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The Jungle
by
But Oswald told him to dry up.
“It’s no use making things up about them,” he said. “The thing is: what are we going to do ? We can’t have our holidays spoiled by these snivelling kids.”
“No,” Alice said, “but they can’t possibly go on snivelling forever. Perhaps they’ve got into the habit of it with that Murdstone aunt. She’s enough to make any one snivel.”
“All the same,” said Oswald, “we jolly well aren’t going to have another day like to-day. We must do something to rouse them from their snivelling leth–what’s its name?–something sudden and–what is it?–decisive.”
“A booby trap,” said H. O., “the first thing when they get up, and an apple-pie bed at night.”
But Dora would not hear of it, and I own she was right.
“Suppose,” she said, “we could get up a good play–like we did when we were Treasure Seekers.”
We said, “Well, what?” But she did not say.
“It ought to be a good long thing–to last all day,” Dicky said; “and if they like they can play, and if they don’t–“
“If they don’t, I’ll read to them,” Alice said.
But we all said: “No, you don’t; if you begin that way you’ll have to go on.”
And Dicky added: “I wasn’t going to say that at all. I was going to say if they didn’t like it they could jolly well do the other thing.”
We all agreed that we must think of something, but we none of us could, and at last the council broke up in confusion because Mrs. Blake–she is the housekeeper–came up and turned off the gas.
But next morning when we were having breakfast, and the two strangers were sitting there so pink and clean, Oswald suddenly said:
“I know; we’ll have a jungle in the garden.”
And the others agreed, and we talked about it till brek was over. The little strangers only said “I don’t know” whenever we said anything to them.
After brekker Oswald beckoned his brothers and sisters mysteriously apart and said:
“Do you agree to let me be captain to-day, because I thought of it?”
And they said they would.
Then he said: “We’ll play jungle-book, and I shall be Mowgli. The rest of you can be what you like–Mowgli’s father and mother, or any of the beasts.”
“I don’t suppose they know the book,” said Noel. “They don’t look as if they read anything, except at lesson times.”
“Then they can go on being beasts all the time,” Oswald said. “Any one can be a beast.”
So it was settled.
And now Oswald–Albert’s uncle has sometimes said he is clever at arranging things–began to lay his plans for the jungle. The day was indeed well chosen. Our Indian uncle was away; father was away; Mrs. Blake was going away, and the housemaid had an afternoon off. Oswald’s first conscious act was to get rid of the white mice–I mean the little good visitors. He explained to them that there would be a play in the afternoon, and they could be what they liked, and gave them the jungle-book to read the stories he told them to–all the ones about Mowgli. He led the strangers to a secluded spot among the sea-kale pots in the kitchen garden and left them. Then he went back to the others, and we had a jolly morning under the cedar talking about what we would do when Blakie was gone. She went just after our dinner.
When we asked Denny what he would like to be in the play, it turned out he had not read the stories Oswald told him at all, but only the “White Seal” and “Rikki Tikki.”
We then agreed to make the jungle first and dress up for our parts afterwards. Oswald was a little uncomfortable about leaving the strangers alone all the morning, so he said Denny should be his aide-de-camp, and he was really quite useful. He is rather handy with his fingers, and things that he does up do not come untied. Daisy might have come too, but she wanted to go on reading, so we let her, which is the truest manners to a visitor. Of course the shrubbery was to be the jungle, and the lawn under the cedar a forest glade, and then we began to collect the things. The cedar lawn is just nicely out of the way of the windows. It was a jolly hot day–the kind of day when the sunshine is white and the shadows are dark gray, not black like they are in the evening.