The Sums That Came Right by E Nesbit

Books at Bedtime by Calming Anxiety, The Sums That Came Right by E. Nesbit.

If 27 barrels full of apples cost 25 pounds, 13 shillings and 3 pence, what would the same barrels be worth if they had been packed by a dishonest person who only put in 7/9 to the apples in each barrel and the rest saw dust? This was the sum. It does not look very hard perhaps to you who have studied ardently for years at board school or high school or at a paratory school for the sons of gentlemen. But to Edwin, it looked as hard as a ship's ship. But he went for it like a man and presently produced an answer and his master wrote a big curly "R" across the sum. Perhaps you do not know that a big curly "R" means right. As for the answer to the sum, I would try to get a fellow of Trinity College Cambridge who is a very terrible person to work it out for you. And if he can do it, I will put the answer at the end of this story. I cannot work it myself. Edwin was glad to see the large curly "R" he saw it so seldom that to meet it was a real pleasure.

But what's the use he said? Everything else leads to something else except lessons. If you put seeds in the garden, they come up as flowers, unless they rot in seeds, all you forget where you put them. And if you buy a rabbit, well, there it is unless it dies. And if you eat your dinner, well, you're not hungry anymore for an hour or two, but lessons. He bit his pen holder angrily and put his head into the desk to look for nibs to play. You know the game of nibs of course. He held up the lid of the desk on his head and, I dare say, you have done often as well. And inside of the desk was darkish so that the sudden light at the very back of the desk showed quite brightly and unmistakably. Those firework fuses, oh, crikey, was Edwin's first thought. But it was no firework fuse. It was like clay worms, only a thousand times more bright and white. For it was the light of pure reason, and it glowed from the glorious eyes of the arithmetic fairy. You did not know there was no arithmetic fairy? If you knew as much as I do, it would simply be silly for me to try to tell you the stories, wouldn't it? Her wonderful eyes, gleamed and flashed straight into the round, goggling eyes of the amazed Edwin. "Upon my word," she said. Edwin said nothing. "Did no one ever tell you the fairy went on, shaking out her dress, which was woven of the integral calculus and trimmed with a dazzling fringe of logarithms?" "Did no one ever tell you the fairy went on, shaking out her dress, which was woven of the integral calculus and trimmed with a dazzling fringe of logarithms?" "Did no one ever tell you that the things that happen when you're done, that your sums are right, happen when you're grown up?"

"I don't care what happens then," Edwin dared to say, "for the flashing eyes were kind eyes. I shall be a pirate, or a bushranger, or something." The fairy drew herself up, and her graceful garland of simple equations trembled as Edwin breathed heavily. "A pirate," she said. A nice sort of pirate who can't calculate his men's shares of the plunder to the three-sevenths of a gold link, or of the dead captain's chain, a vine bushranger who can't arrange the 42 bullets from the revolvers of his seven dauntless followers so that each of the fifteen enemies gets his fair share. "Go along with you," said the arithmetic fairy. But Edwin's eyes were, as I said, wide open, goggling. I say, he suddenly remarked, "Hell you are pretty, the arithmetic fairy has but one weakness, a feminine weakness. She loves a pretty speech, if blunt so much the worse, yet even bluntness."

She looked down and played shyly with the bunch of miscellaneous examples in vulgar fractions which adorned her waistband. "I suppose you can't be expected to understand yet," she said, and she said it in a very gentle way. Edwin took courage. "When I do things I once, something to happen at once, I want a white rabbit and I want it now." She did not recognise the quotation. "Get your master to set you a little simple multiplication sum in white rabbits," she said. "Goodbye my child, you'll know me better in time, and as you know me better, you'll love me more. I, you're lovely now," said Edwin. The fairy laughed and spread her dazzling wings glistening with all the glories of the higher mathematics. Edwin closed dazzled eyes and opened them as the desk lid shut down on his head, swayed by no uncertain hand. It was the mathematical master's hand, in fact, a new example was set, and curiously enough white rabbits were in it.

