The Story of the Treasure Seekers quotes

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 someone 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 semidetached and has a garden, not a large one. We are the Bastables. There are six of us besides Father.

Father was very ill after Mother died; and while he was ill his business-partner went to Spain—and there was never much money afterwards. I don’t know why. Then the servants left and there was only one, a General.

A great deal of your comfort and happiness depends on having a good General.

The last but one was nice: she used to make jolly good currant puddings for us, and let us have the dish on the floor and pretend it was a wild boar we were killing with our forks.

a policeman brought it, and we were so frightened. But Father said it was all right, only when he went up to kiss the girls after they were in bed they said he had been crying, though I’m sure that’s not true.

Because only cowards and snivellers cry, and my Father is the bravest man in the world.

So you see it was time we looked for treasure; and Oswald said so, and Dora said it was all very well. But the others agreed with Oswald. So we held a council.

I am afraid the last chapter was rather dull. It is always dull in books when people talk and talk, and don’t do anything, but I was obliged to put it in, or else you wouldn’t have understood all the rest.

The best part of books is when things are happening. That is the best part of real things too.

This is why I shall not tell you in this story about all the days when nothing happened. You will not catch me saying, “thus the sad days passed slowly by”—or “the years rolled on their weary course,”—or “time went on”—because it is silly;

The best part of books is when things are happening. That is the best part of real things too. This is why I shall not tell you in this story about all the days when nothing happened.

You will not catch me saying, “thus the sad days passed slowly by”⁠—or “the years rolled on their weary course,”⁠—or “time went on”⁠—because it is silly; of course time goes on⁠—whether you say so or not.

So I shall just tell you the nice, interesting parts—and in between you will understand that we had our meals and got up and went to bed, and dull things like that.

I said so to Albert-next-door’s uncle, who writes books, and he said, “Quite right, that’s what we call selection, a necessity of true art.” And he is very clever indeed. So you see.

I have often thought that if the people who write books for children knew a little more it would be better.

I shall not tell you anything about us except what I should like to know about if I was reading the story and you were writing it.

We wasted a little time getting them dusted, because the girls wouldn’t dig with spades that had cobwebs on them.

Girls would never do for African explorers or anything like that, they are too beastly particular.

It was no use doing the thing by halves. We marked out a sort of square in the mouldy part of the garden, about three yards across, and began to dig. But we found nothing except worms and stones—and the ground was very hard.

But he would not go in head first, the proper way, and dig with his hands as we had done, and though Oswald was angry at the time, for he hates snivellers, yet afterwards he owned that perhaps it was just as well.

You should never be afraid to own that perhaps you were mistaken⁠—but it is cowardly to do it unless you are quite sure you are in the wrong.

“Let me go in feet first,” said Albert-next-door. “I’ll dig with my boots—I will truly, honour bright.”

You should always try to think of these little things.

Thinking of other people’s comfort makes them like you.

Alice held Pincher, and we all shouted, “Kick! dig with your feet, for all you’re worth!”

I wish to be quite fair, but I cannot remember exactly who said it. Oswald thinks he said it, and Dora says it was Dicky, but

Oswald is too much of a man to quarrel about a little thing like that.

“I should like to be a detective,” said—perhaps it was Dicky, but I think not—“and find out strange and hidden crimes.”

She stroked Pincher’s ears, but he had gone to sleep because he knew well enough that all the suet pudding was finished.

He is a very sensible dog.

“You always get hold of the wrong end of the stick,” Oswald said. “You can’t choose what crimes you’ll be a detective about. You just have to get a suspicious circumstance, and then you look for a clue and follow it up.

We had never heard of her, and she seemed much too jolly for a poet.

Good old Kipling! We owe him those two shillings, as well as the Jungle Books!

He looked very tired and sleepy, as if he had got up very early in the morning; but he was kind, and we liked him. Oswald thought he looked clever.

Oswald is considered a judge of faces.

“Well,” said he, “so you are Mrs. Leslie’s friends?”

Then the other gentleman said something about Maecenas, and we went off to see the printing office with at least one pound seven in our pockets.

It was good hunting, and no mistake!

But he never put Noël’s poetry in the Daily Recorder. It was quite a long time afterwards we saw a sort of story thing in a magazine, on the station bookstall, and that kind, sleepy-looking Editor had written it, I suppose.

and when we had done we scratched a hole under a tree and buried the papers, because we know it spoils pretty places to leave beastly, greasy papers lying about. I remember Mother teaching me and Dora that, when we were quite little.

I wish everybody’s parents would teach them this useful lesson, and the same about orange peel.

When we’d eaten everything there was, Alice whispered—

And until those fifteen shillings were spent we felt almost as jolly as though our fortunes had been properly restored.

You do not notice your general fortune so much, as long as you have money in your pocket.

This is why so many children with regular pocket-money have never felt it their duty to seek for treasure. So, perhaps, our not having pocket-money was a blessing in disguise. But the disguise was quite impenetrable, like the villains’ in the books;

And we all saw at once that it could be done.

Pincher is very well bred, and he does know one or two things, though we never could teach him to beg.

But if you tell him to hold on—he will do it, even if you only say “Seize him!” in a whisper.

“Oh, do let Noël go, dear, good, kind Lord Tottenham; he’ll faint if you don’t, I know he will, he does sometimes. Oh, I wish we’d never done it! Dora said it was wrong.”

