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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, New Treasure Seekers, by E. (Edith) Nesbit,
+Illustrated by Gordon Browne and Lewis Baumer
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: New Treasure Seekers
+       or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune
+
+
+Author: E. (Edith) Nesbit
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2008  [eBook #25496]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW TREASURE SEEKERS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Emmy, and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 25496-h.htm or 25496-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/4/9/25496/25496-h/25496-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/4/9/25496/25496-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+NEW TREASURE SEEKERS
+
+[Illustration: THE STAIR WAS OF STONE, ARCHED OVERHEAD LIKE CHURCHES.]
+
+NEW TREASURE SEEKERS
+
+Or The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune
+
+by
+
+E. NESBIT
+          Author of "The Treasure Seekers,"
+          "The Would-Be-Goods," Etc.
+
+With Illustrations by Gordon Browne and Lewis Baumer [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+New York
+Frederick A. Stokes Company
+Publishers
+
+
+
+
+          TO
+          ARTHUR WATTS
+          (OSWALD IN PARIS)
+          FROM
+          E. NESBIT
+
+          _Montparnasse, 1904._
+
+
+
+
+NEW TREASURE SEEKERS
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                               PAGE
+  THE ROAD TO ROME; OR, THE SILLY STOWAWAY                      15
+
+  THE CONSCIENCE-PUDDING                                        37
+
+  ARCHIBALD THE UNPLEASANT                                      62
+
+  OVER THE WATER TO CHINA                                       88
+
+  THE YOUNG ANTIQUARIES                                        113
+
+  THE INTREPID EXPLORER AND HIS LIEUTENANT                     136
+
+  THE TURK IN CHAINS; OR, RICHARD'S REVENGE                    161
+
+  THE GOLDEN GONDOLA                                           185
+
+  THE FLYING LODGER                                            209
+
+  THE SMUGGLER'S REVENGE                                       236
+
+  ZAÏDA, THE MYSTERIOUS PROPHETESS OF THE GOLDEN ORIENT        262
+
+  THE LADY AND THE LICENSE; OR, FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND           287
+
+  THE POOR AND NEEDY                                           311
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                           PAGE
+
+  THE STAIR WAS OF STONE, ARCHED OVERHEAD LIKE CHURCHES _Frontispiece_
+
+  DORA DID SOME WHITE SEWING                                  19
+
+  THEY LAUGHED EVER SO                                        34
+
+  AND HE WAS AWFULLY RUDE TO THE SERVANTS                     69
+
+  THE OTHERS CAME UP BY THE ROPE-LADDER                       73
+
+  SO OSWALD OPENED THE TRAP-DOOR AND SQUINTED DOWN, AND
+    THERE WAS THAT ARCHIBALD                                  75
+
+  "WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT?" HE ASKED. "NYANG, NYANG," JANE
+    ANSWERED TAUNTINGLY                                       83
+
+  WHEN FATHER CAME HOME THERE WAS AN AWFUL ROW                85
+
+  IT SEEMS THE SAILOR WAS ASLEEP, BUT OF COURSE WE DID NOT
+    KNOW, OR WE SHOULD NOT HAVE DISTURBED HIM                 94
+
+  WE WENT ROUND A CORNER RATHER FAST, AND CAME SLAP INTO
+    THE LARGEST WOMAN I HAVE EVER SEEN                        99
+
+  IT WAS INDEED A CELESTIAL CHINAMAN IN DEEP DIFFICULTIES    103
+
+  ON THE SIDEBOARD WAS A BLUEY-WHITE CROCKERY IMAGE          107
+
+  OSWALD LISTENED AS CAREFULLY AS HE COULD, BUT DENNY
+    ALWAYS BUZZES SO WHEN HE WHISPERS                        117
+
+  IT WAS NOT TILL NEXT DAY THAT HE OWNED THAT THE TYPEWRITER
+    HAD BEEN A FIEND IN DISGUISE                             123
+
+  THE STATIONMASTER AND PORTER LOOKED RESPECTFULLY AT US     127
+
+  HER VOICE WHEN SHE TOLD US WE WERE TRESPASSING WAS NOT SO
+    FURIOUS                                                  131
+
+  THE LUNCH WAS A PERFECT DREAM OF A.1.-NESS                 137
+
+  OSWALD DID NOT STRIKE THE NEXT MATCH CAREFULLY ENOUGH      145
+
+  WITH SCISSORS AND GAS PLIERS THEY CUT EVERY FUSE           157
+
+  "HI, BRIGANDS!" HE EXCLAIMED                               167
+
+  IT WAS RATHER DIFFICULT TO GET ANYTHING THE SHAPE OF A
+    TURKEY                                                   173
+
+  WHEN THE DOOR WAS SHUT HE SAID, "I AIN'T GOT MUCH TO SAY,
+    YOUNG GEMMEN"                                            179
+
+  THE FIVE OTHERS                                            191
+
+  OSWALD SAW THE DRIVER WINK AS HE PUT HIS BOOT ON THE STEP,
+    AND THE PORTER WHO WAS OPENING THE CAB DOOR WINKED BACK  201
+
+  HE LOOKED AT OSWALD'S BOOTS                                203
+
+  HE FETCHED DOWN HALF A DOZEN PLANKS AND THE WORKMAN        218
+
+  "HOW MUCH?" SAID THE GENTLEMAN SHORTLY                     222
+
+  "THEN I'LL MAKE YOU!" HE SAID, CATCHING HOLD OF OSWALD     232
+
+  A COASTGUARD ORDERED US QUITE HARSHLY                      244
+
+  SURE ENOUGH IT WAS SEA-WATER, AS THE UNAMIABLE ONE SAID
+    WHEN HE HAD TASTED IT                                    259
+
+  "I SAY, BEALIE DEAR, YOU'VE GOT A BOOK UP AT YOUR PLACE"   265
+
+  ALICE BEAT THE DONKEY FROM THE CART, THE REST SHOUTED      272
+
+  "WE'VE GOT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS," SAID NOËL                 280
+
+
+
+
+_THE ROAD TO ROME; OR, THE SILLY STOWAWAY_
+
+
+WE Bastables have only two uncles, and neither of them, are our
+own natural-born relatives. One is a great-uncle, and the other is
+the  uncle from his birth of Albert, who used to live next door to
+us in  the Lewisham Road. When we first got to know him (it was over
+some baked potatoes, and is quite another story) we called him
+Albert-next-door's-Uncle, and then Albert's uncle for short. But
+Albert's uncle and my father joined in taking a jolly house in the
+country, called the Moat House, and we stayed there for our summer
+holidays; and it was there, through an accident to a pilgrim with peas
+in his shoes--that's another story too--that we found Albert's uncle's
+long-lost love; and as she was very old indeed--twenty-six next
+birthday--and he was ever so much older in the vale of years, he had to
+get married almost directly, and it was fixed for about Christmas-time.
+And when our holidays came the whole six of us went down to the Moat
+House with Father and Albert's uncle. We never had a Christmas in the
+country before. It was simply ripping. And the long-lost love--her name
+was Miss Ashleigh, but we were allowed to call her Aunt Margaret even
+before the wedding made it really legal for us to do so--she and her
+jolly clergyman brother used to come over, and sometimes we went to the
+Cedars, where they live, and we had games and charades, and
+hide-and-seek, and Devil in the Dark, which is a game girls pretend to
+like, and very few do really, and crackers and a Christmas-tree for the
+village children, and everything you can jolly well think of.
+
+And all the time, whenever we went to the Cedars, there was all sorts of
+silly fuss going on about the beastly wedding; boxes coming from London
+with hats and jackets in, and wedding presents--all glassy and silvery,
+or else brooches and chains--and clothes sent down from London to choose
+from. I can't think how a lady can want so many petticoats and boots and
+things just because she's going to be married. No man would think of
+getting twenty-four shirts and twenty-four waistcoats, and so on, just
+to be married in.
+
+"It's because they're going to Rome, I think," Alice said, when we
+talked it over before the fire in the kitchen the day Mrs. Pettigrew
+went to see her aunt, and we were allowed to make toffee. "You see, in
+Rome you can only buy Roman clothes, and I think they're all stupid
+bright colours--at least I know the sashes are. You stir now, Oswald.
+My face is all burnt black."
+
+Oswald took the spoon, though it was really not his turn by three; but
+he is one whose nature is so that he cannot make a fuss about little
+things--and he knows he can make toffee.
+
+"Lucky hounds," H.O. said, "to be going to Rome. I wish I was."
+
+"Hounds isn't polite, H.O., dear," Dora said; and H.O. said--
+
+"Well, lucky bargees, then."
+
+"It's the dream of my life to go to Rome," Noël said. Noël is our poet
+brother. "Just think of what the man says in the 'Roman Road.' I wish
+they'd take me."
+
+"They won't," Dicky said. "It costs a most awful lot. I heard Father
+saying so only yesterday."
+
+"It would only be the fare," Noël answered; "and I'd go third, or even
+in a cattle-truck, or a luggage van. And when I got there I could easily
+earn my own living. I'd make ballads and sing them in the streets. The
+Italians would give me lyres--that's the Italian kind of shilling, they
+spell it with an _i_. It shows how poetical they are out there, their
+calling it that."
+
+"But you couldn't make Italian poetry," H.O. said, staring at Noël with
+his mouth open.
+
+"Oh, I don't know so much about that," Noël said. "I could jolly soon
+learn anyway, and just to begin with I'd do it in English. There are
+sure to be some people who would understand. And if they didn't, don't
+you think their warm Southern hearts would be touched to see a pale,
+slender, foreign figure singing plaintive ballads in an unknown tongue?
+I do. Oh! they'd chuck along the lyres fast enough--they're not hard and
+cold like North people. Why, every one here is a brewer, or a baker, or
+a banker, or a butcher, or something dull. Over there they're all
+bandits, or vineyardiners, or play the guitar, or something, and they
+crush the red grapes and dance and laugh in the sun--you know jolly well
+they do."
+
+"This toffee's about done," said Oswald suddenly. "H.O., shut your silly
+mouth and get a cupful of cold water." And then, what with dropping a
+little of the toffee into the water to see if it was ready, and pouring
+some on a plate that wasn't buttered and not being able to get it off
+again when it was cold without breaking the plate, and the warm row
+there was about its being one of the best dinner-service ones, the wild
+romances of Noël's poetical intellect went out of our heads altogether;
+and it was not till later, and when deep in the waters of affliction,
+that they were brought back to us.
+
+Next day H.O. said to Dora, "I want to speak to you all by yourself and
+me." So they went into the secret staircase that creaks and hasn't been
+secret now for countless years; and after that Dora did some white
+sewing she wouldn't let us look at, and H.O. helped her.
+
+[Illustration: DORA DID SOME WHITE SEWING.]
+
+"It's another wedding present, you may depend," Dicky said--"a beastly
+surprise, I shouldn't wonder." And no more was said. The rest of us were
+busy skating on the moat, for it was now freezing hard. Dora never did
+care for skating; she says it hurts her feet.
+
+And now Christmas and Boxing Day passed like a radiating dream, and it
+was the wedding-day. We all had to go to the bride's mother's house
+before the wedding, so as to go to church with the wedding party. The
+girls had always wanted to be somebody's bridesmaids, and now they
+were--in white cloth coats like coachmen, with lots of little capes, and
+white beaver bonnets. They didn't look so bad, though rather as if they
+were in a Christmas card; and their dresses were white silk like
+pocket-handkerchiefs under the long coats. And their shoes had real
+silver buckles our great Indian uncle gave them. H.O. went back just as
+the waggonette was starting, and came out with a big brown-paper parcel.
+We thought it was the secret surprise present Dora had been making, and,
+indeed, when I asked her she nodded. We little recked what it really
+was, or how our young brother was going to shove himself forward once
+again. He _will_ do it. Nothing you say is of any lasting use.
+
+There were a great many people at the wedding--quite crowds. There was
+lots to eat and drink, and though it was all cold, it did not matter,
+because there were blazing fires in every fireplace in the house, and
+the place all decorated with holly and mistletoe and things. Every one
+seemed to enjoy themselves very much, except Albert's uncle and his
+blushing bride; and they looked desperate. Every one said how sweet she
+looked, but Oswald thought she looked as if she didn't like being
+married as much as she expected. She was not at all a blushing bride
+really; only the tip of her nose got pink, because it was rather cold in
+the church. But she is very jolly.
+
+Her reverend but nice brother read the marriage service. He reads better
+than any one I know, but he is not a bit of a prig really, when you come
+to know him.
+
+When the rash act was done Albert's uncle and his bride went home in a
+carriage all by themselves, and then we had the lunch and drank the
+health of the bride in real champagne, though Father said we kids must
+only have just a taste. I'm sure Oswald, for one, did not want any more;
+one taste was quite enough. Champagne is like soda-water with medicine
+in it. The sherry we put sugar in once was much more decent.
+
+Then Miss Ashleigh--I mean Mrs. Albert's uncle--went away and took off
+her white dress and came back looking much warmer. Dora heard the
+housemaid say afterwards that the cook had stopped the bride on the
+stairs with "a basin of hot soup, that would take no denial, because the
+bride, poor dear young thing, not a bite or sup had passed her lips that
+day." We understood then why she had looked so unhappy. But Albert's
+uncle had had a jolly good breakfast--fish and eggs and bacon and three
+goes of marmalade. So it was not hunger made him sad. Perhaps he was
+thinking what a lot of money it cost to be married and go to Rome.
+
+A little before the bride went to change, H.O. got up and reached his
+brown-paper parcel from under the sideboard and sneaked out. We thought
+he might have let us see it given, whatever it was. And Dora said she
+had understood he meant to; but it was his secret.
+
+The bride went away looking quite comfy in a furry cloak, and Albert's
+uncle cheered up at the last and threw off the burden of his cares and
+made a joke. I forget what it was; it wasn't a very good one, but it
+showed he was trying to make the best of things.
+
+Then the Bridal Sufferers drove away, with the luggage on a cart--heaps
+and heaps of it, and we all cheered and threw rice and slippers. Mrs.
+Ashleigh and some other old ladies cried.
+
+And then every one said, "What a pretty wedding!" and began to go. And
+when our waggonette came round we all began to get in. And suddenly
+Father said--
+
+"Where's H.O.?" And we looked round. He was in absence.
+
+"Fetch him along sharp--some of you," Father said; "I don't want to keep
+the horses standing here in the cold all day."
+
+So Oswald and Dicky went to fetch him along. We thought he might have
+wandered back to what was left of the lunch--for he is young and he does
+not always know better. But he was not there, and Oswald did not even
+take a crystallised fruit in passing. He might easily have done this,
+and no one would have minded, so it would not have been wrong. But it
+would have been ungentlemanly. Dicky did not either. H.O. was not there.
+
+We went into the other rooms, even the one the old ladies were crying
+in, but of course we begged their pardons. And at last into the kitchen,
+where the servants were smart with white bows and just sitting down to
+their dinner, and Dicky said--
+
+"I say, cookie love, have you seen H.O.?"
+
+"Don't come here with your imperence!" the cook said, but she was
+pleased with Dicky's unmeaning compliment all the same.
+
+"_I_ see him," said the housemaid. "He was colloguing with the butcher
+in the yard a bit since. He'd got a brown-paper parcel. Perhaps he got a
+lift home."
+
+So we went and told Father, and about the white present in the parcel.
+
+"I expect he was ashamed to give it after all," Oswald said, "so he
+hooked off home with it."
+
+And we got into the wagonette.
+
+"It wasn't a present, though," Dora said; "it was a different kind of
+surprise--but it really is a secret."
+
+Our good Father did not command her to betray her young brother.
+
+But when we got home H.O. wasn't there. Mrs. Pettigrew hadn't seen him,
+and he was nowhere about. Father biked back to the Cedars to see if he'd
+turned up. No. Then all the gentlemen turned out to look for him through
+the length and breadth of the land.
+
+"He's too old to be stolen by gipsies," Alice said.
+
+"And too ugly," said Dicky.
+
+"Oh _don't_!" said both the girls; "and now when he's lost, too!"
+
+We had looked for a long time before Mrs. Pettigrew came in with a
+parcel she said the butcher had left. It was not addressed, but we knew
+it was H.O.'s, because of the label on the paper from the shop where
+Father gets his shirts. Father opened it at once.
+
+Inside the parcel we found H.O.'s boots and braces, his best hat and his
+chest-protector. And Oswald felt as if we had found his skeleton.
+
+"Any row with any of you?" Father asked. But there hadn't been any.
+
+"Was he worried about anything? Done anything wrong, and afraid to own
+up?"
+
+We turned cold, for we knew what he meant. That parcel was so horribly
+like the lady's hat and gloves that she takes off on the seashore and
+leaves with a letter saying it has come to this.
+
+"_No_, _no_, NO, NO!" we all said. "He was perfectly jolly all the
+morning."
+
+Then suddenly Dicky leaned on the table and one of H.O.'s boots toppled
+over, and there was something white inside. It was a letter. H.O. must
+have written it before we left home. It said--
+
+          "DEAR FATHER AND EVERY ONE,--I am going to be a
+          Clown. When I am rich and reveared I will come
+          back rolling.
+
+                          "Your affectionate son,
+                                   "HORACE OCTAVIUS BASTABLE."
+
+"Rolling?" Father said.
+
+"He means rolling in money," Alice said. Oswald noticed that every one
+round the table where H.O.'s boots were dignifiedly respected as they
+lay, was a horrid pale colour, like when the salt is thrown into
+snapdragons.
+
+"Oh dear!" Dora cried, "that was it. He asked me to make him a clown's
+dress and keep it deeply secret. He said he wanted to surprise Aunt
+Margaret and Albert's uncle. And I didn't think it was wrong," said
+Dora, screwing up her face; she then added, "Oh dear, oh dear, oh, oh!"
+and with these concluding remarks she began to howl.
+
+Father thumped her on the back in an absent yet kind way.
+
+"But where's he gone?" he said, not to any one in particular. "I saw the
+butcher; he said H.O. asked him to take a parcel home and went back
+round the Cedars."
+
+Here Dicky coughed and said--
+
+"I didn't think he meant anything, but the day after Noël was talking
+about singing ballads in Rome, and getting poet's lyres given him, H.O.
+did say if Noël had been really keen on the Roman lyres and things he
+could easily have been a stowaway, and gone unknown."
+
+"A stowaway!" said my Father, sitting down suddenly and hard.
+
+"In Aunt Margaret's big dress basket--the one she let him hide in when
+we had hide-and-seek there. He talked a lot about it after Noël had said
+that about the lyres--and the Italians being so poetical, you know. You
+remember that day we had toffee."
+
+My Father is prompt and decisive in action, so is his eldest son.
+
+"I'm off to the Cedars," he said.
+
+"Do let me come, Father," said the decisive son. "You may want to send a
+message."
+
+So in a moment Father was on his bike and Oswald on the step--a
+dangerous but delightful spot--and off to the Cedars.
+
+"Have your teas; and _don't_ any more of you get lost, and don't sit up
+if we're late," Father howled to them as we rushed away. How glad then
+the thoughtful Oswald was that he was the eldest. It was very cold in
+the dusk on the bicycle, but Oswald did not complain.
+
+At the Cedars my father explained in a few manly but well-chosen words,
+and the apartment of the dear departed bride was searched.
+
+"Because," said my father, "if H.O. really was little ass enough to get
+into that basket, he must have turned out something to make room for
+himself."
+
+Sure enough, when they came to look, there was a great bundle rolled in
+a sheet under the bed--all lace things and petticoats and ribbons and
+dressing-gowns and ladies' flummery.
+
+"If you will put the things in something else, I'll catch the express to
+Dover and take it with me," Father said to Mrs. Ashleigh; and while she
+packed the things he explained to some of the crying old ladies who had
+been unable to leave off, how sorry he was that a son of his--but you
+know the sort of thing.
+
+Oswald said: "Father, I wish you'd let me come too. I won't be a bit of
+trouble."
+
+Perhaps it was partly because my Father didn't want to let me walk home
+in the dark, and he didn't want to worry the Ashleighs any more by
+asking them to send me home. He said this was why, but I hope it was his
+loving wish to have his prompt son, so like himself in his decisiveness,
+with him.
+
+We went.
+
+It was an anxious journey. We knew how far from pleased the bride would
+be to find no dressing-gowns and ribbons, but only H.O. crying and cross
+and dirty, as likely as not, when she opened the basket at the hotel at
+Dover.
+
+Father smoked to pass the time, but Oswald had not so much as a
+peppermint or a bit of Spanish liquorice to help him through the
+journey. Yet he bore up.
+
+When we got out at Dover there were Mr. and Mrs. Albert's uncle on the
+platform.
+
+"Hullo," said Albert's uncle. "What's up? Nothing wrong at home, I
+hope."
+
+"We've only lost H.O.," said my father. "You don't happen to have him
+with you?"
+
+"No; but you're joking," said the bride. "We've lost a dress-basket."
+
+_Lost a dress-basket!_ The words struck us dumb, but my father recovered
+speech and explained. The bride was very glad when we said we had
+brought her ribbons and things, but we stood in anxious gloom, for now
+H.O. was indeed lost. The dress-basket might be on its way to Liverpool,
+or rocking on the Channel, and H.O. might never be found again. Oswald
+did not say these things. It is best to hold your jaw when you want to
+see a thing out, and are liable to be sent to bed at a strange hotel if
+any one happens to remember you.
+
+Then suddenly the station master came with a telegram.
+
+It said: "A dress-basket without label at Cannon Street detained for
+identification suspicious sounds from inside detain inquirers dynamite
+machine suspected."
+
+He did not show us this till my Father had told him about H.O., which it
+took some time for him to believe, and then he did and laughed, and said
+he would wire them to get the dynamite machine to speak, and if so, to
+take it out and keep it till its Father called for it.
+
+So back we went to London, with hearts a little lighter, but not gay,
+for we were a very long time from the last things we had had to eat. And
+Oswald was almost sorry he had not taken those crystallised fruits.
+
+It was quite late when we got to Cannon Street, and we went straight
+into the cloakroom, and there was the man in charge, a very jolly chap,
+sitting on a stool. And there was H.O., the guilty stowaway, dressed in
+a red-and-white clown's dress, very dusty, and his face as dirty as I
+have ever seen it, sitting on some one else's tin box, with his feet on
+some body else's portmanteau, eating bread and cheese, and drinking ale
+out of a can.
+
+My Father claimed him at once, and Oswald identified the basket. It was
+very large. There was a tray on the top with hats in it, and H.O. had
+this on top of him. We all went to bed in Cannon Street Hotel. My Father
+said nothing to H.O. that night. When we were in bed I tried to get H.O.
+to tell me all about it, but he was too sleepy and cross. It was the
+beer and the knocking about in the basket, I suppose. Next day we went
+back to the Moat House, where the raving anxiousness of the others had
+been cooled the night before by a telegram from Dover.
+
+My Father said he would speak to H.O. in the evening. It is very horrid
+not to be spoken to at once and get it over. But H.O. certainly deserved
+something.
+
+It is hard to tell this tale, because so much of it happened all at once
+but at different places. But this is what H.O. said to us about it. He
+said--
+
+"Don't bother--let me alone."
+
+But we were all kind and gentle, and at last we got it out of him what
+had happened. He doesn't tell a story right from the beginning like
+Oswald and some of the others do, but from his disjunctured words the
+author has made the following narration. This is called editing, I
+believe.
+
+"It was all Noël's fault," H.O. said; "what did he want to go jawing
+about Rome for?--and a clown's as good as a beastly poet, anyhow! You
+remember that day we made toffee? Well, I thought of it then."
+
+"You didn't tell us."
+
+"Yes, I did. I half told Dicky. He never said don't, or you'd better
+not, or gave me any good advice or anything. It's his fault as much as
+mine. Father ought to speak to him to-night the same as me--and Noël,
+too."
+
+We bore with him just then because we wanted to hear the story. And we
+made him go on.
+
+"Well--so I thought if Noël's a cowardy custard I'm not--and I wasn't
+afraid of being in the basket, though it was quite dark till I cut the
+air-holes with my knife in the railway van. I think I cut the string off
+the label. It fell off afterwards, and I saw it through the hole, but of
+course I couldn't say anything. I thought they'd look after their silly
+luggage better than that. It was all their fault I was lost."
+
+"Tell us how you did it, H.O. dear," Dora said; "never mind about it
+being everybody else's fault."
+
+"It's yours as much as any one's, if you come to that," H.O. said. "You
+made me the clown dress when I asked you. You never said a word about
+not. So there!"
+
+"Oh, H.O., you _are_ unkind!" Dora said. "You know you said it was for a
+surprise for the bridal pair."
+
+"So it would have been, if they'd found me at Rome, and I'd popped up
+like what I meant to--like a jack-in-the-box--and said, 'Here we are
+again!' in my clown's clothes, at them. But it's all spoiled, and
+father's going to speak to me this evening." H.O. sniffed every time he
+stopped speaking. But we did not correct him then. We wanted to hear
+about everything.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me straight out what you were going to do?" Dicky
+asked.
+
+"Because you'd jolly well have shut me up. You always do if I want to do
+anything you haven't thought of yourself."
+
+"What did you take with you, H.O.?" asked Alice in a hurry, for H.O. was
+now sniffing far beyond a whisper.
+
+"Oh, I'd saved a lot of grub, only I forgot it at the last. It's under
+the chest of drawers in our room. And I had my knife--and I changed into
+the clown's dress in the cupboard at the Ashleighs--over my own things
+because I thought it would be cold. And then I emptied the rotten girl's
+clothes out and hid them--and the top-hatted tray I just put it on a
+chair near, and I got into the basket, and I lifted the tray up over my
+head and sat down and fitted it down over me--it's got webbing bars, you
+know, across it. And none of you would ever have thought of it, let
+alone doing it."
+
+"I should hope not," Dora said, but H.O. went on unhearing.
+
+"I began to think perhaps I wished I hadn't directly they strapped up
+the basket. It was beastly hot and stuffy--I had to cut an air-hole in
+the cart, and I cut my thumb; it was so bumpety. And they threw me about
+as if I was coals--and wrong way up as often as not. And the train was
+awful wobbly, and I felt so sick, and if I'd had the grub I couldn't
+have eaten it. I had a bottle of water. And that was all right till I
+dropped the cork, and I couldn't find it in the dark till the water got
+upset, and then I found the cork that minute.
+
+"And when they dumped the basket on to the platform I was so glad to sit
+still a minute without being jogged I nearly went to sleep. And then I
+looked out, and the label was off, and lying close by. And then some one
+gave the basket a kick--big brute, I'd like to kick him!--and said,
+'What's this here?' And I daresay I did squeak--like a rabbit-noise, you
+know--and then some one said, 'Sounds like live-stock, don't it? No
+label.' And he was standing on the label all the time. I saw the string
+sticking out under his nasty boot. And then they trundled me off
+somewhere, on a wheelbarrow it felt like, and dumped me down again in a
+dark place--and I couldn't see anything more."
+
+"I wonder," said the thoughtful Oswald, "what made them think you were a
+dynamite machine?"
+
+"Oh, that was awful!" H.O. said. "It was my watch. I wound it up, just
+for something to do. You know the row it makes since it was broken, and
+I heard some one say, 'Shish! what's that?' and then, 'Sounds like an
+infernal machine'--don't go shoving me, Dora, it was him said it, not
+me--and then, 'If I was the inspector I'd dump it down in the river, so
+I would. Any way, let's shift it.' But the other said, 'Let well alone,'
+so I wasn't dumped any more. And they fetched another man, and there was
+a heap of jaw, and I heard them say 'Police,' so I let them have it."
+
+[Illustration: THEY LAUGHED EVER SO.]
+
+"What _did_ you do?"
+
+"Oh, I just kicked about in the basket, and I heard them all start off,
+and I shouted, 'Hi, here! let me out, can't you!'"
+
+"And did they?"
+
+"Yes, but not for ever so long, I had to jaw at them through the cracks
+of the basket. And when they opened it there was quite a crowd, and they
+laughed ever so, and gave me bread and cheese, and said I was a plucky
+youngster--and I am, and I do wish Father wouldn't put things off so. He
+might just as well have spoken to me this morning. And I can't see I've
+done anything so awful--and it's all your faults for not looking after
+me. Aren't I your little brother? and it's your duty to see I do what's
+right. You've told me so often enough."
+
+These last words checked the severe reprimand trembling on the hitherto
+patient Oswald's lips. And then H.O. began to cry, and Dora nursed him,
+though generally he is much too big for this and knows it. And he went
+to sleep on her lap, and said he didn't want any dinner.
+
+When it came to Father's speaking to H.O. that evening it never came
+off, because H.O. was ill in bed, not sham, you know, but real,
+send-for-the-doctor ill. The doctor said it was fever from chill and
+excitement, but I think myself it was very likely the things he ate at
+lunch, and the shaking up, and then the bread and cheese, and the beer
+out of a can.
+
+He was ill a week. When he was better, not much was said. My Father, who
+is the justest man in England, said the boy had been punished
+enough--and so he had, for he missed going to the pantomime, and to
+"Shock-Headed Peter" at the Garrick Theatre, which is far and away the
+best play that ever was done, and quite different from any other acting
+I ever saw. They are exactly like real boys; I think they must have been
+reading about us. And he had to take a lot of the filthiest medicine I
+ever tasted. I wonder if Father told the doctor to make it nasty on
+purpose? A woman would have directly, but gentlemen are not generally so
+sly. Any way, you live and learn. None of us would now ever consent to
+be a stowaway, no matter who wanted us to, and I don't think H.O.'s very
+likely to do it again.
+
+The only _meant_ punishment he had was seeing the clown's dress burnt
+before his eyes by Father. He had bought it all with his own saved-up
+money, red trimmings and all.
+
+Of course, when he got well we soon taught him not to say again that it
+was any of our faults. As he owned himself, he _is_ our little brother,
+and we are not going to stand that kind of cheek from _him_.
+
+
+
+
+_THE CONSCIENCE-PUDDING_
+
+
+IT was Christmas, nearly a year after Mother died. I cannot write about
+Mother--but I will just say one thing. If she had only been away for a
+little while, and not for always, we shouldn't have been so keen on
+having a Christmas. I didn't understand this then, but I am much older
+now, and I think it was just because everything was so different and
+horrid we felt we _must_ do something; and perhaps we were not
+particular enough _what_. Things make you much more unhappy when you
+loaf about than when you are doing events.
+
+Father had to go away just about Christmas. He had heard that his wicked
+partner, who ran away with his money, was in France, and he thought he
+could catch him, but really he was in Spain, where catching criminals is
+never practised. We did not know this till afterwards.
+
+Before Father went away he took Dora and Oswald into his study, and
+said--
+
+"I'm awfully sorry I've got to go away, but it is very serious business,
+and I must go. You'll be good while I'm away, kiddies, won't you?"
+
+We promised faithfully. Then he said--
+
+"There are reasons--you wouldn't understand if I tried to tell you--but
+you can't have much of a Christmas this year. But I've told Matilda to
+make you a good plain pudding. Perhaps next Christmas will be brighter."
+
+(It was; for the next Christmas saw us the affluent nephews and nieces
+of an Indian uncle--but that is quite another story, as good old Kipling
+says.)
+
+When Father had been seen off at Lewisham Station with his bags, and a
+plaid rug in a strap, we came home again, and it was horrid. There were
+papers and things littered all over his room where he had packed. We
+tidied the room up--it was the only thing we could do for him. It was
+Dicky who accidentally broke his shaving-glass, and H.O. made a paper
+boat out of a letter we found out afterwards Father particularly wanted
+to keep. This took us some time, and when we went into the nursery the
+fire was black out, and we could not get it alight again, even with the
+whole _Daily Chronicle_. Matilda, who was our general then, was out, as
+well as the fire, so we went and sat in the kitchen. There is always a
+good fire in kitchens. The kitchen hearthrug was not nice to sit on, so
+we spread newspapers on it.
+
+It was sitting in the kitchen, I think, that brought to our minds my
+Father's parting words--about the pudding, I mean.
+
+Oswald said, "Father said we couldn't have much of a Christmas for
+secret reasons, and he said he had told Matilda to make us a plain
+pudding."
+
+The plain pudding instantly cast its shadow over the deepening gloom of
+our young minds.
+
+"I wonder _how_ plain she'll make it?" Dicky said.
+
+"As plain as plain, you may depend," said Oswald. "A
+here-am-I-where-are-you pudding--that's her sort."