"If 7,563 white rabbits it began." Edwin, his brain in a world, worked it correctly by a sort of inspiration, like an ancient prophet or a calculating machine. When he turned, with his books in a scrap to the red filler whose gables meant home for him, he found an excited crowd dancing around the white painted gates. The whole of the front garden, as well as most of the back garden, was a seething mass of white rabbits. 7,563 were there, to be exact. I alone know this. The joyous Edwin and his distracted parents were never able to count them. What a lot of huts we all want, Edwin thought galley. But when his father came home, we'd from this stock exchange where he spent his days in considering 7 and 5/8 and 10 minus 3 to the 30 second. No doubt under the direct guidance of the arithmetic fairy, he said at once, "send for the poltier." This was done. Only one pair of white rabbits were remained on the property of Edwin, but these, by the power of the arithmetic fairy, became ten by Christmas. The rabbits disposed off, peace spread a longing wing over the river, but was not allowed to settle. "Oh please, the startle cook, cap all crooked, exclaimed in the hall, the seller is chocker full of apples, most of them bad. I've never seen no one deliver them, nor yet give no receipt." The cook, for once in a lurid career, spoke to the priest. The seller was full of apples, 19 pounds, 19 and tuppence, and 1/3 of a penny worth to be accurate. Edwin went to bed, feeling now quite sure that he had not dreamed the arithmetic fairy, and anxiously wondering what tomorrow's sums would be about. Not entrusted about snakes or Sunday's calls teachers. The next day's sums were about oranges. Edwin did it correctly, and went home a prey to the most golden apprehensions, nor were these unfounded. The whole of the dining room and most of the hall up to the 17th step of the neatly carpeted stairs was golden with oranges. Edwin's father said some severe things about practical jokers, and sent for the green grocer. Edwin 8.9 and 3/7 oranges and went to bed, yellow, but not absolutely unhappy. But now he was quite sure, on the following day his sum dealt with elephants, and in such numbers that his father on returning from business yielded to a very natural annoyance, and gave notice to his landlord that he should, at Lady Day, leave a villa where elephants and oranges occurred to such an extent. No one suspected Edwin of having anything to do with these happenings, and indeed it was not his fault. So how and why could or should he have owned up to it? I wish I had time to tell you of the events that occurred when Edwin's sums were set in buttered muffins, of the 75 pigs travelling in a circle at varying rates. I can only say that part of this circle ran through Edwin's mother's drawing room. Nor can I hear a late detail of the 300 lightning inductors which was suddenly found to be attached to the once happy villa home. Edwin's mother cried all day when she was not laughing, and people came from far and near to see the haunted house. For when it came to the 4000 white house and a church deepum, everyone felt that it was more than a mere accident. Edwin's master had a pretty taste in sums, and about once a term he used to set a sum about canes.

Edwin worked that sum wrong on purpose, so I supposed it served him right, but the canes should not be at home before he got there, just as they would have been if he had worked the sum properly, and as he had borrowed his father's razor that morning to sharpen a slate pencil, the 57 cranes were not all thrown away. But it was the sum about the system that convinced Edwin of the desperate need of finding the arithmetic fairy and begging her to take back the present she had made him. It is not polite to ask this, but Edwin had to do it.

You see in the sum the system had to leak three pints and 13 minutes in a quarter, but the system at home happened to have a little leak of its own already, where Edwin had tried his new drill on it, and the two leaks together managed so well. But when Edwin got home, he found water dripping from all the top bedroom ceilings, and the staircase was a Niagara. It was very exciting, but when the plumber came he let Edwin's father know all about the little drilled hole, and Edwin got the credit of the leak in the sum, which was much larger and most unfair. His father spoke to Edwin about this matter in the study, and it was then that Edwin saw that he must put an end to the sums that came true. So he went up to his bedroom with his candle and his arithmetic book. Directly he put the candle on the chest of drawers and a big splash of water from the ceiling fell right onto the flame and it went out. He had to go right downstairs to get another candle. Then he put the candle on the dressing table, splash out it went, chair splash out. At last he got the candle to stay a light on the washed handstand, which was, by some curious accident, the only dry place in the room. Then he opened his book, somewhere in the book he knew there must be something that would fetch the fairy. He said the multiplication table up to nine times after that, as you know, the worst is over, but no fairy appeared. Then he read aloud the instructions for working the different rules, including the examples given. There was no result. Then he called the fairy, but she did not come. Then he tried counting, then counting and calling, mixing in with other things like this. A good fairy, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, do come and help me, eight, nine, ten, eleven, beautiful, dear kind, lovely fairy, nine, nine and eighty-one, dear fairy, do come. Seven million, two hundred thousand, six hundred and fifty-nine, I will always love you if you all come to me now. Three, sevens, of five, nines, of five, twelves and sixteen fifteens. You were so kind the other day. Two and two are four and three and seven. Do come now.

You've no idea what an awful mess you've got me into. Seven, nine, sixty-three, though I know you meant it kindly, dear fairy. Thirteen from thirty-seven leaves twenty-four. Do come and see what a hole I'm in, do come and the product will give you the desired result. Edwin stopped out of breath.

He looked around him for the fairy, but his room with the water dripping from the roof and the wet towels and basins on the floor was not a fairy-like place. Edwin saw with a sigh that it was a no-go.

"I'll have another go in prep tomorrow," he said, and this he did. The mathematical master was pleased with himself that day because he had succeeded in preventing his best boy from yielding to the alermance of the headmaster and the classical side. Of course, his class knew at once what kind of attempt the mathematical master was in. You know, we always know that. An Edwin ventured to ask that the examples that day might be about a model steam engine. Only one sir pleased he was careful to explain. The master kindly consented and by great good fortune the example did not deal with a faulty boiler nor with any other defect but concerned itself solely with a model engine speed. So Edwin knew when he had worked his sum exactly what pace the model engine he would find at home would be good for. He worked the sum right, then he put his head into his desk and began again a good fairy. If a sum of £4,700 is to be divided by A, B and C do do come and help me.

