ONE day when we suddenly found that we had half a crown we decided that we really ought to try Dicky’s way of restoring our fallen fortunes while yet the deed was in our power. Because it might easily have happened to us never to have half a crown again. So we decided to dally no longer with being journalists and bandits and things like them, but to send for sample and instructions how to earn two pounds a week each in our spare time. We had seen the advertisement in the paper, and we had always wanted to do it, but we had never had the money to spare before, somehow. The advertisement says: “Any lady or gentleman can easily earn two pounds a week in their spare time. Sample and instructions, two page: 170 shillings. Packed free from observation.” A good deal of the half‐crown was Dora’s. It came from her godmother; but she said she would not mind letting Dicky have it if he would pay her back before Christmas, and if we were sure it was right to try to make our fortune that way. Of course that was quite easy, because out of two pounds a week in your spare time you can easily pay all your debts, and have almost as much left as you began with; and as to the right we told her to dry up.
Dicky had always thought that this was really the best way to restore our fallen fortunes, and we were glad that now he had a chance of trying because of course we wanted the two pounds a week each, and besides, we were rather tired of Dicky’s always saying when our ways didn’t turn out well, “Why don’t you try the sample and instructions about our spare time?”
When we found out about our half‐crown we got the paper. No?l was playing admirals in it, but he had made the cocked hat without tearing the paper, and we found the advertisement, and it said just the same as ever. So we got a two‐shilling postal order and a stamp, and what was left of the money it was agreed page: 171 we would spend in ginger‐beer to drink success to trade.
We got some nice paper out of Father’s study, and Dicky wrote the letter, and we put in the money and put on the stamp, and made H.O. post it. Then we drank the ginger‐beer, and then we waited for the sample and instructions. It seemed a long time coming, and the postman got quite tired of us running out and stopping him in the street to ask if it had come.
But on the third morning it came. It was quite a large parcel, and it was packed, as the advertisement said it would be, “free from observation.” That means it was in a box; and inside the box was some stiff browny cardboard, crinkled like the galvanized iron on the tops of chicken‐houses, and inside that was a lot of paper, some of it printed and some scrappy, and in the very middle of it all a bottle, not very large, and black, and sealed on the top of the cork with yellow sealing‐wax.
We looked at it as it lay on the nursery table, and while all the others grabbed at the papers to see what the printing said, Oswald went to look for the corkscrew, so as to see what was inside the bottle. He found the page: 172 corkscrew in the dresser drawer—it always gets there, though it is supposed to be in the sideboard drawer in the dining‐room—and when he got back the others had read most of the printed papers.
“I don’t think it’s much good, and I don’t think it’s quite nice to sell wine,” Dora said “and besides, it’s not easy to suddenly begin to sell things when you aren’t used to it.”
“I don’t know,” said Alice; “I believe I could.”
They all looked rather down in the mouth, though, and Oswald asked how you were to make your two pounds a week.
“Why, you’ve got to get people to taste that stuff in the bottle. It’s sherry—Castilian Amoroso its name is—and then you get them to buy it, and then you write to the people and tell them the other people want the wine, and then for every dozen you sell you get two shillings from the wine people, so if you sell twenty dozen a week you get your two pounds. I don’t think we shall sell as much as that,” said Dicky.
“We might not the first week,” Alice said, “but when people found out how nice it was, they would want more and more. page: 173 And if we only got ten shillings a week it would be something to begin with, wouldn’t it?”
Oswald said he should jolly well think it would, and then Dicky took the cork out with the corkscrew. The cork broke a good deal, and some of the bits went into the bottle. Dora got the medicine glass that has the teaspoons and tablespoons marked on it, and we agreed to have a teaspoonful each, to see what it was like.
“No one must have more than that,” Dora said, “however nice it is.” Dora behaved rather as if it were her bottle. I suppose it was, because she had lent the money for it.
Then she measured out the teaspoonful, and she had first go, because of being the eldest. We asked at once what it was like, but Dora could not speak just then.
Then she said, “It’s like the tonic No?l had in the spring; but perhaps sherry ought to be like that.”
Then it was Oswald’s turn. He thought it was very burny; but he said nothing. He wanted to see first what the others would say.
Dicky said his was simply beastly, and Alice said No?l could taste next if he liked.
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No?l said it was the golden wine of the gods, but he had to put his handkerchief up to his mouth all the same, and I saw the face he made.
Then H.O. had his, and he spat it out in the fire, which was very rude and nasty, and we told him so.
Then it was Alice’s turn. She said, “Only half a teaspoonful for me, Dora. We mustn’t use it all up.” And she tasted it and said nothing.
Then Dicky said: “Look here, I chuck this. I’m not going to hawk round such beastly stuff. Any one who likes can have the bottle. Quis?”
And Alice got out “Ego” before the rest of us. Then she said, “I know what’s the matter with it. It wants sugar.”
And at once we all saw that that was all there was the matter with the stuff. So we got two lumps of sugar and crushed it on the floor with one of the big wooden bricks till it was powdery, and mixed it with some of the wine up to the tablespoon mark, and it was quite different, and not nearly so nasty.
“You see it’s all right when you get used to it,” Dicky said. I think he was sorry he had said “Quis?” in such a hurry.
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“Of course,” Alice said, “it’s rather dusty. We must crush the sugar carefully in clean paper before we put it in the bottle.”
Dora said she was afraid it would be cheating to make one bottle nicer than what people would get when they ordered a dozen bottles, but Alice said Dora always made a fuss about everything, and really it would be quite honest.
“You see,” she said, “I shall just tell them, quite truthfully, what we have done to it, and when their dozens come they can do it for themselves.”
So then we crushed eight more lumps, very cleanly and carefully between newspapers, and shook it up well in the bottle, and corked it up with a screw of paper, brown and not news, for fear of the poisonous printing ink getting wet and dripping down into the wine and killing people. We made Pincher have a taste, and he sneezed for ever so long, and after that he used to go under the sofa whenever we showed him the bottle.
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: page: 176 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. page: 177 She led the way into the dining‐room, where the Castilian Amoroso bottle and the medicine glass 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 glass 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 page: 178 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 glass 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 page: 179 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.
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“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.
Nobody 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 s............