The House of Arden | Page 2

had never got used to the
lodgers. They hated them. At first they had tried to be friendly with the
lodgers' children, but they soon found that the lodgers' children
considered Edred and Elfrida very much beneath them, and looked
down on them accordingly. And very often the lodgers' children were
the sort of children on whom anybody might have looked down, if it
were right and kind to look down on any one. And when Master
Reginald Potts, of Peckham, puts his tongue out at you on the parade
and says, right before everybody, "Lodgings! Yah!" it is hard to feel
quite the same to him as you did before.
When there were lodgers--and. there nearly always were, for the house

was comfortable, and people who had been once came again--the
children and their aunt had to live in the very top and the very bottom
of the house--in the attics and the basement, in fact.
When there were no lodgers they used all the rooms in turn, to keep
them aired. But the children liked the big basement parlour room best,
because there all the furniture had belonged to dead-and-gone Ardens,
and all the pictures on the walls were of Ardens dead and gone. The
rooms that the lodgers had were furnished with a new sort of furniture
that had no stories belonging to it such as belonged to the old polished
oak tables and bureaux that were in the basement parlour.
Edred and Elfrida went to school every day and learned reading,
writing, arithmetic, geography, history, spelling, and useful knowledge,
all of which they hated quite impartially, which means they hated the
whole lot--one thing as much as another.
The only part of lessons they liked was the home-work, when, if Aunt
Edith had time to help them, geography became like adventures, history
like story-books, and even arithmetic suddenly seemed to mean
something.
"I wish you could teach us always," said Edred, very inky, and
interested for the first time in the exports of China; "it does seem so
silly trying to learn things that are only words in books."
"I wish I could," said Aunt Edith, "but I can't do twenty-nine thousand
and seventeen things all at once, and--" A bell jangled. "That's the
seventh time since tea." She got up and went into the kitchen. "There's
the bell again, my poor Eliza. Never mind; answer the bell, but don't
answer them, whatever they say. It doesn't do a bit of good, and it
sometimes prevents their giving you half-crowns when they leave."
"I do love it when they go," said Elfrida.
"Yes," said her aunt. "A cab top-heavy with luggage, the horse's nose
turned stationward, it's a heavenly sight--when the bill is paid and--But,
then, I'm just as glad to see the luggage coming. Chickens! when my

ship comes home we'll go and live on a desert island where there aren't
any cabs, and we won't have any lodgers in our cave."
"When I grow up," said Edred, "I shall go across the sea and look for
your ship and bring it home. I shall take a steam-tug and steer it
myself."
"Then I shall be captain," said Elfrida.
"No, I shall be captain."
You can't if you steer."
"Yes, I can!"
"No, you can't!"
"Yes, I can!"
"Well, do, then!" said Elfrida; "and while you're doing it--I know you
can't--I shall dig in the garden and find a gold-mine, and Aunt Edith
will be rolling in money when you come back, and she won't want your
silly old ship."
"Spelling next," said Aunt Edith. "How do you spell 'disagreeable'?"
"Which of us?" asked Edred acutely.
"Both," said Aunt Edith, trying to look very severe.
When you are a child you always dream of your ship coming home--of
having a hundred pounds, or a thousand, or a million pounds to spend
as you like. My favourite dream, I remember, was a thousand pounds
and an express understanding that I was not to spend it on anything
useful. And when you have dreamed of your million pounds, or your
thousand, or your hundred, you spend happy hour on hour in deciding
what presents you will buy for each of the people you are fond of, and
in picturing their surprise and delight at your beautiful presents and
your wonderful generosity. I think very few of us spend our dream

fortunes entirely on ourselves. Of course, we buy ourselves a
motor-bicycle straight away, and footballs and bats--and dolls with real
hair, and real china tea-sets, and large boxes of mixed chocolates, and
"Treasure Island," and all the books that Mrs. Ewing ever wrote, but,
when we have done that we begin to buy things for other people. It is a
beautiful dream, but too often, by the time it comes