The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wouldbegoods, by E. Nesbit

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Title: The Wouldbegoods

Author: E. Nesbit

Posting Date: August 6, 2008 [EBook #794]
Release Date: January, 1997

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOULDBEGOODS ***

Produced by Jo Churcher

THE WOULDBEGOODS

BEING THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE TREASURE SEEKERS

By E. Nesbit

TO
My Dear Son
Fabian Bland

CONTENTS

1. The Jungle
2. The Wouldbegoods
3. Bill's Tombstone
4. The Tower of Mystery
5. The Waterworks
6. The Circus
7. Being Beavers; or, The Young Explorers (Arctic or Otherwise)
8. The High-Born Babe
9. Hunting the Fox
10. The Sale of Antiquities
11. The Benevolent Bar
12. The Canterbury Pilgrims
13. The Dragon's Teeth; or, Army Seed
14. Albert's Uncle's Grandmother; or, The Long-Lost

CHAPTER 1. THE JUNGLE

Children are like jam: all very well in the proper place, but you can't
stand them all over the shop--eh, what?'

These were the dreadful words of our Indian uncle. They made us feel
very young and angry; and yet we could not be comforted by calling him
names to ourselves, as you do when nasty grown-ups say nasty things,
because he is not nasty, but quite the exact opposite when not
irritated. And we could not think it ungentlemanly of him to say we were
like jam, because, as Alice says, jam is very nice indeed--only not on
furniture and improper places like that. My father said, 'Perhaps they
had better go to boarding-school.' And that was awful, because we know
Father disapproves of boarding-schools. And he looked at us and said, 'I
am ashamed of them, sir!'

Your lot is indeed a dark and terrible one when your father is ashamed
of you. And we all knew this, so that we felt in our chests just as if
we had swallowed a hard-boiled egg whole. At least, this is what
Oswald felt, and Father said once that Oswald, as the eldest, was the
representative of the family, so, of course, the others felt the same.