+
+The others groaned, and we gathered closer round the fire till the
+newspapers rustled madly.
+
+"I believe I could make a pudding that _wasn't_ plain, if I tried,"
+Alice said. "Why shouldn't we?"
+
+"No chink," said Oswald, with brief sadness.
+
+"How much would it cost?" Noël asked, and added that Dora had twopence
+and H.O. had a French halfpenny.
+
+Dora got the cookery-book out of the dresser drawer, where it lay
+doubled up among clothes-pegs, dirty dusters, scallop shells, string,
+penny novelettes, and the dining-room corkscrew. The general we had
+then--it seemed as if she did all the cooking on the cookery-book
+instead of on the baking-board, there were traces of so many bygone
+meals upon its pages.
+
+"It doesn't say Christmas pudding at all," said Dora.
+
+"Try plum," the resourceful Oswald instantly counselled.
+
+Dora turned the greasy pages anxiously.
+
+"'Plum-pudding, 518.
+
+"'A rich, with flour, 517.
+
+"'Christmas, 517.
+
+"'Cold brandy sauce for, 241.'
+
+"We shouldn't care about that, so it's no use looking.
+
+"'Good without eggs, 518.
+
+"'Plain, 518.'
+
+"We don't want _that_ anyhow. 'Christmas, 517'--that's the one."
+
+It took her a long time to find the page. Oswald got a shovel of coals
+and made up the fire. It blazed up like the devouring elephant the
+_Daily Telegraph_ always calls it. Then Dora read--
+
+"'Christmas plum-pudding. Time six hours.'"
+
+"To eat it in?" said H.O.
+
+"No, silly! to make it."
+
+"Forge ahead, Dora," Dicky replied.
+
+Dora went on--
+
+"'2072. One pound and a half of raisins; half a pound of currants; three
+quarters of a pound of breadcrumbs; half a pound of flour;
+three-quarters of a pound of beef suet; nine eggs; one wine glassful of
+brandy; half a pound of citron and orange peel; half a nutmeg; and a
+little ground ginger.' I wonder _how_ little ground ginger."
+
+"A teacupful would be enough, I think," Alice said; "we must not be
+extravagant."
+
+"We haven't got anything yet to be extravagant _with_," said Oswald, who
+had toothache that day. "What would you do with the things if you'd got
+them?"
+
+"You'd 'chop the suet as fine as possible'--I wonder how fine that is?"
+replied Dora and the book together--"'and mix it with the breadcrumbs
+and flour; add the currants washed and dried.'"
+
+"Not starched, then," said Alice.
+
+"'The citron and orange peel cut into thin slices'--I wonder what they
+call thin? Matilda's thin bread-and-butter is quite different from what
+I mean by it--'and the raisins stoned and divided.' How many heaps would
+you divide them into?"
+
+"Seven, I suppose," said Alice; "one for each person and one for the
+pot--I mean pudding."
+
+"'Mix it all well together with the grated nutmeg and ginger. Then stir
+in nine eggs well beaten, and the brandy'--we'll leave that out, I
+think--'and again mix it thoroughly together that every ingredient may
+be moistened; put it into a buttered mould, tie over tightly, and boil
+for six hours. Serve it ornamented with holly and brandy poured over
+it.'"
+
+"I should think holly and brandy poured over it would be simply
+beastly," said Dicky.
+
+"I expect the book knows. I daresay holly and water would do as well
+though. 'This pudding may be made a month before'--it's no use reading
+about that though, because we've only got four days to Christmas."
+
+"It's no use reading about any of it," said Oswald, with thoughtful
+repeatedness, "because we haven't got the things, and we haven't got the
+coin to get them."
+
+"We might get the tin somehow," said Dicky.
+
+"There must be lots of kind people who would subscribe to a Christmas
+pudding for poor children who hadn't any," Noël said.
+
+"Well, I'm going skating at Penn's," said Oswald. "It's no use thinking
+about puddings. We must put up with it plain."
+
+So he went, and Dicky went with him.
+
+When they returned to their home in the evening the fire had been
+lighted again in the nursery, and the others were just having tea. We
+toasted our bread-and-butter on the bare side, and it gets a little warm
+among the butter. This is called French toast. "I like English better,
+but it is more expensive," Alice said--
+
+"Matilda is in a frightful rage about your putting those coals on the
+kitchen fire, Oswald. She says we shan't have enough to last over
+Christmas as it is. And Father gave her a talking to before he went
+about them--asked her if she ate them, she says--but I don't believe he
+did. Anyway, she's locked the coal-cellar door, and she's got the key in
+her pocket. I don't see how we can boil the pudding."
+
+"What pudding?" said Oswald dreamily. He was thinking of a chap he had
+seen at Penn's who had cut the date 1899 on the ice with four strokes.
+
+"_The_ pudding," Alice said. "Oh, we've had such a time, Oswald! First
+Dora and I went to the shops to find out exactly what the pudding would
+cost--it's only two and elevenpence halfpenny, counting in the holly."
+
+"It's no good," Oswald repeated; he is very patient and will say the
+same thing any number of times. "It's no good. You know we've got no
+tin."
+
+"Ah," said Alice, "but Noël and I went out, and we called at some of the
+houses in Granville Park and Dartmouth Hill--and we got a lot of
+sixpences and shillings, besides pennies, and one old gentleman gave us
+half-a-crown. He was so nice. Quite bald, with a knitted red and blue
+waistcoat. We've got eight-and-sevenpence."
+
+Oswald did not feel quite sure Father would like us to go asking for
+shillings and sixpences, or even half-crowns from strangers, but he did
+not say so. The money had been asked for and got, and it couldn't be
+helped--and perhaps he wanted the pudding--I am not able to remember
+exactly why he did not speak up and say, "This is wrong," but anyway he
+didn't.
+
+Alice and Dora went out and bought the things next morning. They bought
+double quantities, so that it came to five shillings and elevenpence,
+and was enough to make a noble pudding. There was a lot of holly left
+over for decorations. We used very little for the sauce. The money that
+was left we spent very anxiously in other things to eat, such as dates
+and figs and toffee.
+
+We did not tell Matilda about it. She was a red-haired girl, and apt to
+turn shirty at the least thing.
+
+Concealed under our jackets and overcoats we carried the parcels up to
+the nursery, and hid them in the treasure-chest we had there. It was the
+bureau drawer. It was locked up afterwards because the treacle got all
+over the green baize and the little drawers inside it while we were
+waiting to begin to make the pudding. It was the grocer told us we ought
+to put treacle in the pudding, and also about not so much ginger as a
+teacupful.
+
+When Matilda had begun to pretend to scrub the floor (she pretended this
+three times a week so as to have an excuse not to let us in the kitchen,
+but I know she used to read novelettes most of the time, because Alice
+and I had a squint through the window more than once), we barricaded the
+nursery door and set to work. We were very careful to be quite clean. We
+washed our hands as well as the currants. I have sometimes thought we
+did not get all the soap off the currants. The pudding smelt like a
+washing-day when the time came to cut it open. And we washed a corner of
+the table to chop the suet on. Chopping suet looks easy till you try.
+
+Father's machine he weighs letters with did to weigh out the things. We
+did this very carefully, in case the grocer had not done so. Everything
+was right except the raisins. H.O. had carried them home. He was very
+young then, and there was a hole in the corner of the paper bag and his
+mouth was sticky.
+
+Lots of people have been hanged to a gibbet in chains on evidence no
+worse than that, and we told H.O. so till he cried. This was good for
+him. It was not unkindness to H.O., but part of our duty.
+
+Chopping suet as fine as possible is much harder than any one would
+think, as I said before. So is crumbling bread--especially if your loaf
+is new, like ours was. When we had done them the breadcrumbs and the
+suet were both very large and lumpy, and of a dingy gray colour,
+something like pale slate pencil.
+
+They looked a better colour when we had mixed them with the flour. The
+girls had washed the currants with Brown Windsor soap and the sponge.
+Some of the currants got inside the sponge and kept coming out in the
+bath for days afterwards. I see now that this was not quite nice. We cut
+the candied peel as thin as we wish people would cut our
+bread-and-butter. We tried to take the stones out of the raisins, but
+they were too sticky, so we just divided them up in seven lots. Then we
+mixed the other things in the wash-hand basin from the spare bedroom
+that was always spare. We each put in our own lot of raisins and turned
+it all into a pudding-basin, and tied it up in one of Alice's pinafores,
+which was the nearest thing to a proper pudding-cloth we could find--at
+any rate clean. What was left sticking to the wash-hand basin did not
+taste so bad.
+
+"It's a little bit soapy," Alice said, "but perhaps that will boil out;
+like stains in table-cloths."
+
+It was a difficult question how to boil the pudding. Matilda proved
+furious when asked to let us, just because some one had happened to
+knock her hat off the scullery door and Pincher had got it and done for
+it. However, part of the embassy nicked a saucepan while the others were
+being told what Matilda thought about the hat, and we got hot water out
+of the bath-room and made it boil over our nursery fire. We put the
+pudding in--it was now getting on towards the hour of tea--and let it
+boil. With some exceptions--owing to the fire going down, and Matilda
+not hurrying up with coals--it boiled for an hour and a quarter. Then
+Matilda came suddenly in and said, "I'm not going to have you messing
+about in here with my saucepans"; and she tried to take it off the fire.
+You will see that we couldn't stand this; it was not likely. I do not
+remember who it was that told her to mind her own business, and I think
+I have forgotten who caught hold of her first to make her chuck it. I am
+sure no needless violence was used. Anyway, while the struggle
+progressed, Alice and Dora took the saucepan away and put it in the
+boot-cupboard under the stairs and put the key in their pocket.
+
+This sharp encounter made every one very hot and cross. We got over it
+before Matilda did, but we brought her round before bedtime. Quarrels
+should always be made up before bedtime. It says so in the Bible. If
+this simple rule was followed there would not be so many wars and
+martyrs and law suits and inquisitions and bloody deaths at the stake.
+
+All the house was still. The gas was out all over the house except on
+the first landing, when several darkly-shrouded figures might have been
+observed creeping downstairs to the kitchen.
+
+On the way, with superior precaution, we got out our saucepan. The
+kitchen fire was red, but low; the coal-cellar was locked, and there was
+nothing in the scuttle but a little coal-dust and the piece of brown
+paper that is put in to keep the coals from tumbling out through the
+bottom where the hole is. We put the saucepan on the fire and plied it
+with fuel--two _Chronicles_, a _Telegraph_, and two _Family Herald_
+novelettes were burned in vain. I am almost sure the pudding did not
+boil at all that night.
+
+"Never mind," Alice said. "We can each nick a piece of coal every time
+we go into the kitchen to-morrow."
+
+This daring scheme was faithfully performed, and by night we had nearly
+half a waste-paper basket of coal, coke, and cinders. And in the depth
+of night once more we might have been observed, this time with our
+collier-like waste-paper basket in our guarded hands.
+
+There was more fire left in the grate that night, and we fed it with the
+fuel we had collected. This time the fire blazed up, and the pudding
+boiled like mad. This was the time it boiled two hours--at least I think
+it was about that, but we dropped asleep on the kitchen tables and
+dresser. You dare not be lowly in the night in the kitchen, because of
+the beetles. We were aroused by a horrible smell. It was the
+pudding-cloth burning. All the water had secretly boiled itself away. We
+filled it up at once with cold, and the saucepan cracked. So we cleaned
+it and put it back on the shelf and took another and went to bed. You
+see what a lot of trouble we had over the pudding. Every evening till
+Christmas, which had now become only the day after to-morrow, we sneaked
+down in the inky midnight and boiled that pudding for as long as it
+would.
+
+On Christmas morning we chopped the holly for the sauce, but we put hot
+water (instead of brandy) and moist sugar. Some of them said it was not
+so bad. Oswald was not one of these.
+
+Then came the moment when the plain pudding Father had ordered smoked
+upon the board. Matilda brought it in and went away at once. She had a
+cousin out of Woolwich Arsenal to see her that day, I remember. Those
+far-off days are quite distinct in memory's recollection still.
+
+Then we got out our own pudding from its hiding-place and gave it one
+last hurried boil--only seven minutes, because of the general impatience
+which Oswald and Dora could not cope with.
+
+We had found means to secrete a dish, and we now tried to dish the
+pudding up, but it stuck to the basin, and had to be dislodged with the
+chisel. The pudding was horribly pale. We poured the holly sauce over
+it, and Dora took up the knife and was just cutting it when a few simple
+words from H.O. turned us from happy and triumphing cookery artists to
+persons in despair.
+
+He said: "How pleased all those kind ladies and gentlemen would be if
+they knew _we_ were the poor children they gave the shillings and
+sixpences and things for!"
+
+We all said, "_What?_" It was no moment for politeness.
+
+"I say," H.O. said, "they'd be glad if they knew it was us was enjoying
+the pudding, and not dirty little, really poor children."
+
+"You should say 'you were,' not 'you was,'" said Dora, but it was as in
+a dream and only from habit.
+
+"Do you mean to say"--Oswald spoke firmly, yet not angrily--"that you
+and Alice went and begged for money for poor children, and then _kept_
+it?"
+
+"We didn't keep it," said H.O., "we spent it."
+
+"We've kept the _things_, you little duffer!" said Dicky, looking at the
+pudding sitting alone and uncared for on its dish. "You begged for money
+for poor children, and then _kept_ it. It's stealing, that's what it is.
+I don't say so much about you--you're only a silly kid--but Alice knew
+better. Why did you do it?"
+
+He turned to Alice, but she was now too deep in tears to get a word out.
+
+H.O. looked a bit frightened, but he answered the question. We have
+taught him this. He said--
+
+"I thought they'd give us more if I said poor children than if I said
+just us."
+
+"_That's_ cheating," said Dicky--"downright beastly, mean, low
+cheating."
+
+"I'm not," said H.O.; "and you're another." Then he began to cry too. I
+do not know how the others felt, but I understand from Oswald that he
+felt that now the honour of the house of Bastable had been stamped on
+in the dust, and it didn't matter what happened. He looked at the
+beastly holly that had been left over from the sauce and was stuck up
+over the pictures. It now appeared hollow and disgusting, though it had
+got quite a lot of berries, and some of it was the varied kind--green
+and white. The figs and dates and toffee were set out in the doll's
+dinner service. The very sight of it all made Oswald blush sickly. He
+owns he would have liked to cuff H.O., and, if he did for a moment wish
+to shake Alice, the author, for one, can make allowances.
+
+Now Alice choked and spluttered, and wiped her eyes fiercely, and said,
+"It's no use ragging H.O. It's my fault. I'm older than he is."
+
+H.O. said, "It couldn't be Alice's fault. I don't see as it was wrong."
+
+"That, not as," murmured Dora, putting her arm round the sinner who had
+brought this degrading blight upon our family tree, but such is girls'
+undetermined and affectionate silliness. "Tell sister all about it, H.O.
+dear. Why couldn't it be Alice's fault?"
+
+H.O. cuddled up to Dora and said snufflingly in his nose--
+
+"Because she hadn't got nothing to do with it. I collected it all. She
+never went into one of the houses. She didn't want to."
+
+"And then took all the credit of getting the money," said Dicky
+savagely.
+
+Oswald said, "Not much _credit_," in scornful tones.
+
+"Oh, you are _beastly_, the whole lot of you, except Dora!" Alice said,
+stamping her foot in rage and despair. "I tore my frock on a nail going
+out, and I didn't want to go back, and I got H.O. to go to the houses
+alone, and I waited for him outside. And I asked him not to say anything
+because I didn't want Dora to know about the frock--it's my best. And I
+don't know what he said inside. He never told me. But I'll bet anything
+he didn't _mean_ to cheat."
+
+"You _said_ lots of kind people would be ready to give money to get
+pudding for poor children. So I asked them to."
+
+Oswald, with his strong right hand, waved a wave of passing things over.
+
+"We'll talk about that another time," he said; "just now we've got
+weightier things to deal with."
+
+He pointed to the pudding, which had grown cold during the conversation
+to which I have alluded. H.O. stopped crying, but Alice went on with it.
+Oswald now said--
+
+"We're a base and outcast family. Until that pudding's out of the house
+we shan't be able to look any one in the face. We must see that that
+pudding goes to poor children--not grisling, grumpy, whiney-piney,
+pretending poor children--but real poor ones, just as poor as they can
+stick."
+
+"And the figs too--and the dates," said Noël, with regretting tones.
+
+"Every fig," said Dicky sternly. "Oswald is quite right."
+
+This honourable resolution made us feel a bit better. We hastily put on
+our best things, and washed ourselves a bit, and hurried out to find
+some really poor people to give the pudding to. We cut it in slices
+ready, and put it in a basket with the figs and dates and toffee. We
+would not let H.O. come with us at first because he wanted to. And Alice
+would not come because of him. So at last we had to let him. The
+excitement of tearing into your best things heals the hurt that wounded
+honour feels, as the poetry writer said--or at any rate it makes the
+hurt feel better.
+
+We went out into the streets. They were pretty quiet--nearly everybody
+was eating its Christmas dessert. But presently we met a woman in an
+apron. Oswald said very politely--
+
+"Please, are you a poor person?" And she told us to get along with us.
+
+The next we met was a shabby man with a hole in his left boot.
+
+Again Oswald said, "Please, are you a poor person, and have you any poor
+little children?"
+
+The man told us not to come any of our games with him, or we should
+laugh on the wrong side of our faces. We went on sadly. We had no heart
+to stop and explain to him that we had no games to come.
+
+The next was a young man near the Obelisk. Dora tried this time.
+
+She said, "Oh, if you please we've got some Christmas pudding in this
+basket, and if you're a poor person you can have some."
+
+"Poor as Job," said the young man in a hoarse voice, and he had to come
+up out of a red comforter to say it.
+
+We gave him a slice of the pudding, and he bit into it without thanks or
+delay. The next minute he had thrown the pudding slap in Dora's face,
+and was clutching Dicky by the collar.
+
+"Blime if I don't chuck ye in the river, the whole bloomin' lot of you!"
+he exclaimed.
+
+The girls screamed, the boys shouted, and though Oswald threw himself on
+the insulter of his sister with all his manly vigour, yet but for a
+friend of Oswald's, who is in the police, passing at that instant, the
+author shudders to think what might have happened, for he was a strong
+young man, and Oswald is not yet come to his full strength, and the
+Quaggy runs all too near.
+
+Our policeman led our assailant aside, and we waited anxiously, as he
+told us to. After long uncertain moments the young man in the comforter
+loafed off grumbling, and our policeman turned to us.
+
+"Said you give him a dollop o' pudding, and it tasted of soap and
+hair-oil."
+
+I suppose the hair-oil must have been the Brown Windsoriness of the soap
+coming out. We were sorry, but it was still our duty to get rid of the
+pudding. The Quaggy was handy, it is true, but when you have collected
+money to feed poor children and spent it on pudding it is not right to
+throw that pudding in the river. People do not subscribe shillings and
+sixpences and half-crowns to feed a hungry flood with Christmas pudding.
+
+Yet we shrank from asking any more people whether they were poor
+persons, or about their families, and still more from offering the
+pudding to chance people who might bite into it and taste the soap
+before we had time to get away.
+
+It was Alice, the most paralysed with disgrace of all of us, who thought
+of the best idea.
+
+She said, "Let's take it to the workhouse. At any rate they're all poor
+people there, and they mayn't go out without leave, so they can't run
+after us to do anything to us after the pudding. No one would give them
+leave to go out to pursue people who had brought them pudding, and wreck
+vengeance on them, and at any rate we shall get rid of the
+conscience-pudding--it's a sort of conscience-money, you know--only it
+isn't money but pudding."
+
+The workhouse is a good way, but we stuck to it, though very cold, and
+hungrier than we thought possible when we started, for we had been so
+agitated we had not even stayed to eat the plain pudding our good Father
+had so kindly and thoughtfully ordered for our Christmas dinner.
+
+The big bell at the workhouse made a man open the door to us, when we
+rang it. Oswald said (and he spoke because he is next eldest to Dora,
+and she had had jolly well enough of saying anything about pudding)--he
+said--
+
+"Please we've brought some pudding for the poor people."
+
+He looked us up and down, and he looked at our basket, then he said:
+"You'd better see the Matron."
+
+We waited in a hall, feeling more and more uncomfy, and less and less
+like Christmas. We were very cold indeed, especially our hands and our
+noses. And we felt less and less able to face the Matron if she was
+horrid, and one of us at least wished we had chosen the Quaggy for the
+pudding's long home, and made it up to the robbed poor in some other way
+afterwards.
+
+Just as Alice was saying earnestly in the burning cold ear of Oswald,
+"Let's put down the basket and make a bolt for it. Oh, Oswald, _let's_!"
+a lady came along the passage. She was very upright, and she had eyes
+that went through you like blue gimlets. I should not like to be obliged
+to thwart that lady if she had any design, and mine was opposite. I am
+glad this is not likely to occur.
+
+She said, "What's all this about a pudding?"
+
+H.O. said at once, before we could stop him, "They say I've stolen the
+pudding, so we've brought it here for the poor people."
+
+"No, we didn't!" "That wasn't why!" "The money was given!" "It was
+meant for the poor!" "Shut up, H.O.!" said the rest of us all at once.
+
+Then there was an awful silence. The lady gimleted us again one by one
+with her blue eyes.
+
+Then she said: "Come into my room. You all look frozen."
+
+She took us into a very jolly room with velvet curtains and a big fire,
+and the gas lighted, because now it was almost dark, even out of doors.
+She gave us chairs, and Oswald felt as if his was a dock, he felt so
+criminal, and the lady looked so Judgular.
+
+Then she took the arm-chair by the fire herself, and said, "Who's the
+eldest?"
+
+"I am," said Dora, looking more like a frightened white rabbit than I've
+ever seen her.
+
+"Then tell me all about it."
+
+Dora looked at Alice and began to cry. That slab of pudding in the face
+had totally unnerved the gentle girl. Alice's eyes were red, and her
+face was puffy with crying; but she spoke up for Dora and said--
+
+"Oh, please let Oswald tell. Dora can't. She's tired with the long walk.
+And a young man threw a piece of it in her face, and----"
+
+The lady nodded and Oswald began. He told the story from the very
+beginning, as he has always been taught to, though he hated to lay bare
+the family honour's wound before a stranger, however judgelike and
+gimlet-eyed. He told all--not concealing the pudding-throwing, nor what
+the young man said about soap.
+
+"So," he ended, "we want to give the conscience-pudding to you. It's
+like conscience-money--you know what that is, don't you? But if you
+really think it is soapy and not just the young man's horridness,
+perhaps you'd better not let them eat it. But the figs and things are
+all right."
+
+When he had done the lady said, for most of us were crying more or
+less--
+
+"Come, cheer up! It's Christmas-time, and he's very little--your
+brother, I mean. And I think the rest of you seem pretty well able to
+take care of the honour of the family. I'll take the conscience-pudding
+off your minds. Where are you going now?"
+
+"Home, I suppose," Oswald said. And he thought how nasty and dark and
+dull it would be. The fire out most likely and Father away.
+
+"And your Father's not at home, you say," the blue-gimlet lady went on.
+"What do you say to having tea with me, and then seeing the
+entertainment we have got up for our old people?"
+
+Then the lady smiled and the blue gimlets looked quite merry.
+
+The room was so warm and comfortable and the invitation was the last
+thing we expected. It was jolly of her, I do think.
+
+No one thought quite at first of saying how pleased we should be to
+accept her kind invitation. Instead we all just said "Oh!" but in a tone
+which must have told her we meant "Yes, please," very deeply.
+
+Oswald (this has more than once happened) was the first to restore his
+manners. He made a proper bow like he has been taught, and said--
+
+"Thank you very much. We should like it very much. It is very much nicer
+than going home. Thank you very much."
+
+I need not tell the reader that Oswald could have made up a much better
+speech if he had had more time to make it up in, or if he had not been
+so filled with mixed flusteredness and furification by the shameful
+events of the day.
+
+We washed our faces and hands and had a first rate muffin and crumpet
+tea, with slices of cold meats, and many nice jams and cakes. A lot of
+other people were there, most of them people who were giving the
+entertainment to the aged poor.
+
+After tea it was the entertainment. Songs and conjuring and a play
+called "Box and Cox," very amusing, and a lot of throwing things about
+in it--bacon and chops and things--and nigger minstrels. We clapped till
+our hands were sore.
+
+When it was over we said goodbye. In between the songs and things Oswald
+had had time to make up a speech of thanks to the lady.
+
+He said--
+
+"We all thank you heartily for your goodness. The entertainment was
+beautiful. We shall never forget your kindness and hospitableness."
+
+The lady laughed, and said she had been very pleased to have us. A fat
+gentleman said--
+
+"And your teas? I hope you enjoyed those--eh?"
+
+Oswald had not had time to make up an answer to that, so he answered
+straight from the heart, and said--
+
+"Ra--_ther_!"
+
+And every one laughed and slapped us boys on the back and kissed the
+girls, and the gentleman who played the bones in the nigger minstrels
+saw us home. We ate the cold pudding that night, and H.O. dreamed that
+something came to eat him, like it advises you to in the advertisements
+on the hoardings. The grown-ups said it was the pudding, but I don't
+think it could have been that, because, as I have said more than once,
+it was so very plain.
+
+Some of H.O.'s brothers and sisters thought it was a judgment on him for
+pretending about who the poor children were he was collecting the money
+for. Oswald does not believe such a little boy as H.O. would have a real
+judgment made just for him and nobody else, whatever he did.
+
+But it certainly is odd. H.O. was the only one who had bad dreams, and
+he was also the only one who got any of the things we bought with that
+ill-gotten money, because, you remember, he picked a hole in the
+raisin-paper as he was bringing the parcel home. The rest of us had
+nothing, unless you count the scrapings of the pudding-basin, and those
+don't really count at all.
+
+
+
+
+_ARCHIBALD THE UNPLEASANT_
+
+
+THE house of Bastable was once in poor, but honest, circs. That was when
+it lived in a semi-detached house in the Lewisham Road, and looked for
+treasure. There were six scions of the house who looked for it--in fact
+there were seven, if you count Father. I am sure he looked right enough,
+but he did not do it the right way. And we did. And so we found a
+treasure of a great-uncle, and we and Father went to live with him in a
+very affluent mansion on Blackheath--with gardens and vineries and
+pineries and everything jolly you can think of. And then, when we were
+no longer so beastly short of pocket-money, we tried to be good, and
+sometimes it came out right, and sometimes it didn't. Something like
+sums.
+
+And then it was the Christmas holidays--and we had a bazaar and raffled
+the most beautiful goat you ever saw, and we gave the money to the poor
+and needy.
+
+And then we felt it was time to do something new, because we were as
+rich as our worthy relative, the uncle, and our Father--now also
+wealthy, at least, compared to what he used to be--thought right for us;
+and we were as good as we could be without being good for nothing and
+muffs, which I hope no one calling itself a Bastable will ever stoop to.
+
+So then Oswald, so often the leader in hazardous enterprises, thought
+long and deeply in his interior self, and he saw that something must be
+done, because, though there was still the goat left over, unclaimed by
+its fortunate winner at the Bazaar, somehow no really fine idea seemed
+to come out of it, and nothing else was happening. Dora was getting a
+bit domineering, and Alice was too much taken up with trying to learn to
+knit. Dicky was bored and so was Oswald, and Noël was writing far more
+poetry than could be healthy for any poet, however young, and H.O. was
+simply a nuisance. His boots are always much louder when he is not
+amused, and that gets the rest of us into rows, because there are hardly
+any grown-up persons who can tell the difference between his boots and
+mine. Oswald decided to call a council (because even if nothing comes of
+a council it always means getting Alice to drop knitting, and making
+Noël chuck the poetical influences, that are no use and only make him
+silly), and he went into the room that is our room. It is called the
+common-room, like in colleges, and it is very different from the room
+that was ours when we were poor, but honest. It is a jolly room, with a
+big table and a big couch, that is most useful for games, and a thick
+carpet because of H.O.'s boots.
+
+Alice was knitting by the fire; it was for Father, but I am sure his
+feet are not at all that shape. He has a high and beautifully formed
+instep like Oswald's. Noël was writing poetry, of course.
+
+          "My dear sister sits
+           And knits,
+           I hope to goodness the stocking fits,"
+
+was as far as he had got.
+
+"It ought to be 'my dearest sister' to sound right," he said, "but that
+wouldn't be kind to Dora."
+
+"Thank you," said Dora, "You needn't trouble to be kind to me, if you
+don't want to."
+
+"Shut up, Dora!" said Dicky, "Noël didn't mean anything."
+
+"He never does," said H.O., "nor yet his poetry doesn't neither."
+
+"_And_ his poetry doesn't _either_," Dora corrected; "and besides, you
+oughtn't to say that at all, it's unkind----"
+
+"You're too jolly down on the kid," said Dicky.
+
+And Alice said, "Eighty-seven, eighty-eight--oh, do be quiet half a
+sec.!--eighty-nine, ninety--now I shall have to count the stitches all
+over again!"
+
+Oswald alone was silent and not cross. I tell you this to show that the
+sort of worryingness was among us that is catching, like measles.
+Kipling calls it the cameelious hump, and, as usual, that great and good
+writer is quite correct.
+
+So Oswald said, "Look here, let's have a council. It says in Kipling's
+book when you've got the hump go and dig till you gently perspire. Well,
+we can't do that, because it's simply pouring, but----"
+
+The others all interrupted him, and said they hadn't got the hump and
+they didn't know what he meant. So he shrugged his shoulders patiently
+(it is not his fault that the others hate him to shrug his shoulders
+patiently) and he said no more.
+
+Then Dora said, "Oh, don't be so disagreeable, Oswald, for goodness'
+sake!"
+
+I assure you she did, though he had done simply nothing.
+
+Matters were in this cryptical state when the door opened and Father
+came in.
+
+"Hullo, kiddies!" he remarked kindly. "Beastly wet day, isn't it? And
+dark too. I can't think why the rain can't always come in term time. It
+seems a poor arrangement to have it in 'vac.,' doesn't it?"
+
+I think every one instantly felt better. I know one of us did, and it
+was me.
+
+Father lit the gas, and sat down in the armchair and took Alice on his
+knee.
+
+"First," he said, "here is a box of chocs." It was an extra big and
+beautiful one and Fuller's best. "And besides the chocs., a piece of
+good news! You're all asked to a party at Mrs. Leslie's. She's going to
+have all sorts of games and things, with prizes for every one, and a
+conjurer and a magic lantern."
+
+The shadow of doom seemed to be lifted from each young brow, and we felt
+how much fonder we were of each other than any one would have thought.
+At least Oswald felt this, and Dicky told me afterwards he felt Dora
+wasn't such a bad sort after all.
+
+"It's on Tuesday week," said Father. "I see the prospect pleases. Number
+three is that your cousin Archibald has come here to stay a week or two.
+His little sister has taken it into her head to have whooping-cough. And
+he's downstairs now, talking to your uncle."
+
+We asked what the young stranger was like, but Father did not know,
+because he and cousin Archibald's father had not seen much of each other
+for some years. Father said this, but we knew it was because Archibald's
+father hadn't bothered to see ours when he was poor and honest, but now
+he was the wealthy sharer of the red-brick, beautiful Blackheath house
+it was different. This made us not like Uncle Archibald very much, but
+we were too just to blame it on to young Archibald. All the same we
+should have liked him better if his father's previous career had not
+been of such a worldly and stuck-up sort. Besides, I do think Archibald
+is quite the most rotten sort of name. We should have called him
+Archie, of course, if he had been at all decent.
+
+"You'll be as jolly to him as you can, I know," Father said; "he's a bit
+older than you, Oswald. He's not a bad-looking chap."
+
+Then Father went down and Oswald had to go with him, and there was
+Archibald sitting upright in a chair and talking to our Indian uncle as
+if he was some beastly grown-up. Our cousin proved to be dark and rather
+tall, and though he was only fourteen he was always stroking his lip to
+see if his moustache had begun to come.
+
+Father introduced us to each other, and we said, "How do you do?" and
+looked at each other, and neither of us could think of anything else to
+say. At least Oswald couldn't. So then we went upstairs. Archibald shook
+hands with the others, and every one was silent except Dora, and she
+only whispered to H.O. to keep his feet still.
+
+You cannot keep for ever in melancholy silence however few things you
+have to say, and presently some one said it was a wet day, and this
+well-chosen remark made us able to begin to talk.