“Dora displayed considerable common sense,” said Lord Tottenham, and he let Noël go.

And Alice put her arm round Noël and tried to cheer him up, but he was all trembly, and as white as paper.

“

Always remember never to do a dishonourable thing, for money or for anything else in the world.

”

And we promised we would remember. Then he took off his hat, and we took off ours, and he went away, and we went home.

I never felt so cheap in all my life!

Dora said, “I told you so,” but we didn’t mind even that so much, though it was indeed hard to bear. It was what Lord Tottenham had said about ungentlemanly. We didn’t go on to the Heath for a week after that;

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 grownup. 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.

and they were really Noël’s flowers, only he could not have sent them to Hastings, and Oswald knew he would say “Yes” if Oswald asked him. Oswald sacrificed his family pride because of his little sister’s danger.

I do not say he was a noble boy⁠—I just tell you what he did, and you can decide for yourself about the nobleness.

He put on his oldest clothes—they’re much older than any you would think he had if you saw him when he was tidy—and he took those yellow chrysanthemums and he walked with them to Greenwich Station and waited for the trains bringing people from London.

But he kept the pistol pointed at the robber, and—you will hardly believe it, but it is true—the robber threw down the screwdriver clattering on the other tools, and he did throw up his hands, and said—

“I surrender; don’t shoot me! How many of you are there?”

So Dicky said, “You are outnumbered. Are you armed?”

“Ah,” said the robber; “but I hadn’t his luck or his pluck, or something. He stuck to it and won Trafalgar, didn’t he? ‘Kiss me, Hardy’—and all that, eh? I couldn’t stick to it—I had to resign.

And nobody kissed me.

”

We had turned out the gas, so that Father should have a jolly good surprise when he did come home, and we sat and talked as pleasant as could be.

I never liked a new man better than I liked that robber.

And I felt so sorry for him. He told us he had been a war-correspondent and an editor, in happier days, as well as a horse-stealer and a colonel of dragoons.

and put his boots back in the fender to go on steaming, and then we all talked at once.

It was the most wonderful adventure we ever had, though it wasn’t treasure-seeking⁠—at least not ours.

I suppose it was the burglar’s treasure-seeking, but he didn’t get much—and our robber said he didn’t believe a word about those kids that were so like Alice and me.

But H. O. did not care about waiting, and I felt for him.

Dora is rather like grownups in that way; she does not seem to understand that when you want a thing you do want it, and that you don’t wish to wait, even a minute.

So we went and asked Albert-next-door’s uncle. He was pegging away at one of the rotten novels he has to write to make his living, but he said we weren’t interrupting him at all.

That’s one thing I like Albert’s uncle for. He always talks like a book, and yet you can always understand what he means.

I think he is more like us, inside of his mind, than most grown-up people are. He can pretend beautifully.

I never met anyone else so good at it, except our robber, and we began it, with him.

… the others got tired, so the divining-rod fell on a certain spot, and I said, ‘Dig,’ and we dug—it was where the loose board is for the gas men—and then there really and truly was a half-sovereign lying under the boards, and here it is.”

Albert’s uncle took it and looked at it.

“The great high priest will bite it to see if it’s good,” he said, and he did. “I congratulate you,” he went on; “you are indeed among those favoured by the Immortals. First you find half-crowns in the garden, and now this.

So Father laughed and said, “All right.” And he said we might do as we liked with the half-sovereign. “Only for goodness’ sake don’t try to go in for business with it,” he said. “

It’s always a mistake to go into business with an insufficient capital.

”

And we gave H. O. some of the hardbake, to make it easier for him to keep his vow.

The next day was the most rememorable day in all our lives, but we didn’t know that then. But that is another story. I think that is such a useful way to know when you can’t think how to end up a chapter.

I learnt it from another writer named Kipling. I’ve mentioned him before, I believe, but he deserves it!

“Oswald Bastable,” I said; and

I do hope you people who are reading this story have not guessed before that I was Oswald all the time.

“Oswald Bastable, eh? Bless my soul!” said the poor Indian. “Yes, I’ll dine with you, Mr. Oswald Bastable, with all the pleasure in life. Very kind and cordial invitation, I’m sure. Good night, sir. At one o’clock, I presume?”

Now it is coming near the end of our treasure-seeking, and the end was so wonderful that now nothing is like it used to be.

It is like as if our fortunes had been in an earthquake, and after those, you know, everything comes out wrong-way up.

The day after the Uncle speared the pudding with us opened in gloom and sadness. But you never know. It was destined to be a day when things happened. Yet no sign of this appeared in the early morning. Then all was misery and upsetness.

We kept as quiet as we could, and I made H. O. do some lessons, like the G.B. had advised us to. But it was very dull.

There are some days when you seem to have got to the end of all the things that could ever possibly happen to you, and you feel you will spend all the rest of your life doing dull things just the same way.

Days like this are generally wet days. But, as I said, you never know.

Dora said, “It is a pity someone doesn’t tell him this isn’t the house.”

And then from inside the cab someone put out a foot feeling for the step, like a tortoise’s foot coming out from under his shell when you are holding him off the ground, and then a leg came and more parcels, and then Noël cried⁠—

Eliza opened the door, and we were all leaning over the banisters. Father heard the noise of parcels and boxes in the hall, and he came out without remembering how bad his cold was.