文档介绍：FIVE CHILDREN AND IT
FIVE CHILDREN AND
IT
E. NESBIT
TO JOHN BLAND
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FIVE CHILDREN AND IT
CHAPTER 1 BEAUTIFUL AS
THE DAY
The house was three miles from the station, but before the dusty hired
fly had rattled along for five minutes the children began to put their heads
out of the carriage window and to say, 'Aren't we nearly there?' And
every time they passed a house, which was not very often, they all said,
'Oh, is THIS it?' But it never was, till they reached the very top of the
hill, just past the chalk-quarry and before e to the gravel-pit.
And then there was a white house with a green garden and an orchard
beyond, and mother said, 'Here we are!'
'How white the house is,' said Robert.
'And look at the roses,' said Anthea.
'And the plums,' said Jane.
'It is rather decent,' Cyril admitted.
The Baby said, 'Wanty go walky'; and the fly stopped with a last rattle
and jolt.
Everyone got its legs kicked or its feet trodden on in the scramble to
get out of the carriage that very minute, but no one seemed to mind.
Mother, curiously enough, was in no hurry to get out; and even when she
e down slowly and by the step, and with no jump at all, she
seemed to wish to see the boxes carried in, and even to pay the driver,
instead of joining in that first glorious rush round the garden and the
orchard and the thorny, thistly, briery, brambly wilderness beyond the
broken gate and the dry fountain at the side of the house. But the
children were wiser, for once. It was not really a pretty house at all; it
was quite ordinary, and mother thought it was rather inconvenient, and
was quite annoyed at there being no shelves, to speak of, and hardly a
cupboard in the place. Father used to say that the ironwork on the roof
and coping was like an architect's nightmare. But the house was deep in
the country, with no other house in sight, and the children had been in
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FIVE CHILDREN AND IT
London for two years, without so much as once going to