+
+I do not wish to be injurious to anybody, especially one who was a
+Bastable, by birth at least if not according to the nobler attributes,
+but I must say that Oswald never did dislike a boy so much as he did
+that young Archibald. He was as cocky as though he'd done something to
+speak of--been captain of his eleven, or passed a beastly exam., or
+something--but we never could find that he had done anything. He was
+always bragging about the things he had at home, and the things he was
+allowed to do, and all the things he knew all about, but he was a most
+untruthful chap. He laughed at Noël's being a poet--a thing we never do,
+because it makes him cry and crying makes him ill--and of course Oswald
+and Dicky could not punch his head in their own house because of the
+laws of hospitableness, and Alice stopped it at last by saying she
+didn't care if it was being a sneak, she would tell Father the very next
+time. I don't think she would have, because we made a rule, when we were
+poor and honest, not to bother Father if we could possibly help it. And
+we keep it up still. But Archibald didn't know that. Then this cousin,
+who is, I fear, the black sheep of the Bastables, and hardly worthy to
+be called one, used to pull the girls' hair, and pinch them at prayers
+when they could not call out or do anything to him back.
+
+And he was awfully rude to the servants, ordering them about, and
+playing tricks on them, not amusing tricks like other Bastables might
+have done--such as booby-traps and mice under dish-covers, which seldom
+leaves any lasting ill-feeling--but things no decent boy would do--like
+hiding their letters and not giving them to them for days, and then it
+was too late to meet the young man the letter was from, and squirting
+ink on their aprons when they were just going to open the door, and once
+he put a fish-hook in the cook's pocket when she wasn't looking. He did
+not do anything to Oswald at that time. I suppose he was afraid. I just
+tell you this to show you that Oswald didn't cotton to him for no
+selfish reason, but because Oswald has been taught to feel for others.
+
+[Illustration: AND HE WAS AWFULLY RUDE TO THE SERVANTS.]
+
+He called us all kids--and he was that kind of boy we knew at once it
+was no good trying to start anything new and jolly--so Oswald, ever
+discreet and wary, shut up entirely about the council. We played games
+with him sometimes, not really good ones, but Snap and Beggar my
+Neighbour, and even then he used to cheat. I hate to say it of one of
+our blood, but I can hardly believe he was. I think he must have been
+changed at nurse like the heirs to monarchies and dukeries.
+
+Well, the days passed slowly. There was Mrs. Leslie's party shining
+starrishly in the mysteries of the future. Also we had another thing to
+look forward to, and that was when Archibald would have to go back to
+school. But we could not enjoy that foreshadowing so much because of us
+having to go back at nearly the same time.
+
+Oswald always tries to be just, no matter how far from easy, and so I
+will say that I am not quite sure that it was Archibald that set the
+pipes leaking, but we were all up in the loft the day before, snatching
+a golden opportunity to play a brief game of robbers in a cave, while
+Archibald had gone down to the village to get his silly hair cut.
+Another thing about him that was not natural was his being always
+looking in the glass and wanting to talk about whether people were
+handsome or not; and he made as much fuss about his ties as though he
+had been a girl. So when he was gone Alice said--
+
+"Hist! The golden moment. Let's be robbers in the loft, and when he
+comes back he won't know where we are."
+
+"He'll hear us," said Noël, biting his pencil.
+
+"No, he won't. We'll be the Whispering Band of Weird Bandits. Come on,
+Noël; you can finish the poetry up here."
+
+"It's about _him_," said Noël gloomily, "when he's gone back to----"
+(Oswald will not give the name of Archibald's school for the sake of the
+other boys there, as they might not like everybody who reads this to
+know about there being a chap like him in their midst.) "I shall do it
+up in an envelope and put a stamp on it and post it to him, and----"
+
+"Haste!" cried Alice. "Bard of the Bandits, haste while yet there's
+time."
+
+So we tore upstairs and put on our slippers and socks over them, and we
+got the high-backed chair out of the girls' bedroom, and the others held
+it steady while Oswald agilitively mounted upon its high back and opened
+the trap-door and got up into the place between the roof and the
+ceiling (the boys in "Stalky & Co." found this out by accident, and they
+were surprised and pleased, but we have known all about it ever since we
+can remember).
+
+Then the others put the chair back, and Oswald let down the rope ladder
+that we made out of bamboo and clothes-line after uncle told us the
+story of the missionary lady who was shut up in a rajah's palace, and
+some one shot an arrow to her with a string tied to it, and it might
+have killed her I should have thought, but it didn't, and she hauled in
+the string and there was a rope and a bamboo ladder, and so she escaped,
+and we made one like it on purpose for the loft. No one had ever told us
+not to make ladders.
+
+The others came up by the rope-ladder (it was partly bamboo, but
+rope-ladder does for short) and we shut the trap-door down. It is jolly
+up there. There are two big cisterns, and one little window in a gable
+that gives you just enough light. The floor is plaster with wooden
+things going across, beams and joists they are called. There are some
+planks laid on top of these here and there. Of course if you walk on the
+plaster you will go through with your foot into the room below.
+
+We had a very jolly game, in whispers, and Noël sat by the little
+window, and was quite happy, being the bandit bard. The cisterns are
+rocks you hide behind. But the jolliest part was when we heard Archibald
+shouting out, "Hullo! kids, where are you?" and we all stayed as still
+as mice, and heard Jane say she thought we must have gone out. Jane was
+the one that hadn't got her letter, as well as having her apron inked
+all over.
+
+[Illustration: THE OTHERS CAME UP BY THE ROPE-LADDER.]
+
+Then we heard Archibald going all over the house looking for us. Father
+was at business and uncle was at his club. And we were _there_. And so
+Archibald was all alone. And we might have gone on for hours enjoying
+the spectacle of his confusion and perplexedness, but Noël happened to
+sneeze--the least thing gives him cold and he sneezes louder for his age
+than any one I know--just when Archibald was on the landing underneath.
+Then he stood there and said--
+
+"I know where you are. Let me come up."
+
+We cautiously did not reply. Then he said:
+
+"All right. I'll go and get the step-ladder."
+
+We did not wish this. We had not been told not to make rope-ladders, nor
+yet about not playing in the loft; but if he fetched the step-ladder
+Jane would know, and there are some secrets you like to keep to
+yourself.
+
+So Oswald opened the trap-door and squinted down, and there was that
+Archibald with his beastly hair cut. Oswald said--
+
+"We'll let you up if you promise not to tell you've been up here."
+
+So he promised, and we let down the rope-ladder. And it will show you
+the kind of boy he was that the instant he had got up by it he began
+to find fault with the way it was made.
+
+[Illustration: SO OSWALD OPENED THE TRAP-DOOR AND SQUINTED DOWN, AND
+THERE WAS THAT ARCHIBALD.]
+
+Then he wanted to play with the ball-cock. But Oswald knows it is better
+not to do this.
+
+"I daresay _you're_ forbidden," Archibald said, "little kids like you.
+But _I_ know all about plumbing."
+
+And Oswald could not prevent his fiddling with the pipes and the
+ball-cock a little. Then we went down. All chance of further banditry
+was at an end. Next day was Sunday. The leak was noticed then. It was
+slow, but steady, and the plumber was sent for on Monday morning.
+
+Oswald does not know whether it was Archibald who made the leak, but he
+does know about what came after.
+
+I think our displeasing cousin found that piece of poetry that Noël was
+beginning about him, and read it, because he is a sneak. Instead of
+having it out with Noël he sucked up to him and gave him a six-penny
+fountain-pen which Noël liked, although it is really no good for him to
+try to write poetry with anything but a pencil, because he always sucks
+whatever he writes with, and ink is poisonous, I believe.
+
+Then in the afternoon he and Noël got quite thick, and went off
+together. And afterwards Noël seemed very peacocky about something, but
+he would not say what, and Archibald was grinning in a way Oswald would
+have liked to pound his head for.
+
+Then, quite suddenly, the peaceable quietness of that happy Blackheath
+home was brought to a close by screams. Servants ran about with brooms
+and pails, and the water was coming through the ceiling of uncle's room
+like mad, and Noël turned white and looked at our unattractive cousin
+and said: "Send him away."
+
+Alice put her arm round Noël and said: "Do go, Archibald."
+
+But he wouldn't.
+
+So then Noël said he wished he had never been born, and whatever would
+Father say.
+
+"Why, what is it, Noël?" Alice asked that. "Just tell us, we'll all
+stand by you. What's he been doing?"
+
+"You won't let him do anything to me if I tell?"
+
+"Tell tale tit," said Archibald.
+
+"He got me to go up into the loft and he said it was a secret, and would
+I promise not to tell, and I won't tell; only I've done it, and now the
+water's coming in."
+
+"You've done it? You young ass, I was only kidding you!" said our
+detestable cousin. And he laughed.
+
+"I don't understand," said Oswald. "What did you tell Noël?"
+
+"He can't tell you because he promised--and I won't--unless you vow by
+the honour of the house you talk so much about that you'll never tell I
+had anything to do with it."
+
+That will show you what he was. We had never mentioned the honour of the
+house except once quite at the beginning, before we knew how discapable
+he was of understanding anything, and how far we were from wanting to
+call him Archie.
+
+We had to promise, for Noël was getting greener and more gurgly every
+minute, and at any moment Father or uncle might burst in foaming for an
+explanation, and none of us would have one except Noël, and him in this
+state of all-anyhow.
+
+So Dicky said--
+
+"We promise, you beast, you!" And we all said the same.
+
+Then Archibald said, drawling his words and feeling for the moustache
+that wasn't there, and I hope he'll be quite old before he gets one--
+
+"It's just what comes of trying to amuse silly little kids. I told the
+foolish little animal about people having arteries cut, and your having
+to cut the whole thing to stop the bleeding. And he said, 'Was that what
+the plumber would do to the leaky pipe?' And how pleased your governor
+would be to find it mended. And then he went and did it."
+
+"You told me to," said Noël, turning greener and greener.
+
+"Go along with Alice," said Oswald. "We'll stand by you. And Noël, old
+chap, you must keep your word and not sneak about that sneaking hound."
+
+Alice took him away, and we were left with the horrid Archibald.
+
+"Now," said Oswald, "I won't break my word, no more will the rest of us.
+But we won't speak another word to you as long as we live."
+
+"Oh, Oswald," said Dora, "what about the sun going down?"
+
+"Let it jolly well go," said Dicky in furiousness. "Oswald didn't say
+we'd go on being angry for ever, but I'm with Oswald all the way. I
+won't talk to cads--no, not even before grown-ups. They can jolly well
+think what they like."
+
+After this no one spoke to Archibald.
+
+Oswald rushed for a plumber, and such was his fiery eloquence he really
+caught one and brought him home. Then he and Dicky waited for Father
+when he came in, and they got him into the study, and Oswald said what
+they had all agreed on. It was this:
+
+"Father, we are all most awfully sorry, but one of us has cut the pipe
+in the loft, and if you make us tell you any more it will not be
+honourable, and we are very sorry. Please, please don't ask who it was
+did it."
+
+Father bit his moustache and looked worried, and Dicky went on--
+
+"Oswald has got a plumber and he is doing it now."
+
+Then Father said, "How on earth did you get into the loft?"
+
+And then of course the treasured secret of the rope-ladder had to be
+revealed. We had never been told not to make rope-ladders and go into
+the loft, but we did not try to soften the anger of our Father by saying
+this. It would not have been any good either. We just had to stick it.
+And the punishment of our crime was most awful. It was that we weren't
+to go to Mrs. Leslie's party. And Archibald was to go, because when
+Father asked him if he was in it with the rest of us, he said "No." I
+cannot think of any really gentle, manly, and proper words to say what I
+think about my unnatural cousin.
+
+We kept our word about not speaking to him, and I think Father thought
+we were jealous because he was going to that conjuring, magic lantern
+party and we were not. Noël was the most unhappy, because he knew we
+were all being punished for what he had done. He was very affectionate
+and tried to write pieces of poetry to us all, but he was so unhappy he
+couldn't even write, and he went into the kitchen and sat on Jane's knee
+and said his head ached.
+
+Next day it was the day of the party and we were plunged in gloom.
+Archibald got out his Etons and put his clean shirt ready, and a pair of
+flashy silk socks with red spots, and then he went into the bath-room.
+
+Noël and Jane were whispering on the stairs. Jane came up and Noël went
+down, Jane knocked at the bath-room door and said--
+
+"Here's the soap, Master Archerbald. I didn't put none in to-day."
+
+He opened the door and put out his hand.
+
+"Half a moment," said Jane, "I've got something else in my hand."
+
+As she spoke the gas all over the house went down blue, and then went
+out. We held our breaths heavily.
+
+"Here it is," she said; "I'll put it in your hand. I'll go down and turn
+off the burners and see about the gas. You'll be late, sir. If I was you
+I should get on a bit with the washing of myself in the dark. I daresay
+the gas'll be five or ten minutes, and it's five o'clock now."
+
+It wasn't, and of course she ought not to have said it, but it was
+useful all the same.
+
+Noël came stumping up the stairs in the dark. He fumbled about and then
+whispered, "I've turned the little white china knob that locks the
+bath-room door on the outside."
+
+The water was bubbling and hissing in the pipes inside, and the darkness
+went on. Father and uncle had not come in yet, which was a fortunate
+blessing.
+
+"Do be quiet!" said Noël. "Just you wait."
+
+We all sat on the stairs and waited. Noël said--
+
+"Don't ask me yet--you'll see--you wait."
+
+And we waited, and the gas did not come back.
+
+At last Archibald tried to come out--he thought he had washed himself
+clean, I suppose--and of course the door was fastened. He kicked and he
+hammered and he shouted, and we were glad.
+
+At last Noël banged on the door and screamed through the keyhole--
+
+"If we let you out will you let us off our promise not to tell about you
+and the pipes? We won't tell till you've gone back to school."
+
+He wouldn't for a long time, but at last he had to.
+
+"I shan't ever come to your beastly house again," he bellowed through
+the keyhole, "so I don't mind."
+
+"Turn off the gas-burners then," said Oswald, ever thoughtful, though he
+was still in ignorance of the beautiful truth.
+
+Then Noël sang out over the stairs, "Light up!" and Jane went round with
+a taper, and when the landing gas was lighted Noël turned the knob of
+the bath-room, and Archibald exited in his Indian red and yellow
+dressing-gown that he thought so much of. Of course we expected his face
+to be red with rage, or white with passion, or purple with mixed
+emotions, but you cannot think what our feelings were--indeed, we hardly
+knew what they were ourselves--when we saw that he was not red or white
+or purple, but _black_. He looked like an uneven sort of bluish nigger.
+His face and hands were all black and blue in streaks, and so were the
+bits of his feet that showed between his Indian dressing-gown and his
+Turkish slippers.
+
+[Illustration: "WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT?" HE ASKED. "NYANG, NYANG!" JANE
+ANSWERED TAUNTINGLY.]
+
+The word "Krikey" fell from more than one lip.
+
+"What are you staring at?" he asked.
+
+We did not answer even then, though I think it was less from
+keep-your-wordishness than amazement. But Jane did.
+
+"Nyang, Nyang!" she uttered tauntingly. "You thought it was soap I was
+giving you, and all the time it was Maple's dark bright navy-blue
+indelible dye--won't wash out." She flashed a looking-glass in his face,
+and he looked and saw the depth of his dark bright navy-blueness.
+
+Now, you may think that we shouted with laughing to see him done brown
+and dyed blue like this, but we did not. There was a spellbound silence.
+Oswald, I know, felt a quite uncomfortable feeling inside him.
+
+When Archibald had had one good look at himself he did not want any
+more. He ran to his room and bolted himself in.
+
+"_He_ won't go to no parties," said Jane, and she flounced downstairs.
+
+We never knew how much Noël had told her. He is very young, and not so
+strong as we are, and we thought it better not to ask.
+
+Oswald and Dicky and H.O.--particularly H.O.--told each other it served
+him right, but after a bit Dora asked Noël if he would mind her trying
+to get some of it off our unloved cousin, and he said "No."
+
+[Illustration: WHEN FATHER CAME HOME THERE WAS AN AWFUL ROW.]
+
+But nothing would get it off him; and when Father came home there was an
+awful row. And he said we had disgraced ourselves and forgotten the
+duties of hospitality. We got it pretty straight, I can tell you. And we
+bore it all. I do not say we were martyrs to the honour of our house and
+to our plighted word, but I do say that we got it very straight indeed,
+and we did not tell the provocativeness we had had from our guest that
+drove the poet Noël to this wild and desperate revenge.
+
+But some one told, and I have always thought it was Jane, and that is
+why we did not ask too many questions about what Noël had told her,
+because late that night Father came and said he now understood that we
+had meant to do right, except perhaps the one who cut the pipe with a
+chisel, and that must have been more silliness than naughtiness; and
+perhaps the being dyed blue served our cousin rather right. And he gave
+Archibald a few remarks in private, and when the dye began to come
+off--it was not a fast dye, though it said so on the paper it was
+wrapped in--Archibald, now a light streaky blue, really did seem to be
+making an effort to be something like decent. And when, now merely a
+pale grey, he had returned to school, he sent us a letter. It said:--
+
+          "_My dear Cousins_,--
+
+          "_I think that I was beastlier than I meant to
+          be, but I am not accustomed to young kids. And I
+          think uncle was right, and the way you stand up
+          for the honour of our house is not all nonsense,
+          like I said it was. If we ever meet in the future
+          life I hope you will not keep a down on me about
+          things. I don't think you can expect me to say
+          more. From your affectionate cousin,_
+
+                                     "_Archibald Bastable._"
+
+So I suppose rays of remorse penetrated that cold heart, and now perhaps
+he will be a reformed Bastable. I am sure I hope so, but I believe it is
+difficult, if not impossible, for a leopard to change his skin.
+
+Still, I remember how indelibly black he looked when he came out of the
+fatal bath-room; and it nearly all wore off. And perhaps spots on the
+honourable inside parts of your soul come off with time. I hope so. The
+dye never came off the inside of the bath though. I think that was what
+annoyed our good great-uncle the most.
+
+
+
+
+_OVER THE WATER TO CHINA_
+
+
+OSWALD is a very modest boy, I believe, but even he would not deny that
+he has an active brain. The author has heard both his Father and
+Albert's uncle say so. And the most far-reaching ideas often come to him
+quite naturally--just as silly notions that aren't any good might come
+to you. And he had an idea which he meant to hold a council; about with
+his brothers and sisters; but just as he was going to unroll his idea to
+them our Father occurred suddenly in our midst and said a strange cousin
+was coming, and he came, and he was strange indeed! And when Fate had
+woven the threads of his dark destiny and he had been dyed a dark bright
+navy-blue, and had gone from our midst, Oswald went back to the idea
+that he had not forgotten. The words "tenacious of purpose" mean
+sticking to things, and these words always make me think of the
+character of the young hero of these pages. At least I suppose his
+brothers Dicky and Noël and H.O. are heroes too, in a way, but somehow
+the author of these lines knows more about Oswald's inside realness
+than he does about the others. But I am getting too deep for words.
+
+So Oswald went into the common-room. Every one was busy. Noël and H.O.
+were playing Halma. Dora was covering boxes with silver paper to put
+sweets in for a school treat, and Dicky was making a cardboard model of
+a new screw he has invented for ocean steamers. But Oswald did not mind
+interrupting, because Dora ought not to work too hard, and Halma always
+ends in a row, and I would rather not say what I think of Dicky's screw.
+So Oswald said--
+
+"I want a council. Where's Alice?"
+
+Every one said they didn't know, and they made haste to say that we
+couldn't have a council without her. But Oswald's determined nature made
+him tell H.O. to chuck that rotten game and go and look for her. H.O. is
+our youngest brother, and it is right that he should remember this and
+do as he was told. But he happened to be winning the beastly Halma game,
+and Oswald saw that there was going to be trouble--"big trouble," as Mr.
+Kipling says. And he was just bracing his young nerves for the conflict
+with H.O., because he was not going to stand any nonsense from his young
+brother about his not fetching Alice when he was jolly well told to,
+when the missing maiden bounced into the room bearing upon her brow the
+marks of ravaging agitatedness.
+
+"Have any of you seen Pincher?" she cried, in haste.
+
+We all said, "No, not since last night."
+
+"Well, then, he's lost," Alice said, making the ugly face that means you
+are going to blub in half a minute.
+
+Every one had sprung to their feet. Even Noël and H.O. saw at once what
+a doddering game Halma is, and Dora and Dicky, whatever their faults,
+care more for Pincher than for boxes and screws. Because Pincher is our
+fox-terrier. He is of noble race, and he was ours when we were poor,
+lonely treasure-seekers and lived in humble hard-upness in the Lewisham
+Road.
+
+To the faithful heart of young Oswald the Blackheath affluent mansion
+and all it contains, even the stuffed fox eating a duck in the glass
+case in the hall that he is so fond of, and even the council he wanted
+to have, seemed to matter much less than old Pincher.
+
+"I want you all to let's go out and look for him," said Alice, carrying
+out the meaning of the faces she had made and beginning to howl. "Oh,
+Pincher, suppose something happens to him; you might get my hat and
+coat, Dora. Oh, oh, oh!"
+
+We all got our coats and hats, and by the time we were ready Alice had
+conquered it to only sniffing, or else, as Oswald told her kindly, she
+wouldn't have been allowed to come.
+
+"Let's go on the Heath," Noël said. "The dear departed dog used to like
+digging there."
+
+So we went. And we said to every single person we met--
+
+"Please have you seen a thorough-bred fox-terrier dog with a black patch
+over one eye, and another over his tail, and a tan patch on his right
+shoulder?" And every one said, "No, they hadn't," only some had more
+polite ways of saying it than others. But after a bit we met a
+policeman, and he said, "I see one when I was on duty last night, like
+what you describe, but it was at the end of a string. There was a young
+lad at the other end. The dog didn't seem to go exactly willing."
+
+He also told us the lad and the dog had gone over Greenwich way. So we
+went down, not quite so wretched in our insides, because now it seemed
+that there was some chance, though we wondered the policeman _could_
+have let Pincher go when he saw he didn't want to, but he said it wasn't
+his business. And now we asked every one if they'd seen a lad and a
+thoroughbred fox-terrier with a black patch, and cetera.
+
+And one or two people said they had, and we thought it must be the same
+the policeman had seen, because they said, too, that the dog didn't seem
+to care about going where he was going.
+
+So we went on and through the Park and past the Naval College, and we
+didn't even stop to look at that life-sized firm ship in the playground
+that the Naval Collegians have to learn about ropes and spars on, and
+Oswald would willingly give a year of his young life to have that ship
+for his very own.
+
+And we didn't go into the Painted Hall either, because our fond hearts
+were with Pincher, and we could not really have enjoyed looking at
+Nelson's remains, of the shipwrecks where the drowning people all look
+so dry, or even the pictures where young heroes are boarding pirates
+from Spain, just as Oswald would do if he had half a chance, with the
+pirates fighting in attitudes more twisted and Spanish than the pirates
+of any nation could manage even if they were not above it. It is an odd
+thing, but all those pictures are awfully bad weather--even the ones
+that are not shipwrecks. And yet in books the skies are usually a
+stainless blue and the sea is a liquid gem when you are engaged in the
+avocation of pirate-boarding.
+
+The author is sorry to see that he is not going on with the story.
+
+We walked through Greenwich Hospital and asked there if they have seen
+Pincher, because I heard Father say once that dogs are sometimes stolen
+and taken to hospitals and never seen again. It is wrong to steal, but I
+suppose the hospital doctors forget this because they are so sorry for
+the poor ill people, and like to give them dogs to play with them and
+amuse them on their beds of anguish. But no one had seen our Pincher,
+who seemed to be becoming more dear to our hearts every moment.
+
+When we got through the Hospital grounds--they are big and the buildings
+are big, and I like it all because there's so much room everywhere and
+nothing niggling--we got down to the terrace over the river, next to the
+Trafalgar Hotel. And there was a sailor leaning on the railings, and we
+asked him the usual question. It seems that he was asleep, but of course
+we did not know, or we would not have disturbed him. He was very angry,
+and he swore, and Oswald told the girls to come away; but Alice pulled
+away from Oswald and said,
+
+"Oh, don't be so cross. Do tell us if you've seen our dog? He is----"
+and she recited Pincher's qualifications.
+
+"Ho yes," said the sailor--he had a red and angry face. "I see 'im a
+hour ago 'long of a Chinaman. 'E crossed the river in a open boat. You'd
+best look slippy arter 'im." He grinned and spat; he was a detestable
+character, I think. "Chinamen puts puppy-dogs in pies. If 'e catches you
+three young chaps 'e'll 'ave a pie as'll need a big crust to cover it.
+Get along with your cheek!"
+
+So we got along. Of course, we knew that the Chinese are not cannibals,
+so we were not frightened by that rot; but we knew, too, that the
+Chinese do really eat dogs, as well as rats and birds' nests and other
+disgraceful forms of eating.
+
+[Illustration: IT SEEMS THE SAILOR WAS ASLEEP, BUT OF COURSE WE DID NOT
+KNOW, OR WE SHOULD NOT HAVE DISTURBED HIM.]
+
+H.O. was very tired, and he said his boots hurt him; and Noël was
+beginning to look like a young throstle--all eyes and beak. He always
+does when he is tired. The others were tired too, but their proud
+spirits would never have owned it. So we went round to the Trafalgar
+Hotel's boathouse, and there was a man in slippers, and we said could we
+have a boat, and he said he would send a boatman, and would we walk in?
+
+We did, and we went through a dark room piled up to the ceiling with
+boats and out on to a sort of thing half like a balcony and half like a
+pier. And there were boats there too, far more than you would think any
+one could want; and then a boy came. We said we wanted to go across the
+river, and he said, "Where to?"
+
+"To where the Chinamen live," said Alice.
+
+"You can go to Millwall if you want to," he said, beginning to put oars
+into the boat.
+
+"Are there any Chinese people there?" Alice asked.
+
+And the boy replied, "I dunno." He added that he supposed we could pay
+for the boat.
+
+By a fortunate accident--I think Father had rather wanted to make up to
+us for our martyr-like enduring when our cousin was with us--we were
+fairly flush of chink. Oswald and Dicky were proudly able to produce
+handfuls of money; it was mostly copper, but it did not fail of its
+effect.
+
+The boy seemed not to dislike us quite so much as before, and he helped
+the girls into the boat, which was now in the water at the edge of a
+sort of floating, unsteady raft, with openings in it that you could see
+the water through. The water was very rough, just like real sea, and not
+like a river at all. And the boy rowed; he wouldn't let us, although I
+can, quite well. The boat tumbled and tossed just like a sea-boat. When
+we were about half-way over, Noël pulled Alice's sleeve and said--
+
+"Do I look very green?"
+
+"You do rather, dear," she said kindly.
+
+"I feel much greener than I look," said Noël. And later on he was not at
+all well.
+
+The boy laughed, but we pretended not to notice. I wish I could tell you
+half the things we saw as our boat was pulled along through the
+swishing, lumpy water that turned into great waves after every steamer
+that went by. Oswald was quite fit, but some of the others were very
+silent. Dicky says he saw everything that Oswald saw, but I am not sure.
+There were wharves and engines, and great rusty cranes swinging giant's
+handfuls of iron rails about in the air, and once we passed a ship that
+was being broken up. All the wood was gone, and they were taking away
+her plates, and the red rust was running from her and colouring the
+water all round; it looked as though she was bleeding to death. I
+suppose it was silly to feel sorry for her, but I did. I thought how
+beastly it was that she would never go to sea again, where the waves are
+clean and green, even if no rougher than the black waves now raging
+around our staunch little bark. I never knew before what lots of kinds
+of ships there can be, and I think I could have gone on and on for ever
+and ever looking at the shapes of things and the colours they were, and
+dreaming about being a pirate, and things like that, but we had come
+some way; and now Alice said--
+
+"Oswald, I think Noël will die if we don't make land soon."
+
+And indeed he had been rather bad for some time, only I thought it was
+kinder to take no notice.
+
+So our ship was steered among other pirate craft, and moored at a
+landing-place where there were steps up.
+
+Noël was now so ill that we felt we could not take him on a Chinese
+hunt, and H.O. had sneaked his boots off in the boat, and he said they
+hurt him too much to put them on again; so it was arranged that those
+two should sit on a dry corner of the steps and wait, and Dora said she
+would stay with them.
+
+"I think we ought to go home," she said. "I'm quite sure Father wouldn't
+like us being in these wild, savage places. The police ought to find
+Pincher."
+
+But the others weren't going to surrender like that, especially as Dora
+had actually had the sense to bring a bag of biscuits, which all, except
+Noël, were now eating.
+
+"Perhaps they ought, but they _won't_," said Dicky. "I'm boiling hot.
+I'll leave you my overcoat in case you're cold."
+
+Oswald had been just about to make the same manly proposal, though he
+was not extra warm. So they left their coats, and, with Alice, who would
+come though told not to, they climbed the steps, and went along a narrow
+passage and started boldly on the Chinese hunt. It was a strange sort of
+place over the river; all the streets were narrow, and the houses and
+the pavements and the people's clothes and the mud in the road all
+seemed the same sort of dull colour--a sort of brown-grey it was.
+
+All the house doors were open, and you could see that the insides of the
+houses were the same colour as the outsides. Some of the women had blue,
+or violet or red shawls, and they sat on the doorsteps and combed their
+children's hair, and shouted things to each other across the street.
+They seemed very much struck by the appearance of the three travellers,
+and some of the things they said were not pretty.
+
+That was the day when Oswald found out a thing that has often been of
+use to him in after-life. However rudely poor people stare at you they
+become all right instantly if you ask them something. I think they don't
+hate you so much when they've done something for you, if it's only to
+tell you the time or the way.
+
+[Illustration: WE WENT ROUND A CORNER RATHER FAST, AND CAME SLAP INTO
+THE LARGEST WOMAN I HAVE EVER SEEN.]
+
+So we got on very well, but it does not make me comfortable to see
+people so poor and we have such a jolly house. People in books feel
+this, and I know it is right to feel it, but I hate the feeling all the
+same. And it is worse when the people are nice to you.
+
+And we asked and asked and asked, but nobody had seen a dog or a
+Chinaman, and I began to think all was indeed lost, and you can't go on
+biscuits all day, when we went round a corner rather fast, and came slap
+into the largest woman I have ever seen. She must have been yards and
+yards round, and before she had time to be in the rage that we saw she
+was getting into, Alice said--
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon! I _am_ so sorry, but we really didn't mean to! I
+_do_ so hope we didn't hurt you!"
+
+We saw the growing rage fade away, and she said, as soon as she got her
+fat breath--
+
+"No 'arm done, my little dear. An' w'ere are you off to in such a
+'urry?"
+
+So we told her all about it. She was quite friendly, although so stout,
+and she said we oughtn't to be gallivanting about all on our own. We
+told her we were all right, though I own Oswald was glad that in the
+hurry of departing Alice hadn't had time to find anything
+smarter-looking to wear than her garden coat and grey Tam, which had
+been regretted by some earlier in the day.
+
+"Well," said the woman, "if you go along this 'ere turning as far as
+ever you can go, and then take the first to the right and bear round to
+the left, and take the second to the right again, and go down the alley
+between the stumps, you'll come to Rose Gardens. There's often Chinamen
+about there. And if you come along this way as you come back, keep your
+eye open for me, and I'll arks some young chaps as I know as is
+interested like in dogs, and perhaps I'll have news for you."
+
+"Thank you very much," Alice said, and the woman asked her to give her a
+kiss. Everybody is always wanting to kiss Alice. I can't think why. And
+we got her to tell us the way again, and we noticed the name of the
+street, and it was Nightingale Street, and the stairs where we had left
+the others was Bullamy's Causeway, because we have the true explorer's
+instincts, and when you can't blaze your way on trees with your axe, or
+lay crossed twigs like the gypsies do, it is best to remember the names
+of streets.
+
+So we said goodbye, and went on through the grey-brown streets with
+hardly any shops, and those only very small and common, and we got to
+the alley all right. It was a narrow place between high blank brown-grey
+walls. I think by the smell it was gasworks and tanneries. There was
+hardly any one there, but when we got into it we heard feet running
+ahead of us, and Oswald said--
+
+"Hullo, suppose that's some one with Pincher, and they've recognized his
+long-lost masters and they're making a bolt for it?"
