"E. Nesbit - The Five Children Omnibus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nesbit Edith)

'And the plums,тАЩ said Jane.

'It is rather decent,тАЩ Cyril admitted.

The Baby said, тАШWanty 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 had come 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 London for two years, without so much as once going to the seaside
even for a day by an excursion train, and so the White House seemed to them a sort of Fairy Palace set
down in an Earthly Paradise. For London is like prison for children, especially if their relations are not
rich.

Of course there are the shops and the theatres, and Maskelyne and Cook's, and things, but if your
people are rather poor you don't get taken to the theatres, and you can't buy things out of the shops; and
London has none of those nice things that children may play with without hurting the things or
themselves-such as trees and sand and woods and waters. And nearly everything in London is the wrong
sort of shape-all straight lines and flat streets, instead of being all sorts of odd shapes, like things are in
the country. Trees are all different, as you know, and I am sure some tiresome person must have told you
that there are no two blades of grass exactly alike. But in streets, where the blades of grass don't grow,
everything is like everything else. This is why so many children who live in towns are so extremely
naughty. They do not know what is the matter with them, and no more do their fathers and mothers,
aunts, uncles, cousins, tutors, governesses, and nurses; but I know. And so do you now. Children in the
country are naughty sometimes, too, but that is for quite different reasons.

The children had explored the gardens and the outhouses thoroughly before they were caught and
cleaned for tea, and they saw quite well that they were certain to be happy at the White House. They
thought so from the first moment, but when they found the back of the house covered with jasmine, an in
white flower, and smelling like a bottle of the most expensive scent that is ever given for a birthday
present; and when they had seen the lawn, all green and smooth, and quite different from the brown grass
in the gardens at Camden Town; and when they had found the stable with a loft over it and some old hay
still left, they were almost certain; and when Robert had found the broken swing and tumbled out of it
and got a lump on his head the size of an egg, and Cyril had nipped his finger in the door of a hutch that
seemed made to keep rabbits in, if you ever had any, they had no longer any doubts whatever.

The best part of it all was that there were no rules about not going to places and not doing things. In
London almost everything is labelled тАШYou mustn't touch,тАЩ and though the label is invisible, it's just as bad,
because you know it's there, or if you don't you jolly soon get told.

The White House was on the edge of a hill, with a wood behind it-and the chalk-quarry on one side and
the gravel-pit on the other. Down at the bottom of the hill was a level plain, with queer-shaped white
buildings where people burnt lime, and a big red brewery and other houses; and when the big chimneys