The Story of the Treasure-Seekers E-Book

Edith Nesbit

• Herausgeber: Edith Nesbit
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Edith Nesbit was born in London. She grew up in France, Germany, and Kent, and wrote over 60 books of fiction for children, including Five Children and It, The Wouldbegoods, and The Railway Children. She died in 1924 in New Romney, Kent, England.

Leseprobe

The Story of the Treasure-SeekersEdith Nesbit

Table of Contents

The Council of Ways and Means

Digging for Treasure

Being Detectives

Good Hunting

The Poet and the Editor

Noel’s Princess

Being Bandits

Being Editors

The G. B.

Lord Tottenham

Castilian Amoroso

The Nobleness of Oswald

The Robber and the Burglar

The Divining-Rod

‘Lo, the Poor Indian!’

The End of the Treasure-Seeking

Chapter 1.

The Council of Ways and Means

This is the story of the different ways we looked for treasure, and I think when you have read it you will see that we were not lazy about the looking.

There are some things I must tell before I begin to tell about the treasure-seeking, because I have read books myself, and I know how beastly it is when a story begins, “‘Alas!” said Hildegarde with a deep sigh, “we must look our last on this ancestral home”’— and then some one else says something — and you don’t know for pages and pages where the home is, or who Hildegarde is, or anything about it. Our ancestral home is in the Lewisham Road. It is semi-detached and has a garden, not a large one. We are the Bastables. There are six of us besides Father. Our Mother is dead, and if you think we don’t care because I don’t tell you much about her you only show that you do not understand people at all. Dora is the eldest. Then Oswald — and then Dicky. Oswald won the Latin prize at his preparatory school — and Dicky is good at sums. Alice and Noel are twins: they are ten, and Horace Octavius is my youngest brother. It is one of us that tells this story — but I shall not tell you which: only at the very end perhaps I will. While the story is going on you may be trying to guess, only I bet you don’t. It was Oswald who first thought of looking for treasure. Oswald often thinks of very interesting things. And directly he thought of it he did not keep it to himself, as some boys would have done, but he told the others, and said —

‘I’ll tell you what, we must go and seek for treasure: it is always what you do to restore the fallen fortunes of your House.’

Dora said it was all very well. She often says that. She was trying to mend a large hole in one of Noel’s stockings. He tore it on a nail when we were playing shipwrecked mariners on top of the chicken-house the day H. O. fell off and cut his chin: he has the scar still. Dora is the only one of us who ever tries to mend anything. Alice tries to make things sometimes. Once she knitted a red scarf for Noel because his chest is delicate, but it was much wider at one end than the other, and he wouldn’t wear it. So we used it as a pennon, and it did very well, because most of our things are black or grey since Mother died; and scarlet was a nice change. Father does not like you to ask for new things. That was one way we had of knowing that the fortunes of the ancient House of Bastable were really fallen. Another way was that there was no more pocket-money — except a penny now and then to the little ones, and people did not come to dinner any more, like they used to, with pretty dresses, driving up in cabs — and the carpets got holes in them — and when the legs came off things they were not sent to be mended, and we gave