+
+And we all started running as hard as ever we could. There was a turn in
+the passage, and when we got round it we saw that the running was
+stopping. There were four or five boys in a little crowd round some one
+in blue--blue looked such a change after the muddy colour of everything
+in that dead Eastern domain--and when we got up, the person the blue was
+on was a very wrinkled old man, with a yellow wrinkled face and a soft
+felt hat and blue blouse-like coat, and I see that I ought not to
+conceal any longer from the discerning reader that it was exactly what
+we had been looking for. It was indeed a Celestial Chinaman in deep
+difficulties with these boys who were, as Alice said afterwards, truly
+fiends in mortal shape. They were laughing at the old Chinaman, and
+shouting to each other, and their language was of that kind that I was
+sorry we had got Alice with us. But she told Oswald afterwards that she
+was so angry she did not know what they were saying.
+
+"Pull his bloomin' pigtail," said one of these outcasts from decent
+conduct.
+
+The old man was trying to keep them off with both hands, but the hands
+were very wrinkled and trembly.
+
+Oswald is grateful to his good Father who taught him and Dicky the
+proper way to put their hands up. If it had not been for that, Oswald
+does not know what on earth would have happened, for the outcasts were
+five to our two, because no one could have expected Alice to do what
+she did.
+
+[Illustration: IT WAS INDEED A CELESTIAL CHINAMAN IN DEEP DIFFICULTIES.]
+
+Before Oswald had even got his hands into the position required by the
+noble art of self-defence, she had slapped the largest boy on the face
+as hard as ever she could--and she can slap pretty hard, as Oswald knows
+but too well--and she had taken the second-sized boy and was shaking him
+before Dicky could get his left in on the eye of the slapped assailant
+of the aged denizen of the Flowery East. The other three went for
+Oswald, but three to one is nothing to one who has hopes of being a
+pirate in his spare time when he grows up.
+
+In an instant the five were on us. Dicky and I got in some good ones,
+and though Oswald cannot approve of my sister being in a street fight,
+he must own she was very quick and useful in pulling ears and twisting
+arms and slapping and pinching. But she had quite forgotten how to hit
+out from the shoulder like I have often shown her.
+
+The battle raged, and Alice often turned the tide of it by a well-timed
+shove or nip. The aged Eastern leaned against the wall, panting and
+holding his blue heart with his yellow hand. Oswald had got a boy down,
+and was kneeling on him, and Alice was trying to pull off two other boys
+who had fallen on top of the fray, while Dicky was letting the fifth
+have it, when there was a flash of blue and another Chinaman dashed into
+the tournament. Fortunately this one was not old, and with a few
+well-directed, if foreign looking, blows he finished the work so ably
+begun by the brave Bastables, and next moment the five loathsome and
+youthful aggressors were bolting down the passage. Oswald and Dicky were
+trying to get their breath and find out exactly where they were hurt and
+how much, and Alice had burst out crying and was howling as though she
+would never stop. That is the worst of girls--they never can keep
+anything up. Any brave act they may suddenly do, when for a moment they
+forget that they have not the honour to be boys, is almost instantly
+made into contemptibility by a sudden attack of crybabyishness. But I
+will say no more: for she did strike the first blow, after all, and it
+did turn out that the boys had scratched her wrist and kicked her shins.
+These things make girls cry.
+
+The venerable stranger from distant shores said a good deal to the other
+in what I suppose was the language used in China. It all sounded like
+"hung" and "li" and "chi," and then the other turned to us and said--
+
+"Nicee lilly girlee, same piecee flowelee, you takee my head to walkee
+on. This is alle samee my father first chop ancestor. Dirty white devils
+makee him hurt. You come alongee fightee ploper. Me likee you welly
+muchee."
+
+Alice was crying too much to answer, especially as she could not find
+her handkerchief. I gave her mine, and then she was able to say that
+she did not want to walk on anybody's head, and she wanted to go home.
+
+"This not nicee place for lillee whitee girlee," said the young
+Chinaman. His pigtail was thicker than his father's and black right up
+to the top. The old man's was grey at the beginning, but lower down it
+was black, because that part of it was not hair at all, but black
+threads and ribbons and odds and ends of trimmings, and towards the end
+both pigtails were greenish.
+
+"Me lun backee takee him safee," the younger of the Eastern adventurers
+went on, pointing to his father. "Then me makee walkee all alonk you,
+takee you back same placee you comee from. Little white devils waitee
+for you on ce load. You comee with? Not? Lillee girlee not cly. John
+givee her one piecee pletty-pletty. Come makee talkee with the House
+Lady."
+
+I believe this is about what he said, and we understood that he wanted
+us to come and see his mother, and that he would give Alice something
+pretty, and then see us safe out of the horrible brown-grey country.
+
+So we agreed to go with them, for we knew those five boys would be
+waiting for us on the way back, most likely with strong reinforcements.
+Alice stopped crying the minute she could--I must say she is better than
+Dora in that way--and we followed the Chinamen, who walked in single
+file like Indians, so we did the same, and talked to each other over our
+shoulders. Our grateful Oriental friends led us through a good many
+streets, and suddenly opened a door with a key, pulled us in, and shut
+the door. Dick thought of the kidnapping of Florence Dombey and good
+Mrs. Brown, but Oswald had no such unnoble thoughts.
+
+[Illustration: ON THE SIDEBOARD WAS A BLUEY-WHITE CROCKERY IMAGE.]
+
+The room was small, and very, very odd. It was very dirty too, but
+perhaps it is not polite to say that. There was a sort of sideboard at
+one end of the room, with an embroidered dirty cloth on it, and on the
+cloth a bluey-white crockery image over a foot high. It was very fat and
+army and leggy, and I think it was an idol. The minute we got inside the
+young man lighted little brown sticks, and set them to burn in front of
+it. I suppose it was incense. There was a sort of long, wide, low sofa,
+without any arms or legs, and a table that was like a box, with another
+box in front of it for you to sit down on when you worked, and on the
+table were all sorts of tiny little tools--awls and brads they looked
+like--and pipe-stems and broken bowls of pipes and mouthpieces, for our
+rescued Chinaman was a pipe-mender by trade. There wasn't much else in
+the room except the smell, and that seemed to fill it choke-full. The
+smell seemed to have all sorts of things in it--glue and gunpowder, and
+white garden lilies and burnt fat, and it was not so easy to breathe as
+plain air.
+
+Then a Chinese lady came in. She had green-grey trousers, shiny like
+varnish, and a blue gown, and her hair was pulled back very tight, and
+twisted into a little knob at the back.
+
+She wanted to go down on the floor before Alice, but we wouldn't let
+her. Then she said a great many things that we feel sure were very nice,
+only they were in Chinese, so we could not tell what they were.
+
+And the Chinaman said that his mother also wanted Alice to walk on her
+head--not Alice's own, of course, but the mother's.
+
+I wished we had stayed longer, and tried harder to understand what they
+said, because it was an adventure, take it how you like, that we're not
+likely to look upon the like of again. Only we were too flustered to see
+this.
+
+We said, "Don't mention it," and things like that; and when Dicky said,
+"I think we ought to be going," Oswald said so too.
+
+Then they all began talking Chinese like mad, and the Chinese lady came
+back and suddenly gave Alice a parrot.
+
+It was red and green, with a very long tail, and as tame as any pet fawn
+I ever read about. It walked up her arm and round her neck, and stroked
+her face with its beak. And it did not bite Oswald or Alice, or even
+Dicky, though they could not be sure at first that it was not going to.
+
+We said all the polite things we could, and the old lady made thousands
+of hurried Chinese replies, and repeated many times, "All litey, John,"
+which seemed to be all the English she knew.
+
+We never had so much fuss made over us in all our lives. I think it was
+that that upset our calmness, and seemed to put us into a sort of silly
+dream that made us not see what idiots we were to hurry off from scenes
+we should never again behold. So we went. And the youthful Celestial saw
+us safely to the top of Bullamy's Stairs, and left us there with the
+parrot and floods of words that seemed all to end in double "e."
+
+We wanted to show him to the others, but he would not come, so we
+rejoined our anxious relations without him.
+
+The scene of rejoinder was painful, at first because they were most
+frightfully sick at us having been such an age away; but when we let
+them look at the parrot, and told them about the fight, they agreed that
+it was not our fault, and we really had been unavoidably detained.
+
+But Dora said, "Well, you may say I'm always preaching, but I _don't_
+think Father would like Alice to be fighting street boys in Millwall."
+
+"I suppose _you'd_ have run away and let the old man be killed," said
+Dicky, and peace was not restored till we were nearly at Greenwich
+again.
+
+We took the tram to Greenwich Station, and then we took a cab home (and
+well worth the money, which was all we now had got, except
+fourpence-halfpenny), for we were all dog-tired.
+
+And dog-tired reminds me that we hadn't found Pincher, in spite of all
+our trouble.
+
+Miss Blake, who is our housekeeper, was angrier than I have ever seen
+her. She had been so anxious that she had sent the police to look for
+us. But, of course, they had not found us. You ought to make allowances
+for what people do when they are anxious, so I forgive her everything,
+even what she said about Oswald being a disgrace to a respectable house.
+He owns we were rather muddy, owing to the fight.
+
+And when the jaw was over and we were having tea--and there was meat to
+it, because we were as near starving as I ever wish to be--we all ate
+lots. Even the thought of Pincher could not thwart our bold appetites,
+though we kept saying, "Poor old Pincher!" "I do wish we'd found him,"
+and things like that. The parrot walked about among the tea-things as
+tame as tame. And just as Alice was saying how we'd go out again
+to-morrow and have another try for our faithful hound there was a
+scratching at the door, and we rushed--and there was Pincher, perfectly
+well and mad with joy to see us.
+
+H.O. turned an abrupt beetroot colour.
+
+"Oh!" he said.
+
+We said, "What? Out with it."
+
+And though he would much rather have kept it a secret buried in his
+breast, we made him own that he had shut Pincher up yesterday in the
+empty rabbit-hutch when he was playing Zoological Gardens and forgotten
+all about it in the pleasures of our cousin having left us.
+
+So we need not have gone over the water at all. But though Oswald pities
+all dumb animals, especially those helplessly shut in rabbit-hutches at
+the bottoms of gardens, he cannot be sorry that we had such a Celestial
+adventure and got hold of such a parrot. For Alice says that Oswald and
+Dicky and she shall have the parrot between them.
+
+She is tremendously straight. I often wonder why she was made a girl.
+She's a jolly sight more of a gentleman than half the boys at our
+school.
+
+
+
+
+_THE YOUNG ANTIQUARIES_
+
+
+THIS really happened before Christmas, but many authors go back to
+bygone years for whole chapters, and I don't see why I shouldn't.
+
+It was one Sunday--the Somethingth Sunday in Advent, I think--and Denny
+and Daisy and their father and Albert's uncle came to dinner, which is
+in the middle of the day on that day of rest and the same things to eat
+for grown-ups and us. It is nearly always roast beef and Yorkshire, but
+the puddings and vegetables are brightly variegated and never the same
+two Sundays running.
+
+At dinner some one said something about the coat-of-arms that is on the
+silver tankards which once, when we were poor and honest, used to stay
+at the shop having the dents slowly taken out of them for months and
+months. But now they are always at home and are put at the four corners
+of the table every day, and any grown-up who likes can drink beer out of
+them.
+
+After some talk of the sort you don't listen to, in which bends and
+lioncels and gules and things played a promising part, Albert's uncle
+said that Mr. Turnbull had told him something about that coat-of-arms
+being carved on a bridge somewhere in Cambridgeshire, and again the
+conversation wandered into things like Albert's uncle had talked about
+to the Maidstone Antiquarian Society the day they came over to see his
+old house in the country and we arranged the time-honoured Roman remains
+for them to dig up. So, hearing the words king-post and mullion and
+moulding and underpin, Oswald said might we go; and we went, and took
+our dessert with us and had it in our own common-room, where you can
+roast chestnuts with a free heart and never mind what your fingers get
+like.
+
+When first we knew Daisy we used to call her the White Mouse, and her
+brother had all the appearance of being one too, but you know how
+untruthful appearances are, or else it was that we taught him happier
+things, for he certainly turned out quite different in the end; and she
+was not a bad sort of kid, though we never could quite cure her of
+wanting to be "ladylike"--that is the beastliest word there is, I think,
+and Albert's uncle says so, too. He says if a girl can't be a lady it's
+not worth while to be only like one--she'd better let it alone and be a
+free and happy bounder.
+
+But all this is not what I was going to say, only the author does think
+of so many things besides the story, and sometimes he puts them in. This
+is the case with Thackeray and the Religious Tract Society and other
+authors, as well as Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Only I don't suppose you have
+ever heard of her, though she writes books that some people like very
+much. But perhaps they are her friends. I did not like the one I read
+about the Baronet. It was on a wet Sunday at the seaside, and nothing
+else in the house but Bradshaw and "Elsie; or like a----" or I shouldn't
+have. But what really happened to us before Christmas is strictly the
+following narrative.
+
+"I say," remarked Denny, when he had burned his fingers with a chestnut
+that turned out a bad one after all--and such is life--and he had
+finished sucking his fingers and getting rid of the chestnut, "about
+these antiquaries?"
+
+"Well, what about them?" said Oswald. He always tries to be gentle and
+kind to Denny, because he knows he helped to make a man of the young
+Mouse.
+
+"I shouldn't think," said Denny, "that it was so very difficult to be
+one."
+
+"I don't know," said Dicky. "You have to read very dull books and an
+awful lot of them, and remember what you read, what's more."
+
+"I don't think so," said Alice. "That girl who came with the
+antiquities--the one Albert's uncle said was upholstered in red plush
+like furniture--_she_ hadn't read anything, you bet."
+
+Dora said, "You ought not to bet, especially on Sunday," and Alice
+altered it to "You may be sure."
+
+"Well, but what then?" Oswald asked Denny. "Out with it," for he saw
+that his youthful friend had got an idea and couldn't get it out. You
+should always listen patiently to the ideas of others, no matter how
+silly you expect them to be.
+
+"I do wish you wouldn't hurry me so," said Denny, snapping his fingers
+anxiously. And we tried to be patient.
+
+"Why shouldn't we _be_ them?" Denny said at last.
+
+"He means antiquaries," said Oswald to the bewildered others. "But
+there's nowhere to go and nothing to do when we get there."
+
+The Dentist (so-called for short, his real name being Denis) got red and
+white, and drew Oswald aside to the window for a secret discussion.
+Oswald listened as carefully as he could, but Denny always buzzes so
+when he whispers.
+
+"Right oh," he remarked, when the confidings of the Dentist had got so
+that you could understand what he was driving at. "Though you're being
+shy with us now, after all we went through together in the summer, is
+simply skittles."
+
+Then he turned to the polite and attentive others and said--
+
+[Illustration: OSWALD LISTENED AS CAREFULLY AS HE COULD, BUT DENNY
+ALWAYS BUZZES SO WHEN HE WHISPERS.]
+
+"You remember that day we went to Bexley Heath with Albert's uncle?
+Well, there was a house, and Albert's uncle said a clever writer lived
+there, and in more ancient years that chap in history--Sir Thomas What's
+his name; and Denny thinks he might let us be antiquaries there. It
+looks a ripping place from the railway."
+
+It really does. It's a fine big house, and splendid gardens, and a lawn
+with a sundial, and the tallest trees anywhere about here.
+
+"But what could we _do_?" said Dicky. "I don't suppose _he'd_ give _us_
+tea," though such, indeed, had been our hospitable conduct to the
+antiquaries who came to see Albert's uncle.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Alice. "We might dress up for it, and wear
+spectacles, and we could all read papers. It would be lovely--something
+to fill up the Christmas holidays--the part before the wedding, I mean.
+Do let's."
+
+"All right, I don't mind. I suppose it would be improving," said Dora.
+"We should have to read a lot of history. You can settle it. I'm going
+to show Daisy our bridesmaids' dresses."
+
+It was, alas! too true. Albert's uncle was to be married but shortly
+after, and it was partly our faults, though that does not come into this
+story.
+
+So the two D.'s went to look at the clothes--girls like this--but Alice,
+who wishes she had never consented to be born a girl, stayed with us,
+and we had a long and earnest council about it.
+
+"One thing," said Oswald, "it can't possibly be wrong--so perhaps it
+won't be amusing."
+
+"Oh, Oswald!" said Alice, and she spoke rather like Dora.
+
+"I don't mean what you mean," said Oswald in lofty scorn. "What I mean
+to say is that when a thing is quite sure to be right, it's not
+so--well--I mean to say there it is, don't you know; and if it might be
+wrong, and isn't, it's a score to you; and if it might be wrong, and
+is--as so often happens--well, you know yourself, adventures sometimes
+turn out wrong that you didn't think were going to, but seldom, or
+never, the uninteresting kind, and----"
+
+Dicky told Oswald to dry up--which, of course, no one stands from a
+younger brother, but though Oswald explained this at the time, he felt
+in his heart that he has sometimes said what he meant with more
+clearness. When Oswald and Dicky had finished, we went on and arranged
+everything.
+
+Every one was to write a paper--and read it.
+
+"If the papers are too long to read while we're there," said Noël, "we
+can read them in the long winter evenings when we are grouped along the
+household hearthrug. I shall do my paper in poetry--about Agincourt."
+
+Some of us thought Agincourt wasn't fair, because no one could be sure
+about any knight who took part in that well-known conflict having lived
+in the Red House; but Alice got us to agree, because she said it would
+be precious dull if we all wrote about nothing but Sir Thomas
+Whatdoyoucallhim--whose real name in history Oswald said he would find
+out, and then write his paper on that world-renowned person, who is a
+household word in all families. Denny said he would write about Charles
+the First, because they were just doing that part at his school.
+
+"I shall write about what happened in 1066," said H.O. "I know that."
+
+Alice said, "If I write a paper it will be about Mary Queen of Scots."
+
+Dora and Daisy came in just as she said this, and it transpired that
+this ill-fated but good-looking lady was the only one they either of
+them wanted to write about. So Alice gave it up to them and settled to
+do Magna Charta, and they could settle something between themselves for
+the one who would have to give up Mary Queen of Scots in the end. We all
+agreed that the story of that lamented wearer of pearls and black velvet
+would not make enough for two papers.
+
+Everything was beautifully arranged, when suddenly H.O. said--
+
+"Supposing he doesn't let us?"
+
+"Who doesn't let us what?"
+
+"The Red House man--read papers at his Red House."
+
+This was, indeed, what nobody had thought of--and even now we did not
+think any one could be so lost to proper hospitableness as to say no.
+Yet none of us liked to write and ask. So we tossed up for it, only Dora
+had feelings about tossing up on Sunday, so we did it with a hymn-book
+instead of a penny.
+
+We all won except Noël, who lost, so he said he would do it on Albert's
+uncle's typewriter, which was on a visit to us at the time, waiting for
+Mr. Remington to fetch it away to mend the "M." We think it was broken
+through Albert's uncle writing "Margaret" so often, because it is the
+name of the lady he was doomed to be married by.
+
+The girls had got the letter the Maidstone Antiquarian Society and Field
+Clubs Secretary had sent to Albert's uncle--H.O. said they kept it for a
+momentum of the day--and we altered the dates and names in blue chalk
+and put in a piece about might we skate on the moat, and gave it to
+Noël, who had already begun to make up his poetry about Agincourt, and
+so had to be shaken before he would attend. And that evening, when
+Father and our Indian uncle and Albert's uncle were seeing the others on
+the way to Forest Hill, Noël's poetry and pencil were taken away from
+him and he was shut up in Father's room with the Remington typewriter,
+which we had never been forbidden to touch. And I don't think he hurt
+it much, except quite at the beginning, when he jammed the "S" and the
+"J" and the thing that means per cent. so that they stuck--and Dicky
+soon put that right with a screwdriver.
+
+He did not get on very well, but kept on writing MOR7E HOAS5 or MORD6M
+HOVCE on new pieces of paper and then beginning again, till the floor
+was strewn with his remains; so we left him at it, and went and played
+Celebrated Painters--a game even Dora cannot say anything about on
+Sunday, considering the Bible kind of pictures most of them painted. And
+much later, the library door having banged once and the front door
+twice, Noël came in and said he had posted it, and already he was deep
+in poetry again, and had to be roused when requisite for bed.
+
+It was not till next day that he owned that the typewriter had been a
+fiend in disguise, and that the letter had come out so odd that he could
+hardly read it himself.
+
+"The hateful engine of destruction wouldn't answer to the bit in the
+least," he said, "and I'd used nearly a wastepaper basket of Father's
+best paper, and I thought he might come in and say something, so I just
+finished it as well as I could, and I corrected it with the blue
+chalk--because you'd bagged that B.B. of mine--and I didn't notice what
+name I'd signed till after I'd licked the stamp."
+
+The hearts of his kind brothers and sisters sank low. But they kept
+them up as well as they could, and said--
+
+[Illustration: IT WAS NOT TILL NEXT DAY THAT HE OWNED THAT THE
+TYPEWRITER HAD BEEN A FIEND IN DISGUISE.]
+
+"What name _did_ you sign?"
+
+And Noël said, "Why, Edward Turnbull, of course--like at the end of the
+real letter. You never crossed it out like you did his address."
+
+"No," said Oswald witheringly. "You see, I did think, whatever else you
+didn't know, I did think you knew your own silly name."
+
+Then Alice said Oswald was unkind, though you see he was not, and she
+kissed Noël and said she and he would take turns to watch for the
+postman, so as to get the answer (which of course would be subscribed on
+the envelope with the name of Turnbull instead of Bastable) before the
+servant could tell the postman that the name was a stranger to her.
+
+And next evening it came, and it was very polite and grown-up--and said
+we should be welcome, and that we might read our papers and skate on the
+moat. The Red House has a moat, like the Moat House in the country, but
+not so wild and dangerous. Only we never skated on it because the frost
+gave out the minute we had got leave to. Such is life, as the sparks fly
+upwards. (The last above is called a moral reflection.)
+
+So now, having got leave from Mr. Red House (I won't give his name
+because he is a writer of worldly fame and he might not like it), we set
+about writing our papers. It was not bad fun, only rather difficult
+because Dora said she never knew which Encyclo. volume she might be
+wanting, as she was using Edinburgh, Mary, Scotland, Bothwell, Holywell,
+and France, and many others, and Oswald never knew which he might want,
+owing to his not being able exactly to remember the distinguished and
+deathless other appellation of Sir Thomas Thingummy, who had lived in
+the Red House.
+
+Noël was up to the ears in Agincourt, yet that made but little
+difference to our destiny. He is always plunged in poetry of one sort or
+another, and if it hadn't been that, it would have been something else.
+This, at least, we insisted on having kept a secret, so he could not
+read it to us.
+
+H.O. got very inky the first half-holiday, and then he got some
+sealing-wax and a big envelope from Father, and put something in and
+fastened it up, and said he had done his.
+
+Dicky would not tell us what his paper was going to be about, but he
+said it would not be like ours, and he let H.O. help him by looking on
+while he invented more patent screws for ships.
+
+The spectacles were difficult. We got three pairs of the uncle's, and
+one that had belonged to the housekeeper's grandfather, but nine pairs
+were needed, because Albert-next-door mouched in one half-holiday and
+wanted to join, and said if we'd let him he'd write a paper on the
+Constitutions of Clarendon, and we thought he couldn't do it, so we let
+him. And then, after all, he did.
+
+So at last Alice went down to Bennett's in the village, that we are such
+good customers of, because when our watches stop we take them there, and
+he lent us a lot of empty frames on the instinctive understanding that
+we would pay for them if we broke them or let them get rusty.
+
+And so all was ready. And the fatal day approached; and it was the
+holidays. For us, that is, but not for Father, for his business never
+seems to rest by day and night, except at Christmas and times like that.
+So we did not need to ask him if we might go. Oswald thought it would be
+more amusing for Father if we told it all to him in the form of an
+entertaining anecdote, afterwards.
+
+Denny and Daisy and Albert came to spend the day.
+
+We told Mrs. Blake Mr. Red House had asked us, and she let the girls put
+on their second-best things, which are coats with capes and red
+Tam-o'shanters. These capacious coats are very good for playing
+highwaymen in.
+
+We made ourselves quite clean and tidy. At the very last we found that
+H.O. had been making marks on his face with burnt matches, to imitate
+wrinkles, but really it only imitated dirt, so we made him wash it off.
+Then he wanted to paint himself red like a clown, but we had decided
+that the spectacles were to be our only disguise, and even those were
+not to be assumed till Oswald gave the word.
+
+[Illustration: THE STATIONMASTER AND PORTER LOOKED RESPECTFULLY AT US.]
+
+No casuist observer could have thought that the nine apparently
+light-headed and careless party who now wended their way to Blackheath
+Station, looking as if they were not up to anything in particular, were
+really an Antiquarian Society of the deepest dye. We got an empty
+carriage to ourselves, and halfway between Blackheath and the other
+station Oswald gave the word, and we all put on the spectacles. We had
+our antiquarian papers of lore and researched history in exercise-books,
+rolled up and tied with string.
+
+The stationmaster and porter, of each of which the station boasted but
+one specimen, looked respectfully at us as we got out of the train, and
+we went straight out of the station, under the railway arch, and down to
+the green gate of the Red House. It has a lodge, but there is no one in
+it. We peeped in at the window, and there was nothing in the room but an
+old beehive and a broken leather strap.
+
+We waited in the front for a bit, so that Mr. Red House could come out
+and welcome us like Albert's uncle did the other antiquaries, but no one
+came, so we went round the garden. It was very brown and wet, but full
+of things you didn't see every day. Furze summer-houses, for instance,
+and a red wall all round it, with holes in it that you might have
+walled heretics up in in the olden times. Some of the holes were quite
+big enough to have taken a very small heretic. There was a broken swing,
+and a fish-pond--but we were on business, and Oswald insisted on reading
+the papers.
+
+He said, "Let's go to the sundial. It looks dryer there, my feet are
+like ice-houses."
+
+It was dryer because there was a soaking wet green lawn round it, and
+round that a sloping path made of little squares of red and white
+marble. This was quite waterless, and the sun shone on it, so that it
+was warm to the hands, though not to the feet, because of boots. Oswald
+called on Albert to read first. Albert is not a clever boy. He is not
+one of us, and Oswald wanted to get over the Constitutions. For Albert
+is hardly ever amusing, even in fun, and when he tries to show off it is
+sometimes hard to bear. He read--
+
+                 "THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON.
+
+          "Clarendon (sometimes called Clarence) had only
+          one constitution. It must have been a very bad
+          one, because he was killed by a butt of Malmsey.
+          If he had had more constitutions or better ones he
+          would have lived to be very old. This is a warning
+          to everybody."
+
+To this day none of us know how he could, and whether his uncle helped
+him.
+
+We clapped, of course, but not with our hearts, which were hissing
+inside us, and then Oswald began to read his paper. He had not had a
+chance to ask Albert's uncle what the other name of the world-famous Sir
+Thomas was, so he had to put him in as Sir Thomas Blank, and make it up
+by being very strong on scenes that could be better imagined than
+described, and, as we knew that the garden was five hundred years old,
+of course he could bring in any eventful things since the year 1400.
+
+He was just reading the part about the sundial, which he had noticed
+from the train when we went to Bexley Heath. It was rather a nice piece,
+I think.
+
+"Most likely this sundial told the time when Charles the First was
+beheaded, and recorded the death-devouring progress of the Great Plague
+and the Fire of London. There is no doubt that the sun often shone even
+in these devastating occasions, so that we may picture Sir Thomas Blank
+telling the time here and remarking--O crikey!"
+
+These last words are what Oswald himself remarked. Of course a person in
+history would never have said them.
+
+The reader of the paper had suddenly heard a fierce, woodeny sound, like
+giant singlesticks, terrifyingly close behind him, and looking hastily
+round, he saw a most angry lady, in a bright blue dress with fur on it,
+like a picture, and very large wooden shoes, which had made the
+singlestick noise. Her eyes were very fierce, and her mouth tight
+shut. She did not look hideous, but more like an avenging sprite or
+angel, though of course we knew she was only mortal, so we took off our
+caps. A gentleman also bounded towards us over some vegetables, and
+acted as reserve support to the lady.
+
+[Illustration: HER VOICE WHEN SHE TOLD US WE WERE TRESPASSING WAS NOT SO
+FURIOUS.]
+
+Her voice when she told us we were trespassing and it was a private
+garden was not so furious as Oswald had expected from her face, but it
+_was_ angry. H.O. at once said it wasn't her garden, was it? But, of
+course, we could see it _was_, because of her not having any hat or
+jacket or gloves, and wearing those wooden shoes to keep her feet dry,
+which no one would do in the street.
+
+So then Oswald said we had leave, and showed her Mr. Red House's letter.
+
+"But that was written to Mr. Turnbull," said she, "and how did _you_ get
+it?"
+
+Then Mr. Red House wearily begged us to explain, so Oswald did, in that
+clear, straightforward way some people think he has, and that no one can
+suspect for an instant. And he ended by saying how far from comfortable
+it would be to have Mr. Turnbull coming with his thin mouth and his
+tight legs, and that we were Bastables, and much nicer than the
+tight-legged one, whatever she might think.
+
+And she listened, and then she quite suddenly gave a most jolly grin and
+asked us to go on reading our papers.
+
+It was plain that all disagreeableness was at an end, and, to show this
+even to the stupidest, she instantly asked us to lunch. Before we could
+politely accept H.O. shoved his oar in as usual and said _he_ would stop
+no matter how little there was for lunch because he liked her very much.
+
+So she laughed, and Mr. Red House laughed, and she said they wouldn't
+interfere with the papers, and they went away and left us.
+
+Of course Oswald and Dicky insisted on going on with the papers; though
+the girls wanted to talk about Mrs. Red House, and how nice she was, and
+the way her dress was made. Oswald finished his paper, but later he was
+sorry he had been in such a hurry, because after a bit Mrs. Red House
+came out, and said she wanted to play too. She pretended to be a very
+ancient antiquary, and was most jolly, so that the others read their
+papers to her, and Oswald knows she would have liked his paper best,
+because it _was_ the best, though I say it.
+
+Dicky's turned out to be all about that patent screw, and how Nelson
+would not have been killed if his ship had been built with one.
+
+Daisy's paper was about Lady Jane Grey, and hers and Dora's were exactly
+alike, the dullest by far, because they had got theirs out of books.
+
+Alice had not written hers because she had been helping Noël to copy
+his.
+
+Denny's was about King Charles, and he was very grown-up and fervent
+about this ill-fated monarch and white roses.
+
+Mrs. Red House took us into the summer-houses, where it was warmer, and
+such is the wonderful architecture of the Red House gardens that there
+was a fresh summer-house for each paper, except Noël's and H.O.'s, which
+were read in the stable. There were no horses there.
+
+Noël's was very long, and it began--
+
+          "This is the story of Agincourt.
+           If you don't know it you jolly well ought.
+           It was a famous battle fair,
+           And all your ancestors fought there
+           That is if you come of a family old.
+           The Bastables do; they were always very bold.
+                    And at Agincourt
+                              They fought
+                    As they ought;
+                    So we have been taught."
+
+And so on and so on, till some of us wondered why poetry was ever
+invented. But Mrs. Red House said she liked it awfully, so Noël said--
+
+"You may have it to keep. I've got another one of it at home."
+
+"I'll put it next my heart, Noël," she said. And she did, under the blue
+stuff and fur.
+
+H.O.'s was last, but when we let him read it he wouldn't, so Dora opened
+his envelope and it was thick inside with blotting-paper, and in the
+middle there was a page with
+
+                     "1066 WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR,"
+
+and nothing else.
+
+"Well," he said, "I said I'd write all I knew about 1066, and that's it.
+I can't write more than I know, can I?" The girls said he couldn't, but
+Oswald thought he might have tried.
+
+"It wasn't worth blacking your face all over just for that," he said.
+But Mrs. Red House laughed very much and said it was a lovely paper, and
+told _her_ all she wanted to know about 1066.
+
+Then we went into the garden again and ran races, and Mrs. Red House
+held all our spectacles for us and cheered us on. She said she was the
+Patent Automatic Cheering Winning-post. We do like her.
+
+Lunch was the glorious end of the Morden House Antiquarian Society and
+Field Club's Field Day. But after lunch was the beginning of a real
+adventure such as real antiquarians hardly ever get. This will be
+unrolled later. I will finish with some French out of a newspaper.
+Albert's uncle told it me, so I know it is right. Any of your own
+grown-ups will tell you what it means.
