Then we asked Alice who she would try and sell it to. She said: 'I shall ask everybody who comes to the house. And while we are doing that, we can be thinking of outside people to take it to. We must be careful: there's not much more than half of it left, even counting the sugar.'

We did not wish to tell Eliza--I don't know why. And she opened the door very quickly that day, so that the Taxes and a man who came to our house by mistake for next door got away before Alice had a chance to try them with the Castilian Amoroso. But about five Eliza slipped out for half an hour to see a friend who was making her a hat for Sunday, and while she was gone there was a knock. Alice went, and we looked over the banisters. When she opened the door, she said at once, 'Will you walk in, please?' The person at the door said, 'I called to see your Pa, miss. Is he at home?'

Alice said again, 'Will you walk in, please?'

Then the person--it sounded like a man--said, 'He is in, then?'

But Alice only kept on saying, 'Will you walk in, please?' so at last the man did, rubbing his boots very loudly on the mat.

Then Alice shut the front door, and we saw that it was the butcher, with an envelope in his hand. He was not dressed in blue, like when he is cutting up the sheep and things in the shop, and he wore knickerbockers.

Alice says he came on a bicycle. She led the way into the dining-room, where the Castilian Amoroso bottle and the medicine gla.s.s were standing on the table all ready.

The others stayed on the stairs, but Oswald crept down and looked through the door-crack.

'Please sit down,' said Alice quite calmly, though she told me afterwards I had no idea how silly she felt. And the butcher sat down.

Then Alice stood quite still and said nothing, but she fiddled with the medicine gla.s.s and put the screw of brown paper straight in the Castilian bottle.

'Will you tell your Pa I'd like a word with him?' the butcher said, when he got tired of saying nothing.

'He'll be in very soon, I think,' Alice said.

And then she stood still again and said nothing. It was beginning to look very idiotic of her, and H. O. laughed. I went back and cuffed him for it quite quietly, and I don't think the butcher heard.

But Alice did, and it roused her from her stupor. She spoke suddenly, very fast indeed--so fast that I knew she had made up what she was going to say before. She had got most of it out of the circular.

She said, 'I want to call your attention to a sample of sherry wine I have here. It is called Castilian something or other, and at the price it is unequalled for flavour and bouquet.'

The butcher said, 'Well--I never!'

And Alice went on, 'Would you like to taste it?'

'Thank you very much, I'm sure, miss,' said the butcher.

Alice poured some out.

The butcher tasted a very little. He licked his lips, and we thought he was going to say how good it was. But he did not. He put down the medicine gla.s.s with nearly all the stuff left in it (we put it back in the bottle afterwards to save waste) and said, 'Excuse me, miss, but isn't it a little sweet?--for sherry I mean?'

'The _Real_ isn't,' said Alice. 'If you order a dozen it will come quite different to that--we like it best with sugar. I wish you _would_ order some.' The butcher asked why.

Alice did not speak for a minute, and then she said--

'I don't mind telling _you_: you are in business yourself, aren't you? We are trying to get people to buy it, because we shall have two shillings for every dozen we can make any one buy. It's called a purr something.'

'A percentage. Yes, I see,' said the butcher, looking at the hole in the carpet.

'You see there are reasons,' Alice went on, 'why we want to make our fortunes as quickly as we can.'

'Quite so,' said the butcher, and he looked at the place where the paper is coming off the wall.

'And this seems a good way,' Alice went on. 'We paid two shillings for the sample and instructions, and it says you can make two pounds a week easily in your leisure time.'

'I'm sure I hope you may, miss,' said the butcher. And Alice said again would he buy some?

'Sherry is my favourite wine,' he said. Alice asked him to have some more to drink.

'No, thank you, miss,' he said; 'it's my favourite wine, but it doesn't agree with me; not the least bit. But I've an uncle drinks it. Suppose I ordered him half a dozen for a Christmas present? Well, miss, here's the shilling commission, anyway,' and he pulled out a handful of money and gave her the shilling.

'But I thought the wine people paid that,' Alice said.

