Five Children and It

Five Children and It

CHAPTER 1

The house was three miles from the station, but before the dusty

hired fly had rattled along for five minutes the children began to

put their heads out of the carriage window and to say, 'Aren't we

nearly there?' And every time they passed a house, which was not

very often, they all said, 'Oh, is THIS it?' But it never was,

till they reached the very top of the hill, just past the

chalk-quarry and before you come to the gravel-pit. And then there

was a white house with a green garden and an orchard beyond, and

mother said, 'Here we are!'

'How white the house is,' said Robert.

'And look at the roses,' said Anthea.

'And the plums,' said Jane.

'It is rather decent,' Cyril admitted.

The Baby said, 'Wanty go walky'; and the fly stopped with a last

rattle and jolt.

Everyone got its legs kicked or its feet trodden on in the scramble

to get out of the carriage that very minute, but no one seemed to

mind. Mother, curiously enough, was in no hurry to get out; and

even when she had come down slowly and by the step, and with no

jump at all, she seemed to wish to see the boxes carried in, and

even to pay the driver, instead of joining in that first glorious

rush round the garden and the orchard and the thorny, thistly,

briery, brambly wilderness beyond the broken gate and the dry

fountain at the side of the house. But the children were wiser,

for once. It was not really a pretty house at all; it was quite

ordinary, and mother thought it was rather inconvenient, and was

quite annoyed at there being no shelves, to speak of, and hardly a

cupboard in the place. Father used to say that the ironwork on the

roof and coping was like an architect's nightmare. But the house

was deep in the country, with no other house in sight, and the

children had been in London for two years, without so much as once

going to the seaside even for a day by an excursion train, and so

the White House seemed to them a sort of Fairy Palace set down in

an Earthly Paradise. For London is like prison for children,

especially if their relations are not rich.

Of course there are the shops and the theatres, and Maskelyne and

Cook's, and things, but if your people are rather poor you don't

get taken to the theatres, and you can't buy things out of the

shops; and London has none of those nice things that children may

play with without hurting the things or themselves - such as trees

and sand and woods and waters. And nearly everything in London is

the wrong sort of shape - all straight lines and flat streets,

instead of being all sorts of odd shapes, like things are in the

country. Trees are all different, as you know, and I am sure some

tiresome person must have told you that there are no two blades of

grass exactly alike. But in streets, where the blades of grass

don't grow, everything is like everything else. This is why so

many children who live in towns are so extremely naughty. They do

not know what is the matter with them, and no more do their fathers

and mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, tutors, governesses, and

nurses; but I know. And so do you now. Children in the country

are naughty sometimes, too, but that is for quite different

reasons.

The children had explored the gardens and the outhouses thoroughly

before they were caught and cleaned for tea, and they saw quite

well that they were certain to be happy at the White House. They

thought so from the first moment, but when they found the back of

the house covered with jasmine, and in white flower, and smelling

like a bottle of the most expensive scent that is ever given for a