+
+_Au prochain numéro je vous promets des émotions._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PS.--In case your grown-ups can't be bothered, "_émotions_" mean
+sensation, I believe.
+
+
+
+
+_THE INTREPID EXPLORER AND HIS LIEUTENANT_
+
+
+WE had spectacles to play antiquaries in, and the rims were vaselined to
+prevent rust, and it came off on our faces with other kinds of dirt, and
+when the antiquary game was over, Mrs. Red House helped us to wash it
+off with all the thoroughness of aunts, and far more gentleness.
+
+Then, clean and with our hairs brushed, we were led from the bath-room
+to the banqueting hall or dining-room.
+
+It is a very beautiful house. The girls thought it was bare, but Oswald
+likes bareness because it leaves more room for games. All the furniture
+was of agreeable shapes and colours, and so were all the things on the
+table--glasses and dishes and everything. Oswald politely said how nice
+everything was.
+
+The lunch was a blissful dream of perfect A.1.-ness. Tongue, and nuts,
+and apples, and oranges, and candied fruits, and ginger-wine in tiny
+glasses that Noël said were fairy goblets. Everybody drank everybody
+else's health--and Noël told Mrs. Red House just how lovely she was,
+and he would have paper and pencil and write her a poem for her very
+own. I will not put it in here, because Mr. Red House is an author
+himself, and he might want to use it in some of his books. And the
+writer of these pages has been taught to think of others, and besides I
+expect you are jolly well sick of Noël's poetry.
+
+[Illustration: THE LUNCH WAS A BLISSFUL DREAM OF A.1.-NESS.]
+
+There was no restrainingness about that lunch. As far as a married lady
+can possibly be a regular brick, Mrs. Red House is one. And Mr. Red
+House is not half bad, and knows how to talk about interesting things
+like sieges, and cricket, and foreign postage stamps.
+
+Even poets think of things sometimes, and it was Noël who said directly
+he had finished his poetry,
+
+"Have you got a secret staircase? And have you explored your house
+properly?"
+
+"Yes--we have," said that well-behaved and unusual lady--Mrs. Red House,
+"but _you_ haven't. You may if you like. Go anywhere," she added with
+the unexpected magnificence of a really noble heart. "Look at
+everything--only don't make hay. Off with you!" or words to that effect.
+
+And the whole of us, with proper thanks, offed with us instantly, in
+case she should change her mind.
+
+I will not describe the Red House to you--because perhaps you do not
+care about a house having three staircases and more cupboards and odd
+corners than we'd ever seen before, and great attics with beams, and
+enormous drawers on rollers, let into the wall--and half the rooms not
+furnished, and those that were all with old-looking, interesting
+furniture. There was something about that furniture that even the
+present author can't describe--as though any of it might have secret
+drawers or panels--even the chairs. It was all beautiful, and mysterious
+in the deepest degree.
+
+When we had been all over the house several times, we thought about the
+cellars. There was only one servant in the kitchen (so we saw Mr. and
+Mrs. Red House must be poor but honest, like we used to be), and we said
+to her--
+
+"How do you do? We've got leave to go wherever we like, and please where
+are the cellars, and may we go in?"
+
+She was quite nice, though she seemed to think there was an awful lot of
+us. People often think this. She said:
+
+"Lor, love a duck--yes, I suppose so," in not ungentle tones, and showed
+us.
+
+I don't think we should ever have found the way from the house into the
+cellar by ourselves. There was a wide shelf in the scullery with a row
+of gentlemanly boots on it that had been cleaned, and on the floor in
+front a piece of wood. The general servant--for such indeed she proved
+to be--lifted up the wood and opened a little door under the shelf. And
+there was the beginning of steps, and the entrance to them was half
+trap-door, and half the upright kind--a thing none of us had seen
+before.
+
+She gave us a candle-end, and we pressed forward to the dark unknown.
+The stair was of stone, arched overhead like churches--and it twisted
+most unlike other cellar stairs. And when we got down it was all arched
+like vaults, very cobwebby.
+
+"Just the place for crimes," said Dicky. There was a beer cellar, and a
+wine cellar with bins, and a keeping cellar with hooks in the ceiling
+and stone shelves--just right for venison pasties and haunches of the
+same swift animal.
+
+Then we opened a door and there was a cellar with a well in it.
+
+"To throw bodies down, no doubt," Oswald explained.
+
+They were cellars full of glory, and passages leading from one to the
+other like the Inquisition, and I wish ours at home were like them.
+
+There was a pile of beer barrels in the largest cellar, and it was H.O.
+who said, "Why not play 'King of the Castle?'"
+
+So we did. We had a most refreshing game. It was exactly like Denny to
+be the one who slipped down behind the barrels, and did not break a
+single one of all his legs or arms.
+
+"No," he cried, in answer to our anxious inquiries. "I'm not hurt a
+bit, but the wall here feels soft--at least not soft--but it doesn't
+scratch your nails like stone does, so perhaps it's the door of a secret
+dungeon or something like that."
+
+"Good old Dentist!" replied Oswald, who always likes Denny to have ideas
+of his own, because it was us who taught him the folly of
+white-mousishness.
+
+"It might be," he went on, "but these barrels are as heavy as lead, and
+much more awkward to collar hold of."
+
+"Couldn't we get in some other way?" Alice said. "There ought to be a
+subterranean passage. I expect there is if we only knew."
+
+Oswald has an enormous geographical bump in his head. He said--
+
+"Look here! That far cellar, where the wall doesn't go quite up to the
+roof--that space we made out was under the dining-room--I could creep
+under there. I believe it leads into behind this door."
+
+"Get me out! Oh do, do get me out, and let me come!" shouted the
+barrel-imprisoned Dentist from the unseen regions near the door.
+
+So we got him out by Oswald lying flat on his front on the top barrel,
+and the Dentist clawed himself up by Oswald's hands while the others
+kept hold of the boots of the representative of the house of Bastable,
+which, of course, Oswald is, whenever Father is not there.
+
+"Come on," cried Oswald, when Denny was at last able to appear, very
+cobwebby and black. "Give us what's left of the matches!"
+
+The others agreed to stand by the barrels and answer our knocking on the
+door if we ever got there.
+
+"But I daresay we shall perish on the way," said Oswald hopefully.
+
+So we started. The other cellar was easily found by the ingenious and
+geography-bump-headed Oswald. It opened straight on to the moat, and we
+think it was a boathouse in middle-aged times.
+
+Denny made a back for Oswald, who led the way, and then he turned round
+and hauled up his inexperienced, but rapidly improving, follower on to
+the top of the wall that did not go quite up to the roof.
+
+"It is like coal mines," he said, beginning to crawl on hands and knees
+over what felt like very prickly beach, "only we've no picks or
+shovels."
+
+"And no Sir Humphry Davy safety lamps," said Denny in sadness.
+
+"They wouldn't be any good," said Oswald; "they're only to protect the
+hard-working mining men against fire-damp and choke-damp. And there's
+none of those kinds here."
+
+"No," said Denny, "the damp here is only just the common kind."
+
+"Well, then," said Oswald, and they crawled a bit further still on
+their furtive and unassuming stomachs.
+
+"This is a very glorious adventure. It is, isn't it?" inquired the
+Dentist in breathlessness, when the young stomachs of the young
+explorers had bitten the dust for some yards further.
+
+"Yes," said Oswald, encouraging the boy, "and it's _your_ find, too," he
+added, with admirable fairness and justice, unusual in one so young. "I
+only hope we shan't find a mouldering skeleton buried alive behind that
+door when we get to it. Come on. What are you stopping for now?" he
+added kindly.
+
+"It's--it's only cobwebs in my throat," Denny remarked, and he came on,
+though slower than before.
+
+Oswald, with his customary intrepid caution, was leading the way, and he
+paused every now and then to strike a match because it was pitch dark,
+and at any moment the courageous leader might have tumbled into a well
+or a dungeon, or knocked his dauntless nose against something in the
+dark.
+
+"It's all right for you," he said to Denny, when he had happened to kick
+his follower in the eye. "You've nothing to fear except my boots, and
+whatever they do is accidental, and so it doesn't count, but _I_ may be
+going straight into some trap that has been yawning for me for countless
+ages."
+
+"I won't come on so fast, thank you," said the Dentist. "I don't think
+you've kicked my eye out yet."
+
+So they went on and on, crampedly crawling on what I have mentioned
+before, and at last Oswald did not strike the next match carefully
+enough, and with the suddenness of a falling star his hands, which, with
+his knees, he was crawling on, went over the edge into infinite space,
+and his chest alone, catching sharply on the edge of the precipice,
+saved him from being hurled to the bottom of it.
+
+"Halt!" he cried, as soon as he had any breath again. But, alas! it was
+too late! The Dentist's nose had been too rapid, and had caught up the
+boot-heel of the daring leader. This was very annoying to Oswald, and
+was not in the least his fault.
+
+"Do keep your nose off my boots half a sec.," he remarked, but not
+crossly. "I'll strike a match."
+
+And he did, and by its weird and unscrutatious light looked down into
+the precipice.
+
+Its bottom transpired to be not much more than six feet below, so Oswald
+turned the other end of himself first, hung by his hands, and dropped
+with fearless promptness, uninjured, in another cellar. He then helped
+Denny down. The cornery thing Denny happened to fall on could not have
+hurt him so much as he said.
+
+The light of the torch, I mean match, now revealed to the two bold and
+youthful youths another cellar, with _things_ in it--very dirty
+indeed, but of thrilling interest and unusual shapes, but the match went
+out before we could see exactly what the things were.
+
+[Illustration: OSWALD DID NOT STRIKE THE NEXT MATCH CAREFULLY ENOUGH.]
+
+The next match was the last but one, but Oswald was undismayed, whatever
+Denny may have been. He lighted it and looked hastily round. There was a
+door.
+
+"Bang on that door--over there, silly!" he cried, in cheering accents,
+to his trusty lieutenant; "behind that thing that looks like a _chevaux
+de frize_."
+
+Denny had never been to Woolwich, and while Oswald was explaining what a
+_chevaux de frize_ is, the match burnt his fingers almost to the bone,
+and he had to feel his way to the door and hammer on it yourself.
+
+The blows of the others from the other side were deafening.
+
+All was saved.
+
+It was the right door.
+
+"Go and ask for candles and matches," shouted the brave Oswald. "Tell
+them there are all sorts of things in here--a _chevaux de frize_ of
+chair-legs, and----"
+
+"A shovel of _what_?" asked Dicky's voice hollowly from the other side
+of the door.
+
+"Freeze," shouted Denny. "I don't know what it means, but do get a
+candle and make them unbarricade the door. I don't want to go back the
+way we came." He said something about Oswald's boots that he was sorry
+for afterwards, so I will not repeat it, and I don't think the others
+heard, because of the noise the barrels made while they were being
+climbed over.
+
+This noise, however, was like balmy zephyrs compared to the noise the
+barrels insisted on making when Dicky had collected some grown-ups and
+the barrels were being rolled away. During this thunder-like interval
+Denny and Oswald were all the time in the pitch dark. They had lighted
+their last match, and by its flickering gleam we saw a long, large
+mangle.
+
+"It's like a double coffin," said Oswald, as the match went out. "You
+can take my arm if you like, Dentist."
+
+The Dentist did--and then afterwards he said he only did it because he
+thought Oswald was frightened of the dark.
+
+"It's only for a little while," said Oswald in the pauses of the
+barrel-thunder, "and I once read about two brothers confined for life in
+a cage so constructed that the unfortunate prisoners could neither sit,
+lie, nor stand in comfort. We can do all those things."
+
+"Yes," said Denny; "but I'd rather keep on standing if it's the same to
+you, Oswald. I don't like spiders--not much, that is."
+
+"You are right," said Oswald with affable gentleness; "and there might
+be toads perhaps in a vault like this--or serpents guarding the treasure
+like in the Cold Lairs. But of course they couldn't have cobras in
+England. They'd have to put up with vipers, I suppose."
+
+Denny shivered, and Oswald could feel him stand first on one leg and
+then on the other.
+
+"I wish I could stand on neither of my legs for a bit," he said, but
+Oswald answered firmly that this could not be.
+
+And then the door opened with a crack-crash, and we saw lights and faces
+through it, and something fell from the top of the door that Oswald
+really did think for one awful instant was a hideous mass of writhing
+serpents put there to guard the entrance.
+
+"Like a sort of live booby-trap," he explained; "just the sort of thing
+a magician or a witch would have thought of doing."
+
+But it was only dust and cobwebs--a thick, damp mat of them.
+
+Then the others surged in, in light-hearted misunderstanding of the
+perils Oswald had led Denny into--I mean through, with Mr. Red House and
+another gentleman, and loud voices and candles that dripped all over
+everybody's hands, as well as their clothes, and the solitary
+confinement of the gallant Oswald was at an end. Denny's solitary
+confinement was at an end, too--and he was now able to stand on both
+legs and to let go the arm of his leader who was so full of fortitude.
+
+"This _is_ a find," said the pleased voice of Mr. Red House. "Do you
+know, we've been in this house six whole months and a bit, and _we_
+never thought of there being a door here."
+
+"Perhaps you don't often play 'King of the Castle,'" said Dora
+politely; "it _is_ rather a rough game, I always think."
+
+"Well, curiously enough, we never have," said Mr. Red House, beginning
+to lift out the chairs, in which avocation we all helped, of course.
+
+"Nansen is nothing to you! You ought to have a medal for daring
+explorations," said the other gentleman, but nobody gave us one, and, of
+course, we did not want any reward for doing our duty, however tight and
+cobwebby.
+
+The cellars proved to be well stocked with spiders and old furniture,
+but no toads or snakes, which few, if any, regretted. Snakes are
+outcasts from human affection. Oswald pities them, of course.
+
+There was a great lumpish thing in four parts that Mr. Red House said
+was a press, and a ripping settle--besides the chairs, and some carved
+wood that Mr. Red House and his friend made out to be part of an old
+four-post bed. There was also a wooden thing like a box with another box
+on it at one end, and H.O. said--
+
+"You could make a ripping rabbit-hutch out of that."
+
+Oswald thought so himself. But Mr. Red House said he had other uses for
+it, and would bring it up later.
+
+It took us all that was left of the afternoon to get the things up the
+stairs into the kitchen. It was hard work, but we know all about the
+dignity of labour. The general hated the things we had so enterprisingly
+discovered. I suppose she knew who would have to clean them, but Mrs.
+Red House was awfully pleased and said we were dears.
+
+We were not very clean dears by the time our work was done, and when the
+other gentleman said, "Won't you all take a dish of tea under my humble
+roof?" the words "Like this?" were formed by more than one youthful
+voice.
+
+"Well, if you would be happier in a partially cleansed state?" said Mr.
+Red House. And Mrs. Red House, who is my idea of a feudal lady in a
+castle, said, "Oh, come along, let's go and partially clean ourselves.
+I'm dirtier than anybody, though I haven't explored a bit. I've often
+noticed that the more you admire things the more they come off on you!"
+
+So we all washed as much as we cared to, and went to tea at the
+gentleman's house, which was only a cottage, but very beautiful. He had
+been a war correspondent, and he knew a great many things, besides
+having books and books of pictures.
+
+It was a splendid party.
+
+We thanked Mrs. R.H. and everybody when it was time to go, and she
+kissed the girls and the little boys, and then she put her head on one
+side and looked at Oswald and said, "I suppose you're too old?"
+
+Oswald did not like to say he was not. If kissed at all he would prefer
+it being for some other reason than his being not too old for it. So he
+did not know what to say. But Noël chipped in with--
+
+"_You'll_ never be too old for it," to Mrs. Red House--which seemed to
+Oswald most silly and unmeaning, because she was already much too old to
+be kissed by people unless she chose to begin it. But every one seemed
+to think Noël had said something clever. And Oswald felt like a young
+ass. But Mrs. R.H. looked at him so kindly and held out her hand so
+queenily that, before he knew he meant to, he had kissed it like you do
+the Queen's. Then, of course, Denny and Dicky went and did the same.
+Oswald wishes that the word "kiss" might never be spoken again in this
+world. Not that he minded kissing Mrs. Red House's hand in the least,
+especially as she seemed to think it was nice of him to--but the whole
+thing is such contemptible piffle.
+
+We were seen home by the gentleman who wasn't Mr. Red House, and he
+stood a glorious cab with a white horse who had a rolling eye, from
+Blackheath Station, and so ended one of the most adventuring times we
+ever got out of a play-beginning.
+
+The _time_ ended as the author has pointed out, but not its
+resultingness. Thus we ever find it in life--the most unharmful things,
+thoroughly approved even by grown-ups, but too often lead to something
+quite different, and that no one can possibly approve of, not even
+yourself when you come to think it over afterwards, like Noël and H.O.
+had to.
+
+It was but natural that the hearts of the young explorers should have
+dwelt fondly on everything underground, even drains, which was what made
+us read a book by Mr. Hugo, all the next day. It is called "The
+Miserables," in French, and the man in it, who is a splendid hero,
+though a convict and a robber and various other professions, escapes
+into a drain with great rats in it, and is miraculously restored to the
+light of day, unharmed by the kindly rodents. (N.B.--Rodents mean rats.)
+
+When we had finished all the part about drains it was nearly
+dinner-time, and Noël said quite suddenly in the middle of a bite of
+mutton--
+
+"The Red House isn't nearly so red as ours is outside. Why should the
+cellars be so much cellarier? Shut up H.O.!" For H.O. was trying to
+speak.
+
+Dora explained to him how we don't all have exactly the same blessings,
+but he didn't seem to see it.
+
+"It doesn't seem like the way things happen in books," he said, "In
+Walter Scott it wouldn't be like that, nor yet in Anthony Hope. I should
+think the rule would be the redder the cellarier. If I was putting it
+into poetry I should make our cellars have something much wonderfuller
+in them than just wooden things. H.O., if you don't shut up I'll never
+let you be in anything again."
+
+"There's that door you go down steps to," said Dicky; "we've never been
+in there. If Dora and I weren't going with Miss Blake to be fitted for
+boots we might try that."
+
+"That's just what I was coming to. (Stow it, H.O.!) I felt just like
+cellars to-day, while you other chaps were washing your hands for
+din.--and it was very cold; but I made H.O. feel the same, and we went
+down, and--that door _isn't shut now_."
+
+The intelligible reader may easily guess that we finished our dinner as
+quickly as we could, and we put on our outers, sympathising with Dicky
+and Dora, who, owing to boots, were out of it, and we went into the
+garden. There are five steps down to that door. They were red brick when
+they began, but now they are green with age and mysteriousness and not
+being walked on. And at the bottom of them the door was, as Noël said,
+not fastened. We went in.
+
+"It isn't beery, winey cellars at all," Alice said; "it's more like a
+robber's store-house. Look there."
+
+We had got to the inner cellar, and there were heaps of carrots and
+other vegetables.
+
+"Halt, my men!" cried Oswald, "advance not an inch further! The bandits
+may lurk not a yard from you!"
+
+"Suppose they jump out on us?" said H.O.
+
+"They will not rashly leap into the light," said the discerning Oswald.
+And he went to fetch a new dark-lantern of his that he had not had any
+chance of really using before. But some one had taken Oswald's secret
+matches, and then the beastly lantern wouldn't light for ever so long.
+But he thought it didn't matter his being rather a long time gone,
+because the others could pass the time in wondering whether anything
+would jump out on them, and if so, what and when.
+
+So when he got back to the red steps and the open door and flashed his
+glorious bull's-eye round it was rather an annoying thing for there not
+to be a single other eye for it to flash into. Every one had vanished.
+
+"Hallo!" cried Oswald, and if his gallant voice trembled he is not
+ashamed of it, because he knows about wells in cellars, and, for an
+instant, even he did not know what had happened.
+
+But an answering hullo came from beyond, and he hastened after the
+others.
+
+"Look out," said Alice; "don't tumble over that heap of bones."
+
+Oswald did look out--of course, he would not wish to walk on any one's
+bones. But he did not jump back with a scream, whatever Noël may say
+when he is in a temper.
+
+The heap really did look very like bones, partly covered with earth.
+Oswald was glad to learn that they were only parsnips.
+
+"We waited as long as we could," said Alice, "but we thought perhaps
+you'd been collared for some little thing you'd forgotten all about
+doing, and wouldn't be able to come back, but we found Noël had,
+fortunately, got your matches. I'm so glad you weren't collared, Oswald
+dear."
+
+Some boys would have let Noël know about the matches, but Oswald didn't.
+The heaps of carrots and turnips and parsnips and things were not very
+interesting when you knew that they were not bleeding warriors' or
+pilgrims' bones, and it was too cold to pretend for long with any
+comfort to the young Pretenders. So Oswald said--
+
+"Let's go out on the Heath and play something warm. You can't warm
+yourself with matches, even if they're not your own."
+
+That was all he said. A great hero would not stoop to argue about
+matches.
+
+And Alice said, "All right," and she and Oswald went out and played
+pretending golf with some walking-sticks of Father's. But Noël and H.O.
+preferred to sit stuffily over the common-room fire. So that Oswald and
+Alice, as well as Dora and Dicky, who were being measured for boots,
+were entirely out of the rest of what happened, and the author can only
+imagine the events that now occurred.
+
+When Noël and H.O. had roasted their legs by the fire till they were so
+hot that their stockings quite hurt them, one of them must have said to
+the other--I never knew which:
+
+"Let's go and have another look at that cellar."
+
+The other--whoever it was--foolishly consented. So they went, and they
+took Oswald's dark-lantern in his absence and without his leave.
+
+They found a hitherto unnoticed door behind the other one, and Noël says
+he said, "We'd better not go in." H.O. says he said so too. But any way,
+they _did_ go in.
+
+They found themselves in a small vaulted place that we found out
+afterwards had been used for mushrooms. But it was long since any fair
+bud of a mushroom had blossomed in that dark retreat. The place had been
+cleaned and new shelves put up, and when Noël and H.O. saw what was on
+these shelves the author is sure they turned pale, though they say not.
+
+For what they saw was coils, and pots, and wires; and one of them said,
+in a voice that must have trembled--
+
+"It is dynamite, I am certain of it; what shall we do?"
+
+I am certain the other said, "This is to blow up Father because he took
+part in the Lewisham Election, and his side won."
+
+The reply no doubt was, "There is no time for delay; we must act. We
+must cut the fuse--all the fuses; there are dozens."
+
+Oswald thinks it was not half bad business, those two kids--for Noël is
+little more than one, owing to his poetry and his bronchitis--standing
+in the abode of dynamite and not screeching, or running off to tell Miss
+Blake, or the servants, or any one--but just doing _the right thing_
+without any fuss.
+
+[Illustration: WITH SCISSORS AND GAS PLIERS THEY CUT EVERY FUSE.]
+
+I need hardly say it did not prove to be the right thing--but they
+thought it was. And Oswald cannot think that you are really doing wrong
+if you really think you are doing right. I hope you will understand
+this.
+
+I believe the kids tried cutting the fuses with Dick's pocket-knife that
+was in the pocket of his other clothes. But the fuses would not--no
+matter how little you trembled when you touched them.
+
+But at last, with scissors and the gas pliers, they cut every fuse. The
+fuses were long, twisty, wire things covered with green wool, like
+blind-cords.
+
+Then Noël and H.O. (and Oswald for one thinks it showed a goodish bit of
+pluck, and policemen have been made heroes for less) got cans and cans
+of water from the tap by the greenhouse and poured sluicing showers of
+the icy fluid in among the internal machinery of the dynamite
+arrangement--for so they believed it to be.
+
+Then, very wet, but feeling that they had saved their Father and the
+house, they went and changed their clothes. I think they were a little
+stuck-up about it, believing it to be an act unrivalled in devotedness,
+and they were most tiresome all the afternoon, talking about their
+secret, and not letting us know what it was.
+
+But when Father came home, early, as it happened, those swollen-headed,
+but, in Oswald's opinion, quite-to-be-excused, kiddies learned the
+terrible truth.
+
+Of course Oswald and Dicky would have known at once; if Noël and H.O.
+hadn't been so cocky about not telling us, we could have exposed the
+truth to them in all its uninteresting nature.
+
+I hope the reader will now prepare himself for a shock. In a wild whirl
+of darkness, and the gas being cut off, and not being able to get any
+light, and Father saying all sorts of things, it all came out.
+
+Those coils and jars and wires in that cellar were not an infernal
+machine at all. It was--I know you will be very much surprised--it was
+the electric lights and bells that Father had had put in while we were
+at the Red House the day before.
+
+H.O. and Noël caught it very fully; and Oswald thinks this was one of
+the few occasions when my Father was not as just as he meant to be. My
+uncle was not just either, but then it is much longer since he was a
+boy, so we must make excuses for him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We sent Mrs. Red House a Christmas card each. In spite of the trouble
+that her cellars had lured him into, Noël sent her a homemade one with
+an endless piece of his everlasting poetry on it, and next May she wrote
+and asked us to come and see her. _We_ try to be just, and we saw that
+it was not really her fault that Noël and H.O. had cut those electric
+wires, so we all went; but we did not take Albert Morrison, because he
+was fortunately away with an aged god-parent of his mother's who writes
+tracts at Tunbridge Wells.
+
+The garden was all flowery and green, and Mr. and Mrs. Red House were
+nice and jolly, and we had a distinguished and first-class time.
+
+But would you believe it?--that boxish thing in the cellar, that H.O.
+wanted them to make a rabbit-hutch of--well, Mr. Red House had cleaned
+it and mended it, and Mrs. Red House took us up to the room where it
+was, to let us look at it again. And, unbelievable to relate, it turned
+out to have rockers, and some one in dark, bygone ages seems, for
+reasons unknown to the present writer, to have wasted no end of
+carpentry and carving on it, just to make it into a _Cradle_. And what
+is more, since we were there last Mr. and Mrs. Red House had succeeded
+in obtaining a small but quite alive baby to put in it.
+
+I suppose they thought it was wilful waste to have a cradle and no baby
+to use it. But it could so easily have been used for something else. It
+would have made a ripping rabbit-hutch, and babies are far more trouble
+than rabbits to keep, and not nearly so profitable, I believe.
+
+
+
+
+_THE TURK IN CHAINS; OR, RICHARD'S REVENGE_
+
+
+THE morning dawned in cloudless splendour. The sky was a pale cobalt
+colour, as in pictures of Swiss scenery. The sun shone brightly, and all
+the green things in the garden sparkled in the bewitching rays of the
+monarch of the skies.
+
+The author of this does not like to read much about the weather in
+books, but he is obliged to put this piece in because it is true; and it
+is a thing that does not very often happen in the middle of January. In
+fact, I never remember the weather being at all like that in the winter
+except on that one day.
+
+Of course we all went into the garden directly after brekker. (PS.--I
+have said green things: perhaps you think that is a _lapsus lazuli_, or
+slip of the tongue, and that there are not any green things in the
+winter. But there are. And not just evergreens either. Wallflowers and
+pansies and snapdragons and primroses, and lots of things, keep green
+all the year unless it's too frosty. Live and learn.)
+
+And it was so warm we were able to sit in the summer-house. The birds
+were singing like mad. Perhaps they thought it was springtime. Or
+perhaps they always sing when they see the sun, without paying attention
+to dates.
+
+And now, when all his brothers and sisters were sitting on the rustic
+seats in the summer-house, the far-sighted Oswald suddenly saw that now
+was the moment for him to hold that council he had been wanting to hold
+for some time.
+
+So he stood in the door of the summer-house, in case any of the others
+should suddenly remember that they wanted to be in some other place. And
+he said--
+
+"I say. About that council I want to hold."
+
+And Dicky replied: "Well, what about it?"
+
+So then Oswald explained all over again that we had been Treasure
+Seekers, and we had been Would-be-Goods, and he thought it was time we
+were something else.
+
+"Being something else makes you think of things," he said at the end of
+all the other things he said.
+
+"Yes," said H.O., yawning, without putting up his hand, which is not
+manners, and we told him so. "But _I_ can think of things without being
+other things. Look how I thought about being a clown, and going to
+Rome."
+
+"I shouldn't think you would want us to remember _that_," said Dora. And
+indeed Father had not been pleased with H.O. about that affair. But
+Oswald never encourages Dora to nag, so he said patiently--
+
+"Yes, you think of things you'd much better not have thought of. Now my
+idea is let's each say what sort of a society we shall make ourselves
+into--like we did when we were Treasure Seekers--about the different
+ways to look for it, I mean. Let's hold our tongues (no, not with your
+dirty fingers, H.O., old chap; hold it with your teeth if you must hold
+it with something)--let's hold our tongues for a bit, and then all say
+what we've thought of--in ages," the thoughtful boy added hastily, so
+that every one should not speak at once when we had done holding our
+tongues.
+
+So we were all silent, and the birds sang industriously among the
+leafless trees of our large sunny garden in beautiful Blackheath. (The
+author is sorry to see he is getting poetical. It shall not happen
+again, and it _was_ an extra fine day, really, and the birds did sing, a
+fair treat.)
+
+When three long minutes had elapsed themselves by the hands of Oswald's
+watch, which always keeps perfect time for three or four days after he
+has had it mended, he closed the watch and observed--
+
+"Time! Go ahead, Dora."
+
+Dora went ahead in the following remarks:
+
+"I've thought as hard as I can, and nothing will come into my head
+except--
+
+          "'Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.'
+
+Don't you think we might try to find some new ways to be good in?"
+
+"No, you don't!" "I bar that!" came at once from the mouths of Dicky and
+Oswald.
+
+"You don't come that over us twice," Dicky added. And Oswald eloquently
+said, "No more Would-be-Goods, thank you, Dora."
+
+Dora said, well, she couldn't think of anything else. And she didn't
+expect Oswald had thought of anything better.
+
+"Yes, I have," replied her brother. "What I think is that we don't
+_know_ half enough."
+
+"If you mean extra swat," said Alice; "I've more homers than I care for
+already, thank you."
+
+"I do not mean swat," rejoined the experienced Oswald. "I want to know
+all about real things, not booky things. If you kids had known about
+electric bells you wouldn't have----" Oswald stopped, and then said, "I
+won't say any more, because Father says a gentleman does not support his
+arguments with personal illusions to other people's faults and follies."
+
+"Faults and follies yourself," said H.O. The girls restored peace, and
+Oswald went on--
+
+"Let us seek to grow wiser, and to teach each other."
+
+"_I_ bar that," said H.O. "I don't want Oswald and Dicky always on to me
+and call it teaching."
+
+"We might call the society the Would-be-Wisers," said Oswald hastily.
+
+"It's not so dusty," said Dicky; "let's go on to the others before we
+decide."
+
+"You're next yourself," said Alice.
+
+"Oh, so I am," remarked Dicky, trying to look surprised. "Well, my idea
+is let's be a sort of Industrious Society of Beavers, and make a solemn
+vow and covenant to make something every day. We might call it the
+Would-be-Clevers."
+
+"It would be the Too-clever-by-half's before we'd done with it," said
+Oswald.
+
+And Alice said, "We couldn't always make things that would be any good,
+and then we should have to do something that wasn't any good, and that
+would be rot. Yes, I know it's my turn--H.O., you'll kick the table to
+pieces if you go on like that. Do, for goodness' sake, keep your feet
+still. The only thing I can think of is a society called the
+Would-be-Boys."
+
+"With you and Dora for members."
+
+"And Noël--poets aren't boys exactly," said H.O.
+
+"If you don't shut up you shan't be in it at all," said Alice, putting
+her arm round Noël. "No; I meant us all to be in it--only you boys are
+not to keep saying we're only girls, and let us do everything the same
+as you boys do."
+
+"I don't want to be a boy, thank you," said Dora, "not when I see how
+they behave. H.O., _do_ stop sniffing and use your handkerchief. Well,
+take mine, then."
+
+It was now Noël's turn to disclose his idea, which proved most awful.
+
+"Let's be Would-be-Poets," he said, "and solemnly vow and convenient to
+write one piece of poetry a day as long as we live."
+
+Most of us were dumb at the dreadful thought. But Alice said--
+
+"That would never do, Noël dear, because you're the only one of us who's
+clever enough to do it."
+
+So Noël's detestable and degrading idea was shelved without Oswald
+having to say anything that would have made the youthful poet weep.
+
+"I suppose you don't mean me to say what I thought of," said H.O., "but
+I shall. I think you ought all to be in a Would-be-Kind Society, and vow
+solemn convents and things not to be down on your younger brother."