Three tenths of a pound is six shillings. Dear fairy, 11, 12, 13, 14, oh lovely fairy and so on.

But no fairy came and Simkin's minor whispered, "What are you chattering about?" and stuck a pin into Edwin's leg. "Can't you do the beastly example?" Then quite suddenly Edwin knew what he had to do. He made up an example for himself and this was it. If 7,535 fairies were in my desk at school and I subtracted 710 and added 1066 and the rest flew away in 783 equal gangs. How many would be left over in the desk?

When he had worked it out the answer was one. Very quickly he opened the desk again and there was the arithmetic fairy. Looking more lovely than ever in a rich gown of indices lined with a surge that fell to her feet in osculating curves. In a hand like a scepter, shone the starry glory of the binomial theorem, but her eyes were staria still. She smiled, but her first words were severe. "You careless boy," she said. "Why can't you learn to be accurate? It is the mere chance you got me. You should have stated your problem more clearly, and you should have said 7000 arithmetic fairies." Why? Suppose you had found one fairy in your desk and it had been the grammar fairy or the full fairy. What would you have done then? "Is there a football fairy?" Edwin asked. "Of course, there's a fairy that everything you have to learn." "There's a patience fairy and a good temp of fairy and a fairy to teach people to make bread and another to teach them to make love." "Didn't you really know that?"

"No," said Edwin. "But I say, look here, I am looking," she said, fixing her bright eyes on Edwin's goggling ones exactly as their first meeting. "No, I mean, oh, I say," he said, "so I hear," she said.

"No, but no kid," said he. "Of course, there isn't any kid," said she. "Dear, kind, pretty fairy," Edwin began again. "That's better," said the fairy. "Didn't you hear all I was saying to you yesterday when the water was dripping from the ceiling all over the room?" "From nineteen several spots?" "Of course I did." "Well, then," said Edwin. "You mean that you're tired of having things happen when you do your sums correctly? You prefer the old ways?" "Yes, please," said Edwin. "If you're sure you don't mind, I know you meant it for kindness, but oh, it's most beastly. When you get into the thick of it, you was thinking of the elephants, I fancy. I only did it to please you," said the fairy, pounding, "I'll make everything as it was before. Does that please you?"

"And there's your third wish." "You know we always give three wishes. It's customary in the profession. What would you like?" Edwin had not attended properly to this speech, so he had only heard as it was before, and then what would you like?" So he said, "I should like to see you again someday." The arithmetic very smiled at him, and her beauty grew more and more radiant. She had not expected this. "I have made sure you would ask for a pony or a cricket bag or a pair of white mice," she said. "You shall see me again, Edward. Goodbye."

And the bright vision faded away into a dim mist of rosy permutations. When Edwin got home, he heard that a model engine had been discovered in the ladder, and had been given to his youngest brother. There were some wrongs, some sorrows, to which he even a pen-like mind cannot hope to do justice. Edwin is now a quite-looking grown-up person in a black frot coat, and his hair is slowly withdrawing itself from the top of his learned head. I suppose it feels itself unworthy to cover so great a brain.

The fairy has been with him unseen this many a year. The other day, he saw her. He had been senior Wrangler, of course, that was nothing to Edwin. And he was astronomer Royale, but that, after all, he had a right to expect. But it was when he took breath from his researches one day, and suddenly found that he had invented a brand new, hyper-nebular hypothesis that he thought of the fairy.

From thinking of her, he beheld her. He was lightly poised, above a pile of books based on Newton's Prince of Payer, and topped with his own latest work, The Fourth and Further Dimensions. He knew her at once, and now he appreciated more than ever in his youth the radiance of her eyes, and her wings for now he understood it. "Their beautiful fairy," he said, "how glad I am to see you again."

"I've been with you all this time," she said. "I wish I could do something more for you. Is there anything you want?" The great mathematician who was Edwin ran his hand over his thin hair. "No," he said. "No." And then he remembered the school and Simpkins minor, and the old desk he used to keep firework fuses in.

Unless he added, "you could make me young again." She dropped little tear, clear as a resolved, solved problem. "I can't do that," she said. "You can't have everything." "The only person who could do that for you is the love fairy."

"If you had found her instead of me, you would have always been young, but you wouldn't have invented the hypernebula hypothesis." "I suppose I shall never, never find her now," said Edwin, as he spoke he looked out of the window to the garden, where a girl was gathering roses. "I wonder," said he. "The love fairy doesn't live in the school desk, so books on fourth dimensions?" "I wonder," said Edwin. "That's the love fairy living gardens." "I wonder," echoed the arithmetic fairy, a little saddling, and she spread her bright wings and flew out of the open window, an out of this story.

Edwin went out into the rose garden, and did he find the love fairy? "I wonder." "Yes, the follow of Trinity," says the answer to that sum, is 19 pounds, 19 chillings, and two pence, and one third of a penny. "Does the fellow of Trinity speak the truth?" "I wonder."