, I'll be Mr. Bath if you like."

      "We don't know much about the people," Alice said. "How many were there?"

      "Thirty," Oswald replied, "but we needn't be all of them. There's the Nun-Priest."

      "Is that a man or a woman?"

      Oswald said he could not be sure by the picture, but Alice and Noël could be it between them. So that was settled. Then we got the book and looked at the dresses to see if we could make up dresses for the parts. At first we thought we would, because it would be something to do, and it was a very wet day; but they looked difficult, especially the Miller's. Denny wanted to be the Miller, but in the end he was the Doctor, because it was next door to Dentist, which is what we call him for short. Daisy was to be the Prioress—because she is good, and has "a soft little red mouth," and H. O. would be the Manciple (I don't know what that is), because the picture of him is bigger than most of the others, and he said Manciple was a nice portmanteau word—half mandarin and half disciple.

      "Let's