+
+We explained to him at once that _he_ couldn't be in that, because he
+hadn't got a younger brother.
+
+"And you may think yourself lucky you haven't," Dicky added.
+
+The ingenious and felicitous Oswald was just going to begin about the
+council all over again, when the portable form of our Indian uncle came
+stoutly stumping down the garden path under the cedars.
+
+"Hi, brigands!" he cried in his cheerful unclish manner. "Who's on for
+the Hippodrome this bright day?"
+
+And instantly we all were. Even Oswald--because after all you can have
+a council any day, but Hippodromes are not like that.
+
+[Illustration: "HI, BRIGANDS!" HE CRIED.]
+
+We got ready like the whirlwind of the desert for quickness, and started
+off with our kind uncle, who has lived so long in India that he is much
+more warm-hearted than you would think to look at him.
+
+Half-way to the station Dicky remembered his patent screw for working
+ships with. He had been messing with it in the bath while he was waiting
+for Oswald to have done plunging cleanly in the basin. And in the
+desert-whirlwinding he had forgotten to take it out. So now he ran back,
+because he knew how its cardboardiness would turn to pulp if it was
+left.
+
+"I'll catch you up," he cried.
+
+The uncle took the tickets and the train came in and still Dicky had not
+caught us up.
+
+"Tiresome boy!" said the uncle; "you don't want to miss the
+beginning--eh, what? Ah, here he comes!" The uncle got in, and so did
+we, but Dicky did not see the uncle's newspaper which Oswald waved, and
+he went running up and down the train looking for us instead of just
+getting in anywhere sensibly, as Oswald would have done. When the train
+began to move he did try to open a carriage door but it stuck, and the
+train went faster, and just as he got it open a large heavy porter
+caught him by the collar and pulled him off the train, saying--
+
+"Now, young shaver, no susansides on this ere line, if _you_ please."
+
+Dicky hit the porter, but his fury was vain. Next moment the train had
+passed away, and us in it. Dicky had no money, and the uncle had all the
+tickets in the pocket of his fur coat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am not going to tell you anything about the Hippodrome because the
+author feels that it was a trifle beastly of us to have enjoyed it as
+much as we did considering Dicky. We tried not to talk about it before
+him when we got home, but it was very difficult--especially the
+elephants.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I suppose he spent an afternoon of bitter thoughts after he had told
+that porter what he thought of him, which took some time, and the
+station-master interfered in the end.
+
+When we got home he was all right with us. He had had time to see it was
+not our faults, whatever he thought at the time.
+
+He refused to talk about it. Only he said--
+
+"I'm going to take it out of that porter. You leave me alone. I shall
+think of something presently."
+
+"Revenge is very wrong," said Dora; but even Alice asked her kindly to
+dry up. We all felt that it was simply piffle to talk copy-book to one
+so disappointed as our unfortunate brother.
+
+"It _is_ wrong, though," said Dora.
+
+"Wrong be blowed!" said Dicky, snorting; "who began it I should like to
+know! The station's a beastly awkward place to take it out of any one
+in. I wish I knew where he lived."
+
+"_I_ know _that_," said Noël. "I've known it a long time--before
+Christmas, when we were going to the Moat House."
+
+"Well, what is it, then?" asked Dicky savagely.
+
+"Don't bite his head off," remarked Alice. "Tell us about it, Noël. How
+do you know?"
+
+"It was when you were weighing yourselves on the weighing machine. I
+didn't because my weight isn't worth being weighed for. And there was a
+heap of hampers and turkeys and hares and things, and there was a label
+on a turkey and brown-paper parcel; and that porter that you hate so
+said to the other porter----"
+
+"Oh, hurry up, do!" said Dicky.
+
+"I won't tell you at all if you bully me," said Noël, and Alice had to
+coax him before he would go on.
+
+"Well, he looked at the label and said, 'Little mistake here,
+Bill--wrong address; ought to be 3, Abel Place, eh?'
+
+"And the other one looked, and he said, 'Yes; it's got your name right
+enough. Fine turkey, too, and his chains in the parcel. Pity they ain't
+more careful about addressing things, eh?' So when they had done
+laughing about it I looked at the label and it said, 'James Johnson, 8,
+Granville Park.' So I knew it was 3, Abel Place, he lived at, and his
+name was James Johnson."
+
+"Good old Sherlock Holmes!" said Oswald.
+
+"You won't really _hurt_ him," said Noël, "will you? Not Corsican
+revenge with knives, or poisoned bowls? I wouldn't do more than a good
+booby-trap, if I was you."
+
+When Noël said the word "booby-trap," we all saw a strange, happy look
+come over Dicky's face. It is called a far-away look, I believe, and you
+can see it in the picture of a woman cuddling a photograph-album with
+her hair down, that is in all the shops, and they call it "The Soul's
+Awakening."
+
+Directly Dicky's soul had finished waking up he shut his teeth together
+with a click. Then he said, "I've got it."
+
+Of course we all knew that.
+
+"Any one who thinks revenge is wrong is asked to leave _now_."
+
+Dora said he was very unkind, and did he really want to turn her out?
+
+"There's a jolly good fire in Father's study," he said. "No, I'm not
+waxy with you, but I'm going to have my revenge, and I don't want you to
+do anything you thought wrong. You'd only make no end of a fuss
+afterwards."
+
+"Well, it _is_ wrong, so I'll go," said Dora. "Don't say I didn't warn
+you, that's all!"
+
+And she went.
+
+Then Dicky said, "Now, any more conscious objectors?"
+
+And when no one replied he went on: "It was you saying 'Booby-trap' gave
+me the idea. His name's James Johnson, is it? And he said the things
+were addressed wrong, did he? Well, _I'll_ send him a Turkey-and-chains."
+
+"A Turk in chains," said Noël, growing owley-eyed at the thought--"a
+_live_ Turk--or--no, not a dead one, Dicky?"
+
+"The Turk I'm going to send won't be a live one nor yet a dead one."
+
+"How horrible! _Half_ dead. That's worse than anything," and Noël became
+so green in the face that Alice told Dicky to stop playing the goat, and
+tell us what his idea really was.
+
+"Don't you see _yet_?" he cried; "_I_ saw it directly."
+
+"I daresay," said Oswald; "it's easy to see your own idea. Drive ahead."
+
+"Well, I'm going to get a hamper and pack it full of parcels and put a
+list of them on the top--beginning Turk-and-chains, and send it to
+Mister James Johnson, and when he opens the parcels there'll be nothing
+inside."
+
+"There must be something, you know," said H.O., "or the parcels won't be
+any shape except flatness."
+
+"Oh, there'll be _something_ right enough," was the bitter reply of the
+one who had not been to the Hippodrome, "but it won't be the sort of
+something he'll expect it to be. Let's do it now. I'll get a hamper."
+
+[Illustration: IT WAS RATHER DIFFICULT TO GET ANYTHING THE SHAPE OF A
+TURKEY.]
+
+He got a big one out of the cellar and four empty bottles with their
+straw cases. We filled the bottles with black ink and water, and red
+ink and water, and soapy water, and water plain. And we put them down on
+the list--
+
+          1 bottle of port wine.
+          1 bottle of sherry wine.
+          1 bottle of sparkling champagne.
+          1 bottle of rum.
+
+The rest of the things we put on the list were--
+
+          1 turkey-and-chains.
+          2 pounds of chains.
+          1 plum-pudding.
+          4 pounds of mince-pies.
+          2 pounds of almonds and raisins.
+          1 box of figs.
+          1 bottle of French plums.
+          1 large cake.
+
+And we made up parcels to look outside as if their inside was full of
+the delicious attributes described in the list. It was rather difficult
+to get anything the shape of a turkey but with coals and crushed
+newspapers and firewood we did it, and when it was done up with lots of
+string and the paper artfully squeezed tight to the firewood to look
+like the Turk's legs it really was almost lifelike in its deceivingness.
+The chains, or sausages, we did with dusters--and not clean ones--rolled
+tight, and the paper moulded gently to their forms. The plum-pudding was
+a newspaper ball. The mince-pies were newspapers too, and so were the
+almonds and raisins. The box of figs was a real fig-box with cinders
+and ashes in it damped to keep them from rattling about. The French-plum
+bottle was real too. It had newspaper soaked in ink in it, and the cake
+was half a muff-box of Dora's done up very carefully and put at the
+bottom of the hamper. Inside the muff-box we put a paper with--
+
+"Revenge is not wrong when the other people begin. It was you began, and
+now you are jolly well served out."
+
+We packed all the bottles and parcels into the hamper, and put the list
+on the very top, pinned to the paper that covered the false breast of
+the imitation Turk.
+
+Dicky wanted to write--"From an unknown friend," but we did not think
+that was fair, considering how Dicky felt.
+
+So at last we put--"From one who does not wish to sign his name."
+
+And that was true, at any rate.
+
+Dicky and Oswald lugged the hamper down to the shop that has Carter
+Paterson's board outside.
+
+"I vote we don't pay the carriage," said Dicky, but that was perhaps
+because he was still so very angry about being pulled off the train.
+Oswald had not had it done to him, so he said that we ought to pay the
+carriage. And he was jolly glad afterwards that this honourable feeling
+had arisen in his young bosom, and that he had jolly well made Dicky let
+it rise in his.
+
+We paid the carriage. It was one-and-five-pence, but Dicky said it was
+cheap for a high-class revenge like this, and after all it was his money
+the carriage was paid with.
+
+So then we went home and had another go in of grub--because tea had been
+rather upset by Dicky's revenge.
+
+The people where we left the hamper told us that it would be delivered
+next day. So next morning we gloated over the thought of the sell that
+porter was in for, and Dicky was more deeply gloating than any one.
+
+"I expect it's got there by now," he said at dinner-time; "it's a first
+class booby-trap; what a sell for him! He'll read the list and then
+he'll take out one parcel after another till he comes to the cake. It
+_was_ a ripping idea! I'm glad I thought of it!"
+
+"I'm not," said Noël suddenly. "I wish you hadn't--I wish we hadn't. I
+know just exactly what he feels like now. He feels as if he'd like to
+_kill_ you for it, and I daresay he would if you hadn't been a craven,
+white-feathered skulker and not signed your name."
+
+It was a thunderbolt in our midst Noël behaving like this. It made
+Oswald feel a sick inside feeling that perhaps Dora had been right. She
+sometimes is--and Oswald hates this feeling.
+
+Dicky was so surprised at the unheard-of cheek of his young brother that
+for a moment he was speechless, and before he got over his
+speechlessness Noël was crying and wouldn't have any more dinner. Alice
+spoke in the eloquent language of the human eye and begged Dicky to look
+over it this once. And he replied by means of the same useful organ that
+he didn't care what a silly kid thought. So no more was said. When Noël
+had done crying he began to write a piece of poetry and kept at it all
+the afternoon. Oswald only saw just the beginning. It was called
+
+                 "THE DISAPPOINTED PORTER'S FURY
+             _Supposed to be by the Porter himself_,"
+
+and it began:--
+
+          "When first I opened the hamper fair
+           And saw the parcel inside there
+           My heart rejoiced like dry gardens when
+           It rains--but soon I changed and then
+           I seized my trusty knife and bowl
+           Of poison, and said 'Upon the whole
+           I will have the life of the man
+           Or woman who thought of this wicked plan
+           To deceive a trusting porter so.
+           No noble heart would have thought of it. No.'"
+
+There were pages and pages of it. Of course it was all nonsense--the
+poetry, I mean. And yet . . . . . . (I have seen that put in books when
+the author does not want to let out all he thought at the time.)
+
+That evening at tea-time Jane came and said--
+
+"Master Dicky, there's an old aged man at the door inquiring if you live
+here."
+
+So Dicky thought it was the bootmaker perhaps; so he went out, and
+Oswald went with him, because he wanted to ask for a bit of cobbler's
+wax.
+
+But it was not the shoemaker. It was an old man, pale in the face and
+white in the hair, and he was so old that we asked him into Father's
+study by the fire, as soon as we had found out it was really Dicky he
+wanted to see.
+
+When we got him there he said--
+
+"Might I trouble you to shut the door?"
+
+This is the way a burglar or a murderer might behave, but we did not
+think he was one. He looked too old for these professions.
+
+When the door was shut, he said--
+
+"I ain't got much to say, young gemmen. It's only to ask was it you sent
+this?"
+
+He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, and it was our list.
+Oswald and Dicky looked at each other.
+
+"Did you send it?" said the old man again.
+
+So then Dicky shrugged his shoulders and said, "Yes."
+
+Oswald said, "How did you know and who are you?"
+
+The old man got whiter than ever. He pulled out a piece of paper--it was
+the greenish-grey piece we'd wrapped the Turk and chains in. And it had
+a label on it that we hadn't noticed, with Dicky's name and address on
+it. The new bat he got at Christmas had come in it.
+
+[Illustration: WHEN THE DOOR WAS SHUT HE SAID, "I AIN'T GOT MUCH TO SAY,
+YOUNG GEMMEN."]
+
+"That's how I know," said the old man. "Ah, be sure your sin will find
+you out."
+
+"But who are you, anyway!" asked Oswald again.
+
+"Oh, _I_ ain't nobody in particular," he said. "I'm only the father of
+the pore gell as you took in with your cruel, deceitful, lying tricks.
+Oh, you may look uppish, young sir, but I'm here to speak my mind, and
+I'll speak it if I die for it. So now!"
+
+"But we didn't send it to a girl," said Dicky. "We wouldn't do such a
+thing. We sent it for a--for a----" I think he tried to say for a joke,
+but he couldn't with the fiery way the old man looked at him--"for a
+sell, to pay a porter out for stopping me getting into a train when it
+was just starting, and I missed going to the Circus with the others."
+Oswald was glad Dicky was not too proud to explain to the old man. He
+was rather afraid he might be.
+
+"I never sent it to a girl," he said again.
+
+"Ho," said the aged one. "An' who told you that there porter was a
+single man? It was his wife--my pore gell--as opened your low parcel,
+and she sees your lying list written out so plain on top, and, sez she
+to me, 'Father,' says she, 'ere's a friend in need! All these good
+things for us, and no name signed, so that we can't even say thank you.
+I suppose it's some one knows how short we are just now, and hardly
+enough to eat with coals the price they are,' says she to me. 'I do call
+that kind and Christian,' says she, 'and I won't open not one of them
+lovely parcels till Jim comes 'ome,' she says, 'and we'll enjoy the
+pleasures of it together, all three of us,' says she. And when he came
+home--we opened of them lovely parcels. She's a cryin' her eyes out at
+home now, and Jim, he only swore once, and I don't blame him for that
+one--though never an evil speaker myself--and then he set himself down
+on a chair and puts his elbows on it to hide his face like--and 'Emmie,'
+says he, 'so help me. I didn't know I'd got an enemy in the world. I
+always thought we'd got nothing but good friends,' says he. An' I says
+nothing, but I picks up the paper, and comes here to your fine house to
+tell you what I think of you. It's a mean, low-down, dirty, nasty trick,
+and no gentleman wouldn't a-done it. So that's all--and it's off my
+chest, and good-night to you gentlemen both!"
+
+He turned to go out. I shall not tell you what Oswald felt, except that
+he did hope Dicky felt the same, and would behave accordingly. And Dicky
+did, and Oswald was both pleased and surprised.
+
+Dicky said--
+
+"Oh, I say, stop a minute. I didn't think of your poor girl."
+
+"And her youngest but a bare three weeks old," said the old man angrily.
+
+"I didn't, on my honour I didn't think of anything but paying the porter
+out."
+
+"He was only a doing of his duty," the old man said.
+
+"Well, I beg your pardon and his," said Dicky; "it was ungentlemanly,
+and I'm very sorry. And I'll try to make it up somehow. Please make it
+up. I can't do more than own I'm sorry. I wish I hadn't--there!"
+
+"Well," said the old man slowly, "we'll leave it at that. Next time
+p'r'aps you'll think a bit who it's going to be as'll get the benefit of
+your payings out."
+
+Dicky made him shake hands, and Oswald did the same.
+
+Then we had to go back to the others and tell them. It was hard. But it
+was ginger-ale and seed-cake compared to having to tell Father, which
+was what it came to in the end. For we all saw, though Noël happened to
+be the one to say it first, that the only way we could really make it up
+to James Johnson and his poor girl and his poor girl's father, and the
+baby that was only three weeks old, was to send them a hamper with all
+the things in it--_real_ things, that we had put on the list in the
+revengeful hamper. And as we had only six-and-sevenpence among us we had
+to tell Father. Besides, you feel better inside when you have. He talked
+to us about it a bit, but he is a good Father and does not jaw unduly.
+He advanced our pocket-money to buy a real large Turk-and-chains. And he
+gave us six bottles of port wine, because he thought that would be
+better for the poor girl who had the baby than rum or sherry or even
+sparkling champagne.
+
+We were afraid to send the hamper by Carter Pat. for fear they should
+think it was another Avenging Take-in. And that was one reason why we
+took it ourselves in a cab. The other reason was that we wanted to see
+them open the hamper, and another was that we wanted--at least Dicky
+wanted--to have it out man to man with the porter and his wife, and tell
+them himself how sorry he was.
+
+So we got our gardener to find out secretly when that porter was off
+duty, and when we knew the times we went to his house at one of them.
+
+Then Dicky got out of the cab and went in and said what he had to say.
+And then we took in the hamper.
+
+And the old man and his daughter and the porter were most awfully decent
+to us, and the porter's wife said, "Lor! let bygones be bygones is what
+_I_ say! Why, we wouldn't never have had this handsome present but for
+the other. Say no more about it, sir, and thank you kindly, I'm sure."
+
+And we have been friends with them ever since.
+
+We were short of pocket-money for some time, but Oswald does not
+complain, though the Turk was Dicky's idea entirely. Yet Oswald is just,
+and he owns that he helped as much as he could in packing the Hamper of
+the Avenger. Dora paid her share, too, though she wasn't in it. The
+author does not shrink from owning that this was very decent of Dora.
+
+This is all the story of--
+
+          THE TURK IN CHAINS; or,
+          RICHARD'S REVENGE.
+
+(His name is really Richard, the same as Father's. We only call him
+Dicky for short.)
+
+
+
+
+_THE GOLDEN GONDOLA_
+
+
+ALBERT'S uncle is tremendously clever, and he writes books. I have told
+how he fled to Southern shores with a lady who is rather nice. His
+having to marry her was partly our fault, but we did not mean to do it,
+and we were very sorry for what we had done. But afterwards we thought
+perhaps it was all for the best, because if left alone he might have
+married widows, or old German governesses, or Murdstone aunts, like
+Daisy and Denny have, instead of the fortunate lady that we were the
+cause of his being married by.
+
+The wedding was just before Christmas, and we were all there. And then
+they went to Rome for a period of time that is spoken of in books as the
+honeymoon. You know that H.O., my youngest brother, tried to go too,
+disguised as the contents of a dress-basket--but was betrayed and
+brought back.
+
+Conversation often takes place about the things you like, and we often
+spoke of Albert's uncle.
+
+One day we had a ripping game of
+hide-and-seek-all-over-the-house-and-all-the-lights-out, sometimes
+called devil-in-the-dark, and never to be played except when your father
+and uncle are out, because of the screams which the strongest cannot
+suppress when caught by "he" in unexpectedness and total darkness. The
+girls do not like this game so much as we do. But it is only fair for
+them to play it. We have more than once played doll's tea-parties to
+please them.
+
+Well, when the game was over we were panting like dogs on the hearthrug
+in front of the common-room fire, and H.O. said--
+
+"I wish Albert's uncle had been here; he does enjoy it so."
+
+Oswald has sometimes thought Albert's uncle only played to please us.
+But H.O. may be right.
+
+"I wonder if they often play it in Rome," H.O. went on. "That post-card
+he sent us with the Colly-whats-its-name-on--you know, the round place
+with the arches. They could have ripping games there----"
+
+"It's not much fun with only two," said Dicky.
+
+"Besides," Dora said, "when people are first married they always sit in
+balconies and look at the moon, or else at each other's eyes."
+
+"They ought to know what their eyes look like by this time," said Dicky.
+
+"I believe they sit and write poetry about their eyes all day, and only
+look at each other when they can't think of the rhymes," said Noël.
+
+"I don't believe she knows how, but I'm certain they read aloud to each
+other out of the poetry books we gave them for wedding presents," Alice
+said.
+
+"It would be beastly ungrateful if they didn't, especially with their
+backs all covered with gold like they are," said H.O.
+
+"About those books," said Oswald slowly, now for the first time joining
+in what was being said; "of course it was jolly decent of Father to get
+such ripping presents for us to give them. But I've sometimes wished
+we'd given Albert's uncle a really truly present that we'd chosen
+ourselves and bought with our own chink."
+
+"I wish we could have _done_ something for him," Noël said; "I'd have
+killed a dragon for him as soon as look at it, and Mrs. Albert's uncle
+could have been the Princess, and I would have let him have her."
+
+"Yes," said Dicky; "and we just gave rotten books. But it's no use
+grizzling over it now. It's all over, and he won't get married again
+while she's alive."
+
+This was true, for we live in England which is a morganatic empire where
+more than one wife at a time is not allowed. In the glorious East he
+might have married again and again and we could have made it all right
+about the wedding present.
+
+"I wish he was a Turk for some things," said Oswald, and explained why.
+
+"I don't think _she_ would like it," said Dora.
+
+Oswald explained that if he was a Turk, she would be a Turquoise (I
+think that is the feminine Turk), and so would be used to lots of wives
+and be lonely without them.
+
+And just then . . . You know what they say about talking of angels, and
+hearing their wings? (There is another way of saying this, but it is not
+polite, as the present author knows.)
+
+Well, just then the postman came, and of course we rushed out, and among
+Father's dull letters we found one addressed to "The Bastables Junior."
+It had an Italian stamp--not at all a rare one, and it was a poor
+specimen too, and the post-mark was _Roma_.
+
+That is what the Italians have got into the habit of calling Rome. I
+have been told that they put the "a" instead of the "e" because they
+like to open their mouths as much as possible in that sunny and
+agreeable climate.
+
+The letter was jolly--it was just like hearing him talk (I mean reading,
+not hearing, of course, but reading him talk is not grammar, and if you
+can't be both sensible and grammarical, it is better to be senseless).
+
+"Well, kiddies," it began, and it went on to tell us about things he had
+seen, not dull pictures and beastly old buildings, but amusing incidents
+of comic nature. The Italians must be extreme Jugginses for the kind of
+things he described to be of such everyday occurring. Indeed, Oswald
+could hardly believe about the soda-water label that the Italian
+translated for the English traveller so that it said, "To distrust of
+the Mineral Waters too fountain-like foaming. They spread the shape."
+
+Near the end of the letter came this:--
+
+"You remember the chapter of 'The Golden Gondola' that I wrote for the
+_People's Pageant_ just before I had the honour to lead to the altar,
+&c. I mean the one that ends in the subterranean passage, with
+Geraldine's hair down, and her last hope gone, and the three villains
+stealing upon her with Venetian subtlety in their hearts and Toledo
+daggers (specially imported) in their garters? I didn't care much for it
+myself, you remember. I think I must have been thinking of other things
+when I wrote it. But you, I recollect, consoled me by refusing to regard
+it as other than 'ripping.' 'Clinking' was, as I recall it, Oswald's
+consolatory epithet. You'll weep with me, I feel confident, when you
+hear that my Editor does not share your sentiments. He writes me that it
+is not up to my usual form. He fears that the public, &c., and he trusts
+that in the next chapter, &c. Let us hope that the public will, in this
+matter, take your views, and not his. Oh! for a really discerning
+public, just like you--you amiable critics! Albert's new aunt is
+leaning over my shoulder. I can't break her of the distracting habit.
+How on earth am I ever to write another line? Greetings to all from
+
+                                           "ALBERT'S UNCLE AND AUNT.
+
+"PS.--She insists on having her name put to this, but of course she
+didn't write it. I am trying to teach her to spell."
+
+"PSS.--Italian spelling, of course."
+
+"And now," cried Oswald, "I see it all!"
+
+The others didn't. They often don't when Oswald does.
+
+"Why, don't you see!" he patiently explained, for he knows that it is
+vain to be angry with people because they are not so clever as--as other
+people. "It's the direct aspiration of Fate. He wants it, does he? Well,
+he shall have it!"
+
+"What?" said everybody.
+
+"We'll be it."
+
+"_What?_" was the not very polite remark now repeated by all.
+
+"Why, his discerning public."
+
+And still they all remained quite blind to what was so clear to Oswald,
+the astute and discernful.
+
+"It will be much more useful than killing dragons," Oswald went on,
+"especially as there aren't any; and it will be a really truly wedding
+present--just what we were wishing we'd given him."
+
+The five others now fell on Oswald and rolled him under the table and
+sat on his head so that he had to speak loudly and plainly.
+
+[Illustration: THE FIVE OTHERS]
+
+"All right! I'll tell you--in words of one syllable if you like. Let go,
+I say!" And when he had rolled out with the others and the tablecloth
+that caught on H.O.'s boots and the books and Dora's workbox, and the
+glass of paint-water that came down with it, he said--
+
+"We will _be_ the public. We will all write to the editor of the
+_People's Pageant_ and tell him what we think about the Geraldine
+chapter. Do mop up that water, Dora; it's running all under where I'm
+sitting."
+
+"Don't you think," said Dora, devoting her handkerchief and Alice's in
+the obedient way she does not always use, "that six letters, all signed
+'Bastable,' and all coming from the same house, would be
+rather--rather----"
+
+"A bit too thick? Yes," said Alice; "but of course we'd have all
+different names and addresses."
+
+"We might as well do it thoroughly," said Dicky, "and send three or four
+different letters each."
+
+"And have them posted in different parts of London. Right oh!" remarked
+Oswald.
+
+"_I_ shall write a piece of poetry for mine," said Noël.
+
+"They ought all to be on different kinds of paper," said Oswald. "Let's
+go out and get the paper directly after tea."
+
+We did, but we could only get fifteen different kinds of paper and
+envelopes, though we went to every shop in the village.
+
+At the first shop, when we said, "Please we want a penn'orth of paper
+and envelopes of each of all the different kinds you keep," the lady of
+the shop looked at us thinly over blue-rimmed spectacles and said, "What
+for?"
+
+And H.O. said, "To write unonymous letters."
+
+"Anonymous letters are very wrong," the lady said, and she wouldn't sell
+us any paper at all.
+
+But at the other places we did not say what it was for, and they sold it
+us. There were bluey and yellowy and grey and white kinds, and some was
+violetish with violets on it, and some pink, with roses. The girls took
+the florivorous ones, which Oswald thinks are unmanly for any but girls,
+but you excuse their using it. It seems natural to them to mess about
+like that.
+
+We wrote the fifteen letters, disguising our handwritings as much as we
+could. It was not easy. Oswald tried to write one of them with his left
+hand, but the consequences were almost totally unreadable. Besides, if
+any one could have read it, they would only have thought it was written
+in an asylum for the insane, the writing was so delirious. So he chucked
+it.
+
+Noël was only allowed to write one poem. It began--
+
+          "Oh, Geraldine! Oh, Geraldine!
+           You are the loveliest heroine!
+           I never read about one before
+           That made me want to write more
+           Poetry. And your Venetian eyes,
+           They must have been an awful size;
+           And black and blue, and like your hair,
+           And your nose and chin were a perfect pair."
+
+and so on for ages.
+
+The other letters were all saying what a beautiful chapter "Beneath the
+Doge's Home" was, and how we liked it better than the other chapters
+before, and how we hoped the next would be like it. We found out when
+all too late that H.O. had called it the "Dog's Home." But we hoped this
+would pass unnoticed among all the others. We read the reviews of books
+in the old _Spectators_ and _Athenæums_, and put in the words they say
+there about other people's books. We said we thought that chapter about
+Geraldine and the garters was "subtle" and "masterly" and
+"inevitable"--that it had an "old-world charm," and was "redolent of the
+soil." We said, too, that we had "read it with breathless interest from
+cover to cover," and that it had "poignant pathos and a convincing
+realism," and the "fine flower of delicate sentiment," besides much
+other rot that the author can't remember.
+
+When all the letters were done we addressed them and stamped them and
+licked them down, and then we got different people to post them. Our
+under-gardener, who lives in Greenwich, and the other under-gardener,
+who lives in Lewisham, and the servants on their evenings out, which
+they spend in distant spots like Plaistow and Grove Park--each had a
+letter to post. The piano-tuner was a great catch--he lived in Highgate;
+and the electric-bell man was Lambeth. So we got rid of all the letters,
+and watched the post for a reply. We watched for a week, but no answer
+came.
+
+You think, perhaps, that we were duffers to watch for a reply when we
+had signed all the letters with fancy names like Daisy Dolman, Everard
+St. Maur, and Sir Cholmondely Marjoribanks, and put fancy addresses on
+them, like Chatsworth House, Loampit Vale, and The Bungalow, Eaton
+Square. But we were not such idiots as you think, dear reader, and you
+are not so extra clever as you think, either. We had written _one_
+letter (it had the grandest _Spectator_ words in it) on our own
+letter-paper, with the address on the top and the uncle's coat-of-arms
+outside the envelope. Oswald's real own name was signed to this letter,
+and this was the one we looked for the answer to. See?
+
+But that answer did not come. And when three long days had passed away
+we all felt most awfully stale about it. Knowing the great good we had
+done for Albert's uncle made our interior feelings very little better,
+if at all.
+
+And on the fourth day Oswald spoke up and said what was in everybody's
+inside heart. He said--
+
+"This is futile rot. I vote we write and ask that editor why he doesn't
+answer letters."
+
+"He wouldn't answer that one any more than he did the other," said Noël.
+"Why should he? He knows you can't do anything to him for not."
+
+"Why shouldn't we go and ask him?" H.O. said. "He couldn't not answer us
+if we was all there, staring him in the face."
+
+"I don't suppose he'd see you," said Dora; "and it's 'were,' not 'was.'"
+
+"The other editor did when I got the guinea for my beautiful poems,"
+Noël reminded us.
+
+"Yes," said the thoughtful Oswald; "but then it doesn't matter how young
+you are when you're just a poetry-seller. But we're the discerning
+public now, and he'd think we ought to be grown up. I say, Dora, suppose
+you rigged yourself up in old Blakie's things. You'd look quite twenty
+or thirty."
+
+Dora looked frightened, and said she thought we'd better not.
+
+But Alice said, "Well, I will, then. I don't care. I'm as tall as Dora.
+But I won't go alone. Oswald, you'll have to dress up old and come too.
+It's not much to do for Albert's uncle's sake."
+
+"You know you'll enjoy it," said Dora, and she may have wished that she
+did not so often think that we had better not. However, the dye was now
+cast, and the remainder of this adventure was doomed to be coloured by
+the dye we now prepared. (This is an allegory. It means we had burned
+our boats. And that is another.)
+
+We decided to do the deed next day, and during the evening Dicky and
+Oswald went out and bought a grey beard and moustache, which was the
+only thing we could think of to disguise the manly and youthful form of
+the bold Oswald into the mature shape of a grown-up and discerning
+public character.
+
+Meanwhile, the girls made tiptoe and brigand-like excursions into Miss
+Blake's room (she is the housekeeper) and got several things. Among
+others, a sort of undecided thing like part of a wig, which Miss Blake
+wears on Sundays. Jane, our housemaid, says it is called a
+"transformation," and that duchesses wear them.
+
+We had to be very secret about the dressing-up that night, and to put
+Blakie's things all back when they had been tried on.
+
+Dora did Alice's hair. She twisted up what little hair Alice has got by
+natural means, and tied on a long tail of hair that was Miss Blake's
+too. Then she twisted that up, bun-like, with many hairpins. Then the
+wiglet, or transformation, was plastered over the front part, and Miss
+Blake's Sunday hat, which is of a very brisk character, with half a blue
+bird in it, was placed on top of everything. There were several
+petticoats used, and a brown dress and some stockings and hankies to
+stuff it out where it was too big. A black jacket and crimson tie
+completed the picture. We thought Alice would do.
+
+Then Oswald went out of the room and secretly assumed his dark disguise.
+But when he came in with the beard on, and a hat of Father's, the others
+were not struck with admiration and respect, like he meant them to be.
+They rolled about, roaring with laughter, and when he crept into Miss
+Blake's room and turned up the gas a bit, and looked in her long glass,
+he owned that they were right and that it was no go. He is tall for his
+age, but that beard made him look like some horrible dwarf; and his hair
+being so short added to everything. Any idiot could have seen that the
+beard had not originally flourished where it now was, but had been
+transplanted from some other place of growth.
