(From The Time Garden by Edward Eager. The setting: Jack, Eliza, Roger, and Ann travel back in time to the days of the Revolution with the help of the magical Natterjack. Having mustered the minutemen, caused an Indian massacre, and nearly gotten themselves killed, they return to the Natterjack with guilty consciences for all the mayhem they've caused. Oh, and the Natterjack is a Cockney Natterjack, you should know, so 'e 'as trouble with 'is haitches.)
"We've been thinking now," said Ann. "And I've been wondering. About those people."
And she told the Natterjack her worries about the Indian massacre.
The Natterjack was silent in thought. Then it spoke. "I 'ave 'eard," it said, "that the h'evil that men do lives after them..."
" 'The good is oft interred with their bones,' " Ann finished the quotation. Then a look of horror came over her face. "Do you mean the bad things we do last, and the good ones don't?"
"That wouldn't be fair," said Roger.
"It would be just like magic, though," said Eliza, "always thwarting us!"
"I was thinking," said the Natterjack, "more the other way round."
"You mean...?" Roger puzzled it out. "You mean the mistakes we make come out of the adventure with us, and don't do any harm, but the good things we do stay buried in the past, and turn real?"
"That," said the Natterjack, "is the general h'idea."
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