But the butcher said not on half-dozens they didn't. Then he said he didn't think he'd wait any longer for Father--but would Alice ask Father to write him?

Alice offered him the sherry again, but he said something about 'Not for worlds!'--and then she let him out and came back to us with the shilling, and said, 'How's that?'

And we said 'A1.'

And all the evening we talked of our fortune that we had begun to make.

n.o.body came next day, but the day after a lady came to ask for money to build an orphanage for the children of dead sailors. And we saw her. I went in with Alice. And when we had explained to her that we had only a shilling and we wanted it for something else, Alice suddenly said, 'Would you like some wine?'

And the lady said, 'Thank you very much,' but she looked surprised.

She was not a young lady, and she had a mantle with beads, and the beads had come off in places--leaving a browny braid showing, and she had printed papers about the dead sailors in a sealskin bag, and the seal had come off in places, leaving the skin bare. We gave her a tablespoonful of the wine in a proper wine-gla.s.s out of the sideboard, because she was a lady. And when she had tasted it she got up in a very great hurry, and shook out her dress and snapped her bag shut, and said, 'You naughty, wicked children! What do you mean by playing a trick like this? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! I shall write to your Mamma about it. You dreadful little girl!--you might have poisoned me. But your Mamma...'

Then Alice said, 'I'm very sorry; the butcher liked it, only he said it was sweet. And please don't write to Mother. It makes Father so unhappy when letters come for her!'--and Alice was very near crying.

'What do you mean, you silly child?' said the lady, looking quite bright and interested. 'Why doesn't your Father like your Mother to have letters--eh?'

And Alice said, 'OH, you...!' and began to cry, and bolted out of the room.

Then I said, 'Our Mother is dead, and will you please go away now?'

The lady looked at me a minute, and then she looked quite different, and she said, 'I'm very sorry. I didn't know. Never mind about the wine. I daresay your little sister meant it kindly.' And she looked round the room just like the butcher had done. Then she said again, 'I didn't know--I'm very sorry...'

So I said, 'Don't mention it,' and shook hands with her, and let her out. Of course we couldn't have asked her to buy the wine after what she'd said. But I think she was not a bad sort of person. I do like a person to say they're sorry when they ought to be--especially a grown-up. They do it so seldom. I suppose that's why we think so much of it.

But Alice and I didn't feel jolly for ever so long afterwards. And when I went back into the dining-room I saw how different it was from when Mother was here, and we are different, and Father is different, and nothing is like it was. I am glad I am not made to think about it every day.

I went and found Alice, and told her what the lady had said, and when she had finished crying we put away the bottle and said we would not try to sell any more to people who came. And we did not tell the others--we only said the lady did not buy any--but we went up on the Heath, and some soldiers went by and there was a Punch-and-judy show, and when we came back we were better.

The bottle got quite dusty where we had put it, and perhaps the dust of ages would have laid thick and heavy on it, only a clergyman called when we were all out. He was not our own clergyman--Mr Bristow is our own clergyman, and we all love him, and we would not try to sell sherry to people we like, and make two pounds a week out of them in our spare time. It was another clergyman, just a stray one; and he asked Eliza if the dear children would not like to come to his little Sunday school. We always spend Sunday afternoons with Father. But as he had left the name of his vicarage with Eliza, and asked her to tell us to come, we thought we would go and call on him, just to explain about Sunday afternoons, and we thought we might as well take the sherry with us.

'I won't go unless you all go too,' Alice said, 'and I won't do the talking.'

Dora said she thought we had much better not go; but we said 'Rot!' and it ended in her coming with us, and I am glad she did.

Oswald said he would do the talking if the others liked, and he learned up what to say from the printed papers.

We went to the Vicarage early on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and rang at the bell. It is a new red house with no trees in the garden, only very yellow mould and gravel. It was all very neat and dry. Just before we rang the bell we heard some one inside call 'Jane! Jane!' and we thought we would not be Jane for anything. It was the sound of the voice that called that made us sorry for her.