+
+And when he laughed, which now became necessary, he really did look most
+awful. He has read of beards wagging, but he never saw it before.
+
+While he was looking at himself the girls had thought of a new idea.
+
+But Oswald had an inside presentiment that made it some time before he
+could even consent to listen to it. But at last, when the others
+reminded him that it was a noble act, and for the good of Albert's
+uncle, he let them explain the horrid scheme in all its lurid parts.
+
+It was this: That Oswald should consent to be disguised in women's
+raiments and go with Alice to see the Editor.
+
+No man ever wants to be a woman, and it was a bitter thing for Oswald's
+pride, but at last he consented. He is glad he is not a girl. You have
+no idea what it is like to wear petticoats, especially long ones. I
+wonder that ladies continue to endure their miserable existences. The
+top parts of the clothes, too, seemed to be too tight and too loose in
+the wrong places. Oswald's head, also, was terribly in the way. He had
+no wandering hairs to fasten transformations on to, even if Miss Blake
+had had another one, which was not the case. But the girls remembered a
+governess they had once witnessed whose hair was brief as any boy's, so
+they put a large hat, with a very tight elastic behind, on to Oswald's
+head, just as it was, and then with a tickly, pussyish, featherish thing
+round his neck, hanging wobblily down in long ends, he looked more
+young-lady-like than he will ever feel.
+
+Some courage was needed for the start next day. Things look so different
+in the daylight.
+
+"Remember Lord Nithsdale coming out of the Tower," said Alice. "Think of
+the great cause and be brave," and she tied his neck up.
+
+"I'm brave all right," said Oswald, "only I do feel such an ass."
+
+"I feel rather an ape myself," Alice owned, "but I've got
+three-penn'orth of peppermints to inspire us with bravery. It is called
+Dutch courage, I believe."
+
+Owing to our telling Jane we managed to get out unseen by Blakie.
+
+All the others would come, too, in their natural appearance, except that
+we made them wash their hands and faces. We happened to be flush of
+chink, so we let them come.
+
+"But if you do," Oswald said, "you must surround us in a hollow square
+of four."
+
+So they did. And we got down to the station all right. But in the train
+there were two ladies who stared, and porters and people like that came
+round the window far more than there could be any need for. Oswald's
+boots must have shown as he got in. He had forgotten to borrow a pair of
+Jane's, as he had meant to, and the ones he had on were his largest. His
+ears got hotter and hotter, and it got more and more difficult to manage
+his feet and hands. He failed to suck any courage, of any nation, from
+the peppermints.
+
+[Illustration: OSWALD SAW THE DRIVER WINK AS HE PUT HIS BOOT ON THE
+STEP, AND THE PORTER WHO WAS OPENING THE CAB DOOR WINKED BACK.]
+
+Owing to the state Oswald's ears were now in, we agreed to take a cab at
+Cannon Street. We all crammed in somehow, but Oswald saw the driver wink
+as he put his boot on the step, and the porter who was opening the cab
+door winked back, and I am sorry to say Oswald forgot that he was a
+high-born lady, and he told the porter that he had better jolly well
+stow his cheek. Then several bystanders began to try and be funny, and
+Oswald knew exactly what particular sort of fool he was being.
+
+But he bravely silenced the fierce warnings of his ears, and when we got
+to the Editor's address we sent Dick up with a large card that we had
+written on,
+
+                        "MISS DAISY DOLMAN
+                                and
+                     THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MISS
+                        ETHELTRUDA BUSTLER.
+                        On urgent business."
+
+and Oswald kept himself and Alice concealed in the cab till the return
+of the messenger.
+
+"All right; you're to go up," Dicky came back and said; "but the boy
+grinned who told me so. You'd better be jolly careful."
+
+We bolted like rabbits across the pavement and up the Editor's stairs.
+
+He was very polite. He asked us to sit down, and Oswald did. But first
+he tumbled over the front of his dress because it would get under his
+boots, and he was afraid to hold it up, not having practised doing this.
+
+"I think I have had letters from you?" said the Editor.
+
+[Illustration: HE LOOKED AT OSWALD'S BOOTS.]
+
+Alice, who looked terrible with the transformation leaning
+right-ear-ward, said yes, and that we had come to say what a fine,
+bold conception we thought the Doge's chapter was. This was what we
+had settled to say, but she needn't have burst out with it like that. I
+suppose she forgot herself. Oswald, in the agitation of his clothes,
+could say nothing. The elastic of the hat seemed to be very slowly
+slipping up the back of his head, and he knew that, if it once passed
+the bump that backs of heads are made with, the hat would spring from
+his head like an arrow from a bow. And all would be frustrated.
+
+"Yes," said the Editor; "that chapter seems to have had a great
+success--a wonderful success. I had no fewer than sixteen letters about
+it, all praising it in unmeasured terms." He looked at Oswald's boots,
+which Oswald had neglected to cover over with his petticoats. He now did
+this.
+
+"It _is_ a nice story, you know," said Alice timidly.
+
+"So it seems," the gentleman went on. "Fourteen of the sixteen letters
+bear the Blackheath postmark. The enthusiasm for the chapter would seem
+to be mainly local."
+
+Oswald would not look at Alice. He could not trust himself, with her
+looking like she did. He knew at once that only the piano-tuner and the
+electric bell man had been faithful to their trust. The others had all
+posted their letters in the pillar-box just outside our gate. They
+wanted to get rid of them as quickly as they could, I suppose.
+Selfishness is a vile quality.
+
+The author cannot deny that Oswald now wished he hadn't. The elastic was
+certainly moving, slowly, but too surely. Oswald tried to check its
+career by swelling out the bump on the back of his head, but he could
+not think of the right way to do this.
+
+"I am very pleased to see you," the Editor went on slowly, and there was
+something about the way he spoke that made Oswald think of a cat playing
+with a mouse. "Perhaps you can tell me. Are there many spiritualists in
+Blackheath? Many clairvoyants?"
+
+"Eh?" said Alice, forgetting that that is not the way to behave.
+
+"People who foretell the future?" he said.
+
+"I don't think so," said Alice. "Why?"
+
+His eye twinkled. Oswald saw he had wanted her to ask this.
+
+"Because," said the Editor, more slowly than ever, "I think there must
+be. How otherwise can we account for that chapter about the 'Doge's
+Home' being read and admired by sixteen different people before it is
+even printed. That chapter has not been printed, it has not been
+published; it will not be published till the May number of the _People's
+Pageant_. Yet in Blackheath sixteen people already appreciate its
+subtlety and its realism and all the rest of it. How do you account for
+this, Miss Daisy Dolman?"
+
+"I am the Right Honourable Etheltruda," said Alice. "At least--oh, it's
+no use going on. We are not what we seem."
+
+"Oddly enough, I inferred that at the very beginning of our interview,"
+said the Editor.
+
+Then the elastic finished slipping up Oswald's head at the back, and the
+hat leapt from his head exactly as he had known it would. He fielded it
+deftly, however, and it did not touch the ground.
+
+"Concealment," said Oswald, "is at an end."
+
+"So it appears," said the Editor. "Well, I hope next time the author of
+the 'Golden Gondola' will choose his instruments more carefully."
+
+"He didn't! We aren't!" cried Alice, and she instantly told the Editor
+everything.
+
+Concealment being at an end, Oswald was able to get at his trousers
+pocket--it did not matter now how many boots he showed--and to get out
+Albert's uncle's letter.
+
+Alice was quite eloquent, especially when the Editor had made her take
+off the hat with the blue bird, and the transformation and the tail, so
+that he could see what she really looked like. He was quite decent when
+he really understood how Albert's uncle's threatened marriage must have
+upset his brain while he was writing that chapter, and pondering on the
+dark future.
+
+He began to laugh then, and kept it up till the hour of parting.
+
+He advised Alice not to put on the transformation and the tail again to
+go home in, and she didn't.
+
+Then he said to me: "Are you in a finished state under Miss Daisy
+Dolman?" and when Oswald said, "Yes," the Editor helped him to take off
+all the womanly accoutrements, and to do them up in brown paper. And he
+lent him a cap to go home in.
+
+I never saw a man laugh more. He is an excellent sort.
+
+But no slow passage of years, however many, can ever weaken Oswald's
+memory of what those petticoats were like to walk in, and how ripping it
+was to get out of them, and have your own natural legs again.
+
+We parted from that Editor without a strain on anybody's character.
+
+He must have written to Albert's uncle, and told him all, for we got a
+letter next week. It said--
+
+          "MY DEAR KIDDIES,--Art cannot be forced. Nor can
+          Fame. May I beg you for the future to confine your
+          exertions to blowing my trumpet--or Fame's--with
+          your natural voices? Editors may be led, but they
+          won't be druv. The Right Honourable Miss
+          Etheltruda Bustler seems to have aroused a deep
+          pity for me in my Editor's heart. Let that
+          suffice. And for the future permit me, as firmly
+          as affectionately, to reiterate the assurance and
+          the advice which I have so often breathed in your
+          long young ears, '_I am not ungrateful; but I do
+          wish you would mind your own business._'"
+
+"That's just because we were found out," said Alice. "If we'd succeeded
+he'd have been sitting on the top of the pinnacle of Fame, and he would
+have owed it all to us. That would have been making him something like a
+wedding present."
+
+What we had really done was to make something very like----but the
+author is sure he has said enough.
+
+
+
+
+_THE FLYING LODGER_
+
+
+FATHER knows a man called Eustace Sandal. I do not know how to express
+his inside soul, but I have heard Father say he means well. He is a
+vegetarian and a Primitive Social Something, and an all-wooler, and
+things like that, and he is really as good as he can stick, only most
+awfully dull. I believe he eats bread and milk from choice. Well, he has
+great magnificent dreams about all the things you can do for other
+people, and he wants to distill cultivatedness into the sort of people
+who live in Model Workmen's Dwellings, and teach them to live up to
+better things. This is what he says. So he gives concerts in Camberwell,
+and places like that, and curates come from far and near, to sing about
+Bold Bandaleros and the Song of the Bow, and people who have escaped
+being curates give comic recitings, and he is sure that it does every
+one good, and "gives them glimpses of the Life Beautiful." He said that.
+Oswald heard him with his own trustworthy ears. Anyway the people enjoy
+the concerts no end, and that's the great thing.
+
+Well, he came one night, with a lot of tickets he wanted to sell, and
+Father bought some for the servants, and Dora happened to go in to get
+the gum for a kite we were making, and Mr. Sandal said, "Well, my little
+maiden, would you not like to come on Thursday evening, and share in the
+task of raising our poor brothers and sisters to the higher levels of
+culture?" So of course Dora said she would, very much. Then he explained
+about the concert, calling her "My little one," and "dear child," which
+Alice never would have borne, but Dora is not of a sensitive nature, and
+hardly minds what she is called, so long as it is not names, which she
+does not deem "dear child" and cetera to be, though Oswald would.
+
+Dora was quite excited about it, and the stranger so worked upon her
+feelings that she accepted the deep responsibility of selling tickets,
+and for a week there was no bearing her. I believe she did sell nine, to
+people in Lewisham and New Cross who knew no better. And Father bought
+tickets for all of us, and when the eventful evening dawned we went to
+Camberwell by train and tram _viâ_ Miss Blake (that means we shouldn't
+have been allowed to go without her).
+
+The tram ride was rather jolly, but when we got out and walked we felt
+like "Alone in London," or "Jessica's First Prayer," because Camberwell
+is a devastating region that makes you think of rickety attics with the
+wind whistling through them, or miserable cellars where forsaken
+children do wonders by pawning their relations' clothes and looking
+after the baby. It was a dampish night, and we walked on greasy mud. And
+as we walked along Alice kicked against something on the pavement, and
+it chinked, and when she picked it up it was five bob rolled up in
+newspaper.
+
+"I expect it's somebody's little all," said Alice, "and the cup was
+dashed from their lips just when they were going to joyfully spend it.
+We ought to give it to the police."
+
+But Miss Blake said no, and that we were late already, so we went on,
+and Alice held the packet in her muff throughout the concert which
+ensued. I will not tell you anything about the concert except that it
+was quite fairly jolly--you must have been to these Self-Raising
+Concerts in the course of your young lives.
+
+When it was over we reasoned with Miss Blake, and she let us go through
+the light blue paper door beside the stage and find Mr. Sandal. We
+thought he might happen to hear who had lost the five bob, and return it
+to its sorrowing family. He was in a great hurry, but he took the chink
+and said he'd let us know if anything happened. Then we went home very
+cheerful, singing bits of the comic songs a bishop's son had done in
+the concert, and little thinking what we were taking home with us.
+
+It was only a few days after this, or perhaps a week, that we all began
+to be rather cross. Alice, usually as near a brick as a girl can go, was
+the worst of the lot, and if you said what you thought of her she
+instantly began to snivel. And we all had awful colds, and our
+handkerchiefs gave out, and then our heads ached. Oswald's head was
+particularly hot, I remember, and he wanted to rest it on the backs of
+chairs or on tables--or anything steady.
+
+But why prolong the painful narrative? What we had brought home from
+Camberwell was the measles, and as soon as the grown-ups recognised the
+Grim Intruder for the fell disease it is we all went to bed, and there
+was an end of active adventure for some time.
+
+Of course, when you begin to get better there are grapes and other
+luxuries not of everyday occurrences, but while you're sniffling and
+fevering in bed, as red as a lobster and blazing hot, you are inclined
+to think it is a heavy price to pay for any concert, however raising.
+
+Mr. Sandal came to see Father the very day we all marched Bedward. He
+had found the owner of the five shillings. It was a doctor's fee, about
+to be paid by the parent of a thoroughly measly family. And if we had
+taken it to the police at once Alice would not have held it in her hand
+all through the concert--but I will not blame Blakie. She was a jolly
+good nurse, and read aloud to us with unfatiguable industry while we
+were getting better.
+
+Our having fallen victims to this disgusting complaint ended in our
+being sent to the seaside. Father could not take us himself, so we went
+to stay with a sister of Mr. Sandal's. She was like him, only more so in
+every way.
+
+The journey was very joyous. Father saw us off at Cannon Street, and we
+had a carriage to ourselves all the way, and we passed the station where
+Oswald would not like to be a porter. Rude boys at this station put
+their heads out of the window and shout, "Who's a duffer?" and things
+like that, and the porters _have_ to shout "I am!" because Higham is the
+name of the station, and porters have seldom any H's with which to
+protect themselves from this cruel joke.
+
+It was a glorious moment when the train swooped out of a tunnel and we
+looked over the downs and saw the grey-blue line that was the sea. We
+had not seen the sea since before Mother died. I believe we older ones
+all thought of that, and it made us quieter than the younger ones were.
+I do not want to forget anything, but it makes you feel empty and stupid
+when you remember some things.
+
+There was a good drive in a waggonette after we got to our station.
+There were primroses under some of the hedges, and lots of dog-violets.
+And at last we got to Miss Sandal's house. It is before you come to the
+village, and it is a little square white house. There is a big old
+windmill at the back of it. It is not used any more for grinding corn,
+but fishermen keep their nets in it.
+
+Miss Sandal came out of the green gate to meet us. She had a soft, drab
+dress and a long thin neck, and her hair was drab too, and it was
+screwed up tight.
+
+She said, "Welcome, one and all!" in a kind voice, but it was too much
+like Mr. Sandal's for me. And we went in. She showed us the
+sitting-rooms, and the rooms where we were to sleep, and then she left
+us to wash our hands and faces. When we were alone we burst open the
+doors of our rooms with one consent, and met on the landing with a rush
+like the great rivers of America.
+
+"_Well!_" said Oswald, and the others said the same.
+
+"Of all the rummy cribs!" remarked Dicky.
+
+"It's like a workhouse or a hospital," said Dora. "I think I like it."
+
+"It makes me think of bald-headed gentlemen," said H.O., "it is so
+bare."
+
+It was. All the walls were white plaster, the furniture was white
+deal--what there was of it, which was precious little. There were no
+carpets--only white matting. And there was not a single ornament in a
+single room! There was a clock on the dining-room mantel-piece, but that
+could not be counted as an ornament because of the useful side of its
+character. There were only about six pictures--all of a brownish colour.
+One was the blind girl sitting on an orange with a broken fiddle. It is
+called Hope.
+
+When we were clean Miss Sandal gave us tea. As we sat down she said,
+"The motto of our little household is 'Plain living and high thinking.'"
+
+And some of us feared for an instant that this might mean not enough to
+eat. But fortunately this was not the case. There was plenty, but all of
+a milky, bunny, fruity, vegetable sort. We soon got used to it, and
+liked it all right.
+
+Miss Sandal was very kind. She offered to read aloud to us after tea,
+and, exchanging glances of despair, some of us said that we should like
+it very much.
+
+It was Oswald who found the manly courage to say very politely--
+
+"Would it be all the same to you if we went and looked at the sea first?
+Because----"
+
+And she said, "Not at all," adding something about "Nature, the dear old
+nurse, taking somebody on her knee," and let us go.
+
+We asked her which way, and we tore up the road and through the village
+and on to the sea-wall, and then with six joyous bounds we leaped down
+on to the sand.
+
+The author will not bother you with a description of the mighty billows
+of ocean, which you must have read about, if not seen, but he will just
+say what perhaps you are not aware of--that seagulls eat clams and
+mussels and cockles, and crack the shells with their beaks. The author
+has seen this done.
+
+You also know, I suppose, that you can dig in the sand (if you have a
+spade) and make sand castles, and stay in them till the tide washes you
+out.
+
+I will say no more, except that when we gazed upon the sea and the sand
+we felt we did not care tuppence how highly Miss Sandal might think of
+us or how plainly she might make us live, so long as we had got the
+briny deep to go down to.
+
+It was too early in the year and too late in the day to bathe, but we
+paddled, which comes to much the same thing, and you almost always have
+to change everything afterwards.
+
+When it got dark we had to go back to the White House, and there was
+supper, and then we found that Miss Sandal did not keep a servant, so of
+course we offered to help wash up. H.O. only broke two plates.
+
+Nothing worth telling about happened till we had been there over a week,
+and had got to know the coastguards and a lot of the village people
+quite well. I do like coastguards. They seem to know everything you want
+to hear about. Miss Sandal used to read to us out of poetry books, and
+about a chap called Thoreau, who could tickle fish, and they liked it,
+and let him. She was kind, but rather like her house--there was
+something bare and bald about her inside mind, I believe. She was very,
+very calm, and said that people who lost their tempers were not living
+the higher life. But one day a telegram came, and then she was not calm
+at all. She got quite like other people, and quite shoved H.O. for
+getting in her way when she was looking for her purse to pay for the
+answer to the telegram.
+
+Then she said to Dora--and she was pale and her eyes red, just like
+people who live the lower or ordinary life--"My dears, it's dreadful! My
+poor brother! He's had a fall. I must go to him at _once_." And she sent
+Oswald to order the fly from the Old Ship Hotel, and the girls to see if
+Mrs. Beale would come and take care of us while she was away. Then she
+kissed us all and went off very unhappy. We heard afterwards that poor,
+worthy Mr. Sandal had climbed a scaffolding to give a workman a tract
+about drink, and he didn't know the proper part of the scaffolding to
+stand on (the workman did, of course) so he fetched down half a dozen
+planks and the workman, and if a dust-cart hadn't happened to be passing
+just under so that they fell into it their lives would not have been
+spared. As it was Mr. Sandal broke his arm and his head. The workman
+escaped unscathed but furious. The workman was a teetotaler.
+
+Mrs. Beale came, and the first thing she did was to buy a leg of mutton
+and cook it. It was the first meat we had had since arriving at
+Lymchurch.
+
+[Illustration: HE FETCHED DOWN HALF A DOZEN PLANKS AND THE WORKMAN.]
+
+"I 'spect she can't afford good butcher's meat," said Mrs. Beale; "but
+your pa, I expect he pays for you, and I lay he'd like you to have your
+fill of something as'll lay acrost your chesties." So she made a
+Yorkshire pudding as well. It was good.
+
+After dinner we sat on the sea-wall, feeling more like after dinner than
+we had felt for days, and Dora said--
+
+"Poor Miss Sandal! I never thought about her being hard-up, somehow. I
+wish we could do something to help her."
+
+"We might go out street-singing," Noël said. But that was no good,
+because there is only one street in the village, and the people there
+are much too poor for one to be able to ask them for anything. And all
+round it is fields with only sheep, who have nothing to give except
+their wool, and when it comes to taking that, they are never asked.
+
+Dora thought we might get Father to give her money, but Oswald knew this
+would never do.
+
+Then suddenly a thought struck some one--I will not say who--and that
+some one said--
+
+"She ought to let lodgings, like all the other people do in Lymchurch."
+
+That was the beginning of it. The end--for that day--was our getting the
+top of a cardboard box and printing on it the following lines in as
+many different coloured chalks as we happened to have with us.
+
+                     LODGINGS TO LET.
+
+                     ENQUIRE INSIDE.
+
+We ruled spaces for the letters to go in, and did it very neatly. When
+we went to bed we stuck it in our bedroom window with stamp-paper.
+
+In the morning when Oswald drew up his blind there was quite a crowd of
+kids looking at the card. Mrs. Beale came out and shoo-ed them away as
+if they were hens. And we did not have to explain the card to her at
+all. She never said anything about it. I never knew such a woman as Mrs.
+Beale for minding her own business. She said afterwards she supposed
+Miss Sandal had told us to put up the card.
+
+Well, two or three days went by, and nothing happened, only we had a
+letter from Miss Sandal, telling us how the poor sufferer was groaning,
+and one from Father telling us to be good children, and not get into
+scrapes. And people who drove by used to look at the card and laugh.
+
+And then one day a carriage came driving up with a gentleman in it, and
+he saw the rainbow beauty of our chalked card, and he got out and came
+up the path. He had a pale face, and white hair and very bright eyes
+that moved about quickly like a bird's, and he was dressed in a quite
+new tweed suit that did not fit him very well.
+
+Dora and Alice answered the door before any one had time to knock, and
+the author has reason to believe their hearts were beating wildly.
+
+"How much?" said the gentleman shortly.
+
+Alice and Dora were so surprised by his suddenness that they could only
+reply--
+
+"Er--er----"
+
+"Just so," said the gentleman briskly as Oswald stepped modestly forward
+and said--
+
+"Won't you come inside?"
+
+"The very thing," said he, and came in.
+
+We showed him into the dining-room and asked him to excuse us a minute,
+and then held a breathless council outside the door.
+
+"It depends how many rooms he wants," said Dora.
+
+"Let's say so much a room," said Dicky, "and extra if he wants Mrs.
+Beale to wait on him."
+
+So we decided to do this. We thought a pound a room seemed fair.
+
+And we went back.
+
+"How many rooms do you want?" Oswald asked.
+
+"All the room there is," said the gentleman.
+
+"They are a pound each," said Oswald, "and extra for Mrs. Beale."
+
+"How much altogether?"
+
+Oswald thought a minute and then said "Nine rooms is nine pounds, and
+two pounds a week for Mrs. Beale, because she is a widow."
+
+[Illustration: "HOW MUCH?" SAID THE GENTLEMAN SHORTLY.]
+
+"Done!" said the gentleman. "I'll go and fetch my portmanteaus."
+
+He bounced up and out and got into his carriage and drove away. It was
+not till he was finally gone quite beyond recall that Alice suddenly
+said--
+
+"But if he has all the rooms where are _we_ to sleep?"
+
+"He must be awfully rich," said H.O., "wanting all those rooms."
+
+"Well, he can't sleep in more than one at once," said Dicky, "however
+rich he is. We might wait till he was bedded down and then sleep in the
+rooms he didn't want."
+
+But Oswald was firm. He knew that if the man paid for the rooms he must
+have them to himself.
+
+"He won't sleep in the kitchen," said Dora; "couldn't we sleep there?"
+
+But we all said we couldn't and wouldn't.
+
+Then Alice suddenly said--
+
+"I know! The Mill. There are heaps and heaps of fishing-nets there, and
+we could each take a blanket like Indians and creep over under cover of
+the night after the Beale has gone, and get back before she comes in the
+morning."
+
+It seemed a sporting thing to do, and we agreed. Only Dora said she
+thought it would be draughty.
+
+Of course we went over to the Mill at once to lay our plans and prepare
+for the silent watches of the night.
+
+There are three stories to a windmill, besides the ground-floor. The
+first floor is pretty empty; the next is nearly full of millstones and
+machinery, and the one above is where the corn runs down from on to the
+millstones.
+
+We settled to let the girls have the first floor, which was covered with
+heaps of nets, and we would pig in with the millstones on the floor
+above.
+
+We had just secretly got out the last of the six blankets from the house
+and got it into the Mill disguised in a clothes-basket, when we heard
+wheels, and there was the gentleman back again. He had only got one
+portmanteau after all, and that was a very little one.
+
+Mrs. Beale was bobbing at him in the doorway when we got up. Of course
+we had told her he had rented rooms, but we had not said how many, for
+fear she should ask where we were going to sleep, and we had a feeling
+that but few grown-ups would like our sleeping in a mill, however much
+we were living the higher life by sacrificing ourselves to get money for
+Miss Sandal.
+
+The gentleman ordered sheep's-head and trotters for dinner, and when he
+found he could not have that he said--
+
+"Gammon and spinach!"
+
+But there was not any spinach in the village, so he had to fall back on
+eggs and bacon. Mrs. Beale cooked it, and when he had fallen back on it
+she washed up and went home. And we were left. We could hear the
+gentleman singing to himself, something about woulding he was a bird
+that he might fly to thee.
+
+Then we got the lanterns that you take when you go "up street" on a dark
+night, and we crept over to the Mill. It was much darker than we
+expected.
+
+We decided to keep our clothes on, partly for warmness and partly in
+case of any sudden alarm or the fishermen wanting their nets in the
+middle of the night, which sometimes happens if the tide is favourable.
+
+We let the girls keep the lantern, and we went up with a bit of candle
+Dicky had saved, and tried to get comfortable among the millstones and
+machinery, but it was not easy, and Oswald, for one, was not sorry when
+he heard the voice of Dora calling in trembling tones from the floor
+below.
+
+"Oswald! Dicky!" said the voice, "I wish one of you would come down a
+sec."
+
+Oswald flew to the assistance of his distressed sister.
+
+"It's only that we're a little bit uncomfortable," she whispered. "I
+didn't want to yell it out because of Noël and H.O. I don't want to
+frighten them, but I can't help feeling that if anything popped out of
+the dark at us I should die. Can't you all come down here? The nets are
+quite comfortable, and I do wish you would."
+
+Alice said she was not frightened, but suppose there were rats, which
+are said to infest old buildings, especially mills?
+
+So we consented to come down, and we told Noël and H.O. to come down
+because it was more comfy, and it is easier to settle yourself for the
+night among fishing-nets than among machinery. There _was_ a rustling
+now and then among the heap of broken chairs and jack-planes and baskets
+and spades and hoes and bits of the spars of ships at the far end of our
+sleeping apartment, but Dicky and Oswald resolutely said it was the wind
+or else jackdaws making their nests, though, of course, they knew this
+is not done at night.
+
+Sleeping in a mill was not nearly the fun we had thought it would
+be--somehow. For one thing, it was horrid not having a pillow, and the
+fishing-nets were so stiff you could not bunch them up properly to make
+one. And unless you have been born and bred a Red Indian you do not know
+how to manage your blanket so as to make it keep out the draughts. And
+when we had put out the light Oswald more than once felt as though
+earwigs and spiders were walking on his face in the dark, but when we
+struck a match there was nothing there.
+
+And empty mills do creak and rustle and move about in a very odd way.
+Oswald was not afraid, but he did think we might as well have slept in
+the kitchen, because the gentleman could not have wanted to use that
+when he was asleep. You see, we thought then that he would sleep all
+night like other people.
+
+We got to sleep at last, and in the night the girls edged up to their
+bold brothers, so that when the morning sun "shone in bars of dusty gold
+through the chinks of the aged edifice" and woke us up we were all lying
+in a snuggly heap like a litter of puppies.
+
+"Oh, I _am_ so stiff!" said Alice, stretching. "I never slept in my
+clothes before. It makes me feel as if I had been starched and ironed
+like a boy's collar."
+
+We all felt pretty much the same. And our faces were tired too, and
+stiff, which was rum, and the author cannot account for it, unless it
+really was spiders that walked on us. I believe the ancient Greeks
+considered them to be venomous, and perhaps that's how their venom
+influences their victims.
+
+"I think mills are merely beastly," remarked H.O. when we had woke him
+up. "You can't wash yourself or brush your hair or anything."
+
+"You aren't always so jolly particular about your hair," said Dicky.
+
+"Don't be so disagreeable," said Dora.
+
+And Dicky rejoined, "Disagreeable yourself!"
+
+There is certainly something about sleeping in your clothes that makes
+you feel not so kind and polite as usual. I expect this is why tramps
+are so fierce and knock people down in lonely roads and kick them.
+Oswald knows he felt just like kicking any one if they had happened to
+cheek him the least little bit. But by a fortunate accident nobody did.
+
+The author believes there is a picture called "Hopeless Dawn." We felt
+exactly like that. Nothing seemed the least bit of good.
+
+It was a pitiful band with hands and faces dirtier than any one would
+believe who had not slept in a mill or witnessed others who had done so,
+that crossed the wet, green grass between the Mill and the white house.
+
+"I shan't ever put morning dew into my poetry again," Noël said; "it is
+not nearly so poetical as people make out, and it is as cold as ice,
+right through your boots."
+
+We felt rather better when we had had a good splash in the brick-paved
+back kitchen that Miss Sandal calls the bath-room. And Alice made a fire
+and boiled a kettle and we had some tea and eggs. Then we looked at the
+clock and it was half-past five. So we hastened to get into another part
+of the house before Mrs. Beale came.
+
+"I wish we'd tried to live the higher life some less beastly way," said
+Dicky as we went along the passage.
+
+"Living the higher life always hurts at the beginning," Alice said. "I
+expect it's like new boots, only when you've got used to it you're glad
+you bore it at first. Let's listen at the doors till we find out where
+he isn't sleeping."
+
+So we listened at all the bedroom doors, but not a snore was heard.
+
+"Perhaps he was a burglar," said H.O., "and only pretended to want
+lodgings so as to get in and bone all the valuables."
+
+"There aren't any valuables," said Noël, and this was quite true, for
+Miss Sandal had no silver or jewellery except a brooch of pewter, and
+the very teaspoons were of wood--very hard to keep clean and having to
+be scraped.
+
+"Perhaps he sleeps without snoring," said Oswald, "some people do."
+
+"Not old gentlemen," said Noël; "think of our Indian uncle--H.O. used to
+think it was bears at first."
+
+"Perhaps he rises with the lark," said Alice, "and is wondering why
+brekker isn't ready."
+
+So then we listened at the sitting-room doors, and through the keyhole
+of the parlour we heard a noise of some one moving, and then in a soft
+whistle the tune of the "Would I were a bird" song.
+
+So then we went into the dining-room to sit down. But when we opened the
+door we almost fell in a heap on the matting, and no one had breath for
+a word--not even for "Krikey," which was what we all thought.
+
+I have read of people who could not believe their eyes; and I have
+always thought it such rot of them, but now, as the author gazed on the
+scene, he really could not be quite sure that he was not in a dream, and
+that the gentleman and the night in the Mill weren't dreams too.
+
+"Pull back the curtains," Alice said, and we did. I wish I could make
+the reader feel as astonished as we did.
+
+The last time we had seen the room the walls had been bare and white.
+Now they were covered with the most splendid drawings you can think of,
+all done in coloured chalk--I don't mean mixed up, like we do with our
+chalks--but one picture was done in green, and another in brown, and
+another in red, and so on. And the chalk must have been of some fat
+radiant kind quite unknown to us, for some of the lines were over an
+inch thick.
+
+"How perfectly _lovely_!" Alice said; "he must have sat up all night to
+do it. He _is_ good. I expect he's trying to live the higher life,
+too--just going about doing secretly, and spending his time making other
+people's houses pretty."
+
+"I wonder what he'd have done if the room had had a large pattern of
+brown roses on it, like Mrs. Beale's," said Noël. "I say, _look_ at that
+angel! Isn't it poetical? It makes me feel I must write something about
+it."
+
+It _was_ a good angel--all drawn in grey, that was--with very wide wings
+going right across the room, and a whole bundle of lilies in his arms.
+Then there were seagulls and ravens, and butterflies, and ballet girls
+with butterflies' wings, and a man with artificial wings being fastened
+on, and you could see he was just going to jump off a rock. And there
+were fairies, and bats, and flying-foxes, and flying-fish. And one
+glorious winged horse done in red chalk--and his wings went from one
+side of the room to the other, and crossed the angel's. There were
+dozens and dozens of birds--all done in just a few lines--but exactly
+right. You couldn't make any mistake about what anything was meant for.
+
+And all the things, whatever they were, had wings to them. How Oswald
+wishes that those pictures had been done in his house!
+
+While we stood gazing, the door of the other room opened, and the
+gentleman stood before us, more covered with different-coloured chalks
+than I should have thought he could have got, even with all those
+drawings, and he had a thing made of wire and paper in his hand, and he
+said--
+
+"Wouldn't you like to fly?"
+
+"Yes," said every one.
+
+"Well then," he said, "I've got a nice little flying-machine here. I'll
+fit it on to one of you, and then you jump out of the attic window. You
+don't know what it's like to fly."
+
+We said we would rather not.
+
+"But I insist," said the gentleman. "I have your real interest at heart,
+my children--I can't allow you in your ignorance to reject the chance of
+a lifetime."
+
+We still said "No, thank you," and we began to feel very uncomfy, for
+the gentleman's eyes were now rolling wildly.
+
+"Then I'll _make_ you!" he said, catching hold of Oswald.
+
+[Illustration: "THEN I'LL _MAKE_ YOU!" HE SAID, CATCHING HOLD OF
+OSWALD.]
+
+"You jolly well won't," cried Dicky, catching hold of the arm of the
+gentleman.
+
+Then Dora said very primly and speaking rather slowly, and she was very
+pale--
+
+"I think it would be lovely to fly. Will you just show me how the
+flying-machine looks when it is unfolded?"
+
+The gentleman dropped Oswald, and Dora made "Go! go" with her lips
+without speaking, while he began to unfold the flying-machine. We others
+went, Oswald lingering last, and then in an instant Dora had nipped out
+of the room and banged the door and locked it.
+
+"To the Mill!" she cried, and we ran like mad, and got in and barred the
+big door, and went up to the first floor, and looked out of the big
+window to warn off Mrs. Beale.
+
+And we thumped Dora on the back, and Dicky called her a Sherlock Holmes,
+and Noël said she was a heroine.
+
+"It wasn't anything," Dora said, just before she began to cry, "only I
+remember reading that you must pretend to humour them, and then get
+away, for of course I saw at once he was a lunatic. Oh, how awful it
+might have been! He could have made us all jump out of the attic window,
+and there would have been no one left to tell Father. Oh! oh!" and then
+the crying began.
+
+But we were proud of Dora, and I am sorry we make fun of her sometimes,
+but it is difficult not to.
+
+We decided to signal the first person that passed, and we got Alice to
+take off her red flannel petticoat for a signal.
+
+The first people who came were two men in a dog-cart. We waved the
+signalising petticoat and they pulled up, and one got out and came up to
+the Mill.
+
+We explained about the lunatic and the wanting us to jump out of the
+windows.
+
+"Right oh!" cried the man to the one still in the cart; "got him." And
+the other hitched the horse to the gate and came over, and the other
+went to the house.
+
+"Come along down, young ladies and gentlemen," said the second man when
+he had been told. "He's as gentle as a lamb. He does not think it hurts
+to jump out of windows. He thinks it really is flying. He'll be like an
+angel when he sees the doctor."
+
+We asked if he had been mad before, because we had thought he might have
+suddenly gone so.
+
+"Certainly he has!" replied the man; "he has never been, so to say,
+himself since tumbling out of a flying-machine he went up in with a
+friend. He was an artist previous to that--an excellent one, I believe.
+But now he only draws objects with wings--and now and then he wants to
+make people fly--perfect strangers sometimes, like yourselves. Yes,
+miss, I am his attendant, and his pictures often amuse me by the
+half-hours together, poor gentleman."
+
+"How did he get away?" Alice asked.
+
+"Well, miss, the poor gentleman's brother got hurt and Mr.
+Sidney--that's him inside--seemed wonderfully put out and hung over the
+body in a way pitiful to see. But really he was extracting the cash from
+the sufferer's pockets. Then, while all of us were occupied with Mr.
+Eustace, Mr. Sidney just packs his portmanteau and out he goes by the
+back door. When we missed him we sent for Dr. Baker, but by the time he
+came it was too late to get here. Dr. Baker said at once he'd revert to
+his boyhood's home. And the doctor has proved correct."
+
+We had all come out of the Mill, and with this polite person we went to
+the gate, and saw the lunatic get into the carriage, very gentle and
+gay.
+
+"But, Doctor," Oswald said, "he did say he'd give nine pounds a week for
+the rooms. Oughtn't he to pay?"
+
+"You might have known he was mad to say that," said the doctor. "No. Why
+should he, when it's his own sister's house? Gee up!"
+
+And he left us.
+
+It was sad to find the gentleman was not a Higher Life after all, but
+only mad. And I was more sorry than ever for poor Miss Sandal. As Oswald
+pointed out to the girls they are much more blessed in their brothers
+than Miss Sandal is, and they ought to be more grateful than they are.
+
+
+
+
+_THE SMUGGLER'S REVENGE_
+
+
+THE days went on and Miss Sandal did not return. We went on being very
+sorry about Miss Sandal being so poor, and it was not our fault that
+when we tried to let the house in lodgings, the first lodger proved to
+be a lunatic of the deepest dye. Miss Sandal must have been a fairly
+decent sort, because she seems not to have written to Father about it.
+At any rate he didn't give it us in any of our letters, about our good
+intentions and their ending in a maniac.
+
+Oswald does not like giving up a thing just because it has once been
+muffed. The muffage of a plan is a thing that often happens at first to
+heroes--like Bruce and the spider, and other great characters. Beside,
+grown-ups always say--
+
+          "If at first you don't succeed,
+           Try, try, try again!"
+
+And if this is the rule for Euclid and rule-of-three and all the things
+you would rather not do, think how much more it must be the rule when
+what you are after is your own idea, and not just the rotten notion of
+that beast Euclid, or the unknown but equally unnecessary author who
+composed the multiplication table. So we often talked about what we
+could do to make Miss Sandal rich. It gave us something to jaw about
+when we happened to want to sit down for a bit, in between all the
+glorious wet sandy games that happen by the sea.
+
+Of course if we wanted real improving conversation we used to go up to
+the boat-house and talk to the coastguards. I do think coastguards are
+A1. They are just the same as sailors, having been so in their youth,
+and you can get at them to talk to, which is not the case with sailors
+who are at sea (or even in harbours) on ships. Even if you had the luck
+to get on to a man-of-war, you would very likely not be able to climb to
+the top-gallants to talk to the man there. Though in books the young
+hero always seems able to climb to the mast-head the moment he is told
+to. The coastguards told us tales of Southern ports, and of shipwrecks,
+and officers they had _not_ cottoned to, and messmates that they _had_,
+but when we asked them about smuggling they said there wasn't any to
+speak of nowadays.
+
+"I expect they think they oughtn't to talk about such dark crimes before
+innocent kids like us," said Dicky afterwards, and he grinned as he said
+it.
+
+"Yes," said Alice; "they don't know how much we know about smugglers,
+and bandits, and highwaymen, and burglars, and coiners," and she sighed,
+and we all felt sad to think that we had not now any chance to play at
+being these things.
+
+"We might play smugglers," said Oswald.
+
+But he did not speak hopefully. The worst of growing up is that you seem
+to want more and more to have a bit of the real thing in your games.
+Oswald could not now be content to play at bandits and just capture
+Albert next door, as once, in happier days, he was pleased and proud to
+do.
+
+It was not a coastguard that told us about the smugglers. It was a very
+old man that we met two or three miles along the beach. He was leaning
+against a boat that was wrong way up on the shingle, and smoking the
+strongest tobacco Oswald's young nose has ever met. I think it must have
+been Black Jack. We said, "How do you do?" and Alice said, "Do you mind
+if we sit down near you?"
+
+"Not me," replied the aged seafarer. We could see directly that he was
+this by his jersey and his sea-boots.
+
+The girls sat down on the beach, but we boys leaned against the boat
+like the seafaring one. We hoped he would join in conversation, but at
+first he seemed too proud. And there was something dignified about him,
+bearded and like a Viking, that made it hard for us to begin.
+
+At last he took his pipe out of his mouth and said--
+
+"Here's a precious Quakers' meeting! You didn't set down here just for
+to look at me?"
+
+"I'm sure you look very nice," Dora said.
+
+"Same to you, miss, I'm sure," was the polite reply.
+
+"We want to talk to you awfully," said Alice, "if you don't mind?"
+
+"Talk away," said he.
+
+And then, as so often happens, no one could think of anything to say.
+
+Suddenly Noël said, "_I_ think you look nice too, but I think you look
+as though you had a secret history. Have you?"
+
+"Not me," replied the Viking-looking stranger. "I ain't got no history,
+nor jog-graphy neither. They didn't give us that much schooling when I
+was a lad."
+
+"Oh!" replied Noël; "but what I really meant was, were you ever a pirate
+or anything?"
+
+"Never in all my born," replied the stranger, now thoroughly roused;
+"I'd scorn the haction. I was in the navy, I was, till I lost the sight
+of my eye, looking too close at gunpowder. Pirates is snakes, and they
+ought to be killed as such."
+
+We felt rather sorry, for though of course it is very wrong to be a
+pirate, it is very interesting too. Things are often like this. That is
+one of the reasons why it is so hard to be truly good.
+
+Dora was the only one who was pleased. She said--
+
+"Yes, pirates _are_ very wrong. And so are highwaymen and smugglers."
+
+"I don't know about highwaymen," the old man replied; "they went out
+afore my time, worse luck; but my father's great-uncle by the mother's
+side, he see one hanged once. A fine upstanding fellow he was, and made
+a speech while they was a-fitting of the rope. All the women was
+snivelling and sniffing and throwing bokays at him."
+
+"Did any of the bouquets reach him?" asked the interested Alice.
+
+"Not likely," said the old man. "Women can't never shy straight. But I
+shouldn't wonder but what them posies heartened the chap up a bit. An
+afterwards they was all a-fightin' to get a bit of the rope he was hung
+with, for luck."
+
+"Do tell us some more about him," said all of us but Dora.
+
+"I don't know no more about him. He was just hung--that's all. They was
+precious fond o' hangin' in them old far-away times."
+
+"Did you ever know a smuggler?" asked H.O.--"to speak to, I mean?"
+
+"Ah, that's tellings," said the old man, and he winked at us all.
+
+So then we instantly knew that the coastguards had been mistaken when
+they said there were no more smugglers now, and that this brave old man
+would not betray his comrades, even to friendly strangers like us. But
+of course he could not know exactly how friendly we were. So we told
+him.
+
+Oswald said--
+
+"We _love_ smugglers. We wouldn't even tell a word about it if you would
+only tell us."
+
+"There used to be lots of smuggling on these here coasts when my father
+was a boy," he said; "my own father's cousin, his father took to the
+smuggling, and he was a doin' so well at it, that what does he do, but
+goes and gets married, and the Preventives they goes and nabs him on his
+wedding-day, and walks him straight off from the church door, and claps
+him in Dover Jail."
+
+"Oh, his poor wife," said Alice, "whatever did she do?"
+
+"_She_ didn't do nothing," said the old man. "It's a woman's place not
+to do nothing till she's told to. He'd done so well at the smuggling,
+he'd saved enough by his honest toil to take a little public. So she
+sets there awaitin' and attendin' to customers--for well she knowed him,
+as he wasn't the chap to let a bit of a jail stand in the way of his
+station in life. Well, it was three weeks to a day after the wedding,
+there comes a dusty chap to the 'Peal of Bells' door. That was the sign
+over the public, you understand."
+
+We said we did, and breathlessly added, "Go on!"
+
+"A dusty chap he was; got a beard and a patch over one eye, and he come
+of a afternoon when there was no one about the place but her.
+
+"'Hullo, missis,' says he; 'got a room for a quiet chap?'
+
+"'I don't take in no men-folks,' says she; 'can't be bothered with 'em.'
+
+"'You'll be bothered with _me_, if I'm not mistaken,' says he.
+
+"'Bothered if I will,' says she.
+
+"'Bothered if you won't,' says he, and with that he ups with his hand
+and off comes the black patch, and he pulls off the beard and gives her
+a kiss and a smack on the shoulder. She always said she nearly died when
+she see it was her new-made bridegroom under the beard.
+
+"So she took her own man in as a lodger, and he went to work up at
+Upton's Farm with his beard on, and of nights he kept up the smuggling
+business. And for a year or more no one knowd as it was him. But they
+got him at last."
+
+"What became of him?" We all asked it.
+
+"He's dead," said the old man. "But, Lord love you, so's everybody as
+lived in them far-off old ancient days--all dead--Preventives too--and
+smugglers and gentry: all gone under the daisies."
+
+We felt quite sad. Oswald hastily asked if there wasn't any smuggling
+now.
+
+"Not hereabouts," the old man answered, rather quickly for him. "Don't
+you go for to think it. But I did know a young chap--quite young he is
+with blue eyes--up Sunderland way it was. He'd got a goodish bit o'
+baccy and stuff done up in a ole shirt. And as he was a-goin' up off of
+the beach a coastguard jumps out at him, and he says to himself, 'All u.
+p. this time,' says he. But out loud he says, 'Hullo, Jack, that you? I
+thought you was a tramp,' says he.
+
+"'What you got in that bundle?' says the coastguard.
+
+"'My washing,' says he, 'and a couple pairs of old boots.'
+
+"Then the coastguard he says, 'Shall I give you a lift with it?'
+thinking in himself the other chap wouldn't part if it was anything it
+oughtn't to be. But that young chap was too sharp. He says to himself,
+'If I don't he'll nail me, and if I do--well, there's just a chance.'
+
+"So he hands over the bundle, and the coastguard he thinks it must be
+all right, and he carries it all the way up to his mother's for him,
+feeling sorry for the mean suspicions he'd had about the poor old chap.
+But that didn't happen near here. No, no."
+
+I think Dora was going to say, "_Old_ chap--but I thought he was young
+with blue eyes?" but just at that minute a coastguard came along and
+ordered us quite harshly not to lean on the boat. He was quite
+disagreeable about it--how different from our own coastguards! He was
+from a different station to theirs. The old man got off very slowly.
+And all the time he was arranging his long legs so as to stand on them,
+the coastguard went on being disagreeable as hard as he could, in a loud
+voice.
+
+[Illustration: A COASTGUARD ORDERED US QUITE HARSHLY NOT TO LEAN ON THE
+BOAT.]
+
+When our old man had told the coastguard that no one ever lost anything
+by keeping a civil tongue in his head, we all went away feeling very
+angry.
+
+Alice took the old man's hand as we went back to the village, and asked
+him why the coastguard was so horrid.
+
+"They gets notions into their heads," replied the old man; "the most
+innocentest people they comes to think things about. It's along of there
+being no smuggling in these ere parts now. The coastguards ain't got
+nothing to do except think things about honest people."
+
+We parted from the old man very warmly, all shaking hands. He lives at a
+cottage not quite in the village, and keeps pigs. We did not say goodbye
+till we had seen all the pigs.
+
+I daresay we should not have gone on disliking that disagreeable
+coastguard so much if he had not come along one day when we were talking
+to our own coastguards, and asked why they allowed a pack of young
+shavers in the boat-house. We went away in silent dignity, but we did
+not forget, and when we were in bed that night Oswald said--
+
+"Don't you think it would be a good thing if the coastguards had
+something to do?"
+
+Dicky yawned and said he didn't know.
+
+"I should like to be a smuggler," said Oswald. "Oh, yes, go to sleep if
+you like; but I've got an idea, and if you'd rather be out of it I'll
+have Alice instead."
+
+"Fire away!" said Dicky, now full of attention, and leaning on his
+elbow.
+
+"Well, then," said Oswald, "I think we _might_ be smugglers."
+
+"We've played all those things so jolly often," said Dicky.
+
+"But I don't mean play," said Oswald. "I mean the real thing. Of course
+we should have to begin in quite a small way. But we should get on in
+time. And we might make quite a lot for poor Miss Sandal."
+
+"Things that you smuggle are expensive," said Dicky.
+
+"Well, we've got the chink the Indian uncle sent us on Saturday. I'm
+certain we could do it. We'd get some one to take us out at night in one
+of the fishing-boats--just tear across to France and buy a keg or a bale
+or something, and rush back."
+
+"Yes, and get nabbed and put in prison. Not me," said Dicky. "Besides,
+who'd take us?"
+
+"That old Viking man would," said Oswald; "but of course, if you funk
+it!"
+
+"I don't funk anything," said Dicky, "bar making an ape of myself. Keep
+your hair on, Oswald. Look here. Suppose we get a keg with nothing in
+it--or just water. We should have all the fun, and if we _were_ collared
+we should have the laugh of that coastguard brute."
+
+Oswald agreed, but he made it a condition that we should call it the keg
+of brandy, whatever was in it, and Dicky consented.
+
+Smuggling is a manly sport, and girls are not fitted for it by nature.
+At least Dora is not; and if we had told Alice she would have insisted
+on dressing as a boy and going too, and we knew Father would not like
+this. And we thought Noël and H.O. were too young to be smugglers with
+any hope of success. So Dicky and I kept the idea to ourselves.
+
+We went to see the Viking man the next day. It took us some time to make
+him understand what we wanted, but when he did understand he slapped his
+leg many times, and very hard, and declared that we were chips of the
+old block.
+
+"But I can't go for to let you," he said; "if you was nailed it's the
+stone jug, bless your hearts."
+
+So then we explained about the keg really having only water in, and he
+slapped his leg again harder than ever, so that it would really have
+been painful to any but the hardened leg of an old sea-dog. But the
+water made his refusals weaker, and at last he said--
+
+"Well, see here, Benenden, him as owns the _Mary Sarah_, he's often took
+out a youngster or two for the night's fishing, when their pa's and ma's
+hadn't no objection. You write your pa, and ask if you mayn't go for
+the night's fishing, or you get Mr. Charteris to write. He knows it's
+all right, and often done by visitors' kids, if boys. And if your pa
+says yes, I'll make it all right with Benenden. But mind, it's just a
+night's fishing. No need to name no kegs. That's just betwixt
+ourselves."
+
+So we did exactly as he said. Mr. Charteris is the clergyman. He was
+quite nice about it, and wrote for us, and Father said "Yes, but be very
+careful, and don't take the girls or the little ones."
+
+We showed the girls the letter, and that removed the trifling
+ill-feeling that had grown up through Dick and me having so much secret
+talk about kegs and not telling the others what was up.
+
+Of course we never breathed a word about kegs in public, and only to
+each other in bated breaths.
+
+What Father said about not taking the girls or the little ones of course
+settled any wild ideas Alice might have had of going as a cabin-girl.
+
+The old Viking man, now completely interested in our scheme, laid all
+the plans in the deepest-laid way you can think. He chose a very dark
+night--fortunately there was one just coming on. He chose the right time
+of the tide for starting, and just in the greyness of the evening when
+the sun is gone down, and the sea somehow looks wetter than at any other
+time, we put on our thick undershirts, and then our thickest suits and
+football jerseys over everything, because we had been told it would be
+very cold. Then we said goodbye to our sisters and the little ones, and
+it was exactly like a picture of the "Tar's Farewell," because we had
+bundles, with things to eat tied up in blue checked handkerchiefs, and
+we said goodbye to them at the gate, and they would kiss us.
+
+Dora said, "Goodbye, I _know_ you'll be drowned. I hope you'll enjoy
+yourselves, I'm sure!"
+
+Alice said, "I do think it's perfectly beastly. You might just as well
+have asked for me to go with you; or you might let us come and see you
+start."
+
+"Men must work, and women must weep," replied Oswald with grim sadness,
+"and the Viking said he wouldn't have us at all unless we could get on
+board in a concealed manner, like stowaways. He said a lot of others
+would want to go too if they saw us."
+
+We made our way to the beach, and we tried to conceal ourselves as much
+as possible, but several people did see us.
+
+When we got to the boat we found she was manned by our Viking and
+Benenden, and a boy with red hair, and they were running her down to the
+beach on rollers. Of course Dicky and I lent a hand, shoving at the
+stern of the boat when the men said, "Yo, ho! Heave ho, my merry boys
+all!" It wasn't exactly that that they said, but it meant the same
+thing, and we heaved like anything.
+
+It was a proud moment when her nose touched the water, and prouder still
+when only a small part of her stern remained on the beach and Mr.
+Benenden remarked--
+
+"All aboard!"
+
+The red boy gave a "leg up" to Dicky and me and clambered up himself.
+Then the two men gave the last shoves to the boat, already cradled
+almost entirely on the bosom of the deep, and as the very end of the
+keel grated off the pebbles into the water, they leaped for the gunwale
+and hung on it with their high sea-boots waving in the evening air.
+
+By the time they had brought their legs on board and coiled a rope or
+two, we chanced to look back, and already the beach seemed quite a long
+way off.
+
+We were really afloat. Our smuggling expedition was no longer a dream,
+but a real realness. Oswald felt almost too excited at first to be able
+to enjoy himself. I hope you will understand this and not think the
+author is trying to express, by roundabout means, that the sea did not
+agree with Oswald. This is not the case. He was perfectly well the whole
+time. It was Dicky who was not. But he said it was the smell of the
+cabin, and not the sea, and I am sure he thought what he said was true.
+
+In fact, that cabin was a bit stiff altogether, and was almost the means
+of upsetting even Oswald.
+
+It was about six feet square, with bunks and an oil stove, and heaps of
+old coats and tarpaulins and sou'-westers and things, and it smelt of
+tar, and fish, and paraffin-smoke, and machinery oil, and of rooms where
+no one ever opens the window.
+
+Oswald just put his nose in, and that was all. He had to go down later,
+when some fish was cooked and eaten, but by that time he had got what
+they call your sea-legs; but Oswald felt more as if he had got a
+sea-waistcoat, rather as if he had got rid of a land-waistcoat that was
+too heavy and too tight.
+
+I will not weary the reader by telling about how the nets are paid out
+and dragged in, or about the tumbling, shining heaps of fish that come
+up all alive over the side of the boat, and it tips up with their weight
+till you think it is going over. It was a very good catch that night,
+and Oswald is glad he saw it, for it was very glorious. Dicky was asleep
+in the cabin at the time and missed it. It was deemed best not to rouse
+him to fresh sufferings.
+
+It was getting latish, and Oswald, though thrilled in every marrow, was
+getting rather sleepy, when old Benenden said, "There she is!"
+
+Oswald could see nothing at first, but presently he saw a dark form on
+the smooth sea. It turned out to be another boat.
+
+She crept quietly up till she was alongside ours, and then a keg was
+hastily hoisted from her to us.
+
+A few words in low voices were exchanged. Oswald only heard--
+
+"Sure you ain't give us the wrong un?"
+
+And several people laughed hoarsely.
+
+On first going on board Oswald and Dicky had mentioned kegs, and had
+been ordered to "Stow that!" so that Oswald had begun to fear that after
+all it _was_ only a night's fishing, and that his glorious idea had been
+abandoned.
+
+But now he saw the keg his trembling heart was reassured.
+
+It got colder and colder. Dicky, in the cabin, was covered with several
+coats richly scented with fish, and Oswald was glad to accept an oilskin
+and sou'-wester, and to sit down on some spare nets.
+
+Until you are out on the sea at night you can never have any idea how
+big the world really is. The sky looks higher up, and the stars look
+further off, and even if you know it is only the English Channel, yet it
+is just as good for feeling small on as the most trackless Atlantic or
+Pacific. Even the fish help to show the largeness of the world, because
+you think of the deep deepness of the dark sea they come up out of in
+such rich profusion. The hold was full of fish after the second haul.
+
+Oswald sat leaning against the precious keg, and perhaps the bigness and
+quietness of everything had really rendered him unconscious. But he did
+not know he was asleep until the Viking man woke him up by kindly
+shaking him and saying--
+
+"Here, look alive! Was ye thinking to beach her with that there precious
+keg of yours all above board, and crying out to be broached?"
+
+So then Oswald roused himself, and the keg was rolled on to the fish
+where they lay filling the hold, and armfuls of fish thrown over it.
+
+"Is it _really_ only water?" asked Oswald. "There's an awfully odd
+smell." And indeed, in spite of the many different smells that are
+natural to a fishing-boat, Oswald began to notice a strong scent of
+railway refreshment-rooms.
+
+"In course it's only water," said the Viking. "What else would it be
+likely to be?" and Oswald thinks he winked in the dark.
+
+Perhaps Oswald fell asleep again after this. It was either that or deep
+thought. Any way, he was aroused from it by a bump, and a soft grating
+sound, and he thought at first the boat was being wrecked on a coral
+reef or something.
+
+But almost directly he knew that the boat had merely come ashore in the
+proper manner, so he jumped up.
+
+You cannot push a boat out of the water like you push it in. It has to
+be hauled up by a capstan. If you don't know what that is the author is
+unable to explain, but there is a picture of one.
+
+When the boat was hauled up we got out, and it was very odd to stretch
+your legs on land again. It felt shakier than being on sea. The
+red-haired boy went off to get a cart to take the shining fish to
+market, and Oswald decided to face the mixed-up smells of that cabin and
+wake Dicky.
+
+Dicky was not grateful to Oswald for his thoughtful kindness in letting
+him sleep through the perils of the deep and his own uncomfortableness.
+
+He said, "I do think you might have waked a chap. I've simply been out
+of everything."
+
+Oswald did not answer back. His is a proud and self-restraining nature.
+He just said--
+
+"Well, hurry up, now, and see them cart the fish away."
+
+So we hurried up, and as Oswald came out of the cabin he heard strange
+voices, and his heart leaped up like the persons who "behold a rainbow
+in the sky," for one of the voices was the voice of that inferior and
+unsailorlike coastguard from Longbeach, who had gone out of his way to
+be disagreeable to Oswald and his brothers and sisters on at least two
+occasions. And now Oswald felt almost sure that his disagreeablenesses,
+though not exactly curses, were coming home to roost just as though they
+had been.
+
+"You're missing your beauty sleep, Stokes," we heard our Viking remark.
+
+"I'm not missing anything else, though," replied the coastguard.
+
+"Like half a dozen mackerel for your breakfast?" inquired Mr. Benenden
+in kindly accents.
+
+"I've no stomach for fish, thank you all the same," replied Mr. Stokes
+coldly.
+
+He walked up and down on the beach, clapping his arms to keep himself
+warm.
+
+"Going to see us unload her?" asked Mr. Benenden.
+
+"If it's all the same to you," answered the disagreeable coastguard.
+
+He had to wait a long time, for the cart did not come, and did not come,
+and kept on not coming for ages and ages. When it did the men unloaded
+the boat, carrying the fish by basketfuls to the cart.
+
+Every one played up jolly well. They took the fish from the side of the
+hold where the keg wasn't till there was quite a deep hole there, and
+the other side, where the keg really was, looked like a mountain in
+comparison.
+
+This could be plainly seen by the detested coastguard, and by three of
+his companions who had now joined him.
+
+It was beginning to be light, not daylight, but a sort of ghost-light
+that you could hardly believe was the beginning of sunshine, and the sky
+being blue again instead of black.
+
+The hated coastguard got impatient. He said--
+
+"You'd best own up. It'll be the better for you. It's bound to come out,
+along of the fish. I know it's there. We've had private information up
+at the station. The game's up this time, so don't you make no mistake."
+
+Mr. Benenden and the Viking and the boy looked at each other.
+
+"An' what might your precious private information have been about?"
+asked Mr. Benenden.
+
+"Brandy," replied the coastguard Stokes, and he went and got on to the
+gunwale. "And what's more, I can smell it from here."
+
+Oswald and Dicky drew near, and the refreshment-room smell was stronger
+than ever. And a brown corner of the keg was peeping out.
+
+"There you are!" cried the Loathed One. "Let's have that gentleman out,
+if you please, and then you'll all just come alonger me."
+
+Remarking, with a shrug of the shoulders, that he supposed it was all
+up, our Viking scattered the fish that hid the barrel, and hoisted it
+out from its scaly bed.
+
+"That's about the size of it," said the coastguard we did not like.
+"Where's the rest?"
+
+"That's all," said Mr. Benenden. "We're poor men, and we has to act
+according to our means."
+
+"We'll see the boat clear to her last timber, if you've no objections,"
+said the Detestable One.
+
+I could see that our gallant crew were prepared to go through with the
+business. More and more of the coastguards were collecting, and I
+understood that what the crew wanted was to go up to the coastguard
+station with that keg of pretending brandy, and involve the whole of the
+coastguards of Longbeach in one complete and perfect sell.
+
+But Dicky was sick of the entire business. He really has not the proper
+soul for adventures, and what soul he has had been damped by what he had
+gone through.
+
+So he said, "Look here, there's nothing in that keg but water."
+
+Oswald could have kicked him, though he is his brother.
+
+"Huh!" replied the Unloved One, "d'you think I haven't got a nose? Why,
+it's oozing out of the bunghole now as strong as Samson."
+
+"Open it and see," said Dicky, disregarding Oswald's whispered
+instructions to him to shut up. "It _is_ water."
+
+"What do you suppose I suppose you want to get water from the other side
+for, you young duffer!" replied the brutal official. "There's plenty
+water and to spare this side."
+
+"It's--it's _French_ water," replied Dicky madly; "it's ours, my
+brother's and mine. We asked these sailors to get it for us."
+
+"Sailors, indeed!" said the hateful coastguard. "You come along with
+me."
+
+And our Viking said he was something or othered. But Benenden whispered
+to him in a low voice that it was all right--time was up. No one heard
+this but me and the Viking.
+
+"I want to go home," said Dicky. "I don't want to come along with you."
+
+"What did you want water for?" was asked. "To try it?"
+
+"To stand you a drink next time you ordered us off your beastly boat,"
+said Dicky. And Oswald rejoiced to hear the roar of laughter that
+responded to this fortunate piece of cheek.
+
+I suppose Dicky's face was so angel-like, innocent-looking, like
+stowaways in books, that they _had_ to believe him. Oswald told him so
+afterwards, and Dicky hit out.
+
+Any way, the keg was broached, and sure enough it was water, and
+sea-water at that, as the Unamiable One said when he had tasted it out
+of a tin cup, for nothing else would convince him. "But I smell brandy
+still," he said, wiping his mouth after the sea-water.
+
+Our Viking slowly drew a good-sized flat labelled bottle out of the
+front of his jersey.
+
+"From the 'Old Ship,'" he said gently. "I may have spilt a drop or two
+here or there over the keg, my hand not being very steady, as is well
+known, owing to spells of marsh fever as comes over me every six weeks
+to the day."
+
+The coastguard that we never could bear said, "Marsh fever be something
+or othered," and his comrades said the same. But they all blamed _him_,
+and we were glad.
+
+We went home sleepy, but rejoicing. The whole thing was as complete a
+sell as ever I wish to see.
+
+[Illustration: SURE ENOUGH IT WAS SEA-WATER, AS THE UNAMIABLE ONE SAID
+WHEN HE HAD TASTED IT.]
+
+Of course we told our own dear and respected Lymchurch coastguards, and
+I think they may be trusted not to let it down on the Longbeach
+coastguards for many a good day. If their memories get bad I think there
+will always be plenty of people along that coast to remind them!
+
+So _that's_ all right.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When we had told the girls all, and borne their reproaches for not
+telling them before, we decided to give the Viking five bob for the game
+way he had played up.
+
+So we did. He would not take it at first, but when we said, "Do--you
+might buy a pig with it, and call it Stokes after that coastguard," he
+could no longer resist, and accepted our friendly gift.
+
+We talked with him for a bit, and when we were going we thanked him for
+being so jolly, and helping us to plant out the repulsive coastguard so
+thoroughly.
+
+Then he said, "Don't mention it. Did you tell your little gells what you
+was up to?"
+
+"No," said Oswald, "not till afterwards."
+
+"Then you _can_ hold your tongues. Well, since you've acted so handsome
+about that there pig, what's to be named for Stokes, I don't mind if I
+tells you something. Only mum's the word."
+
+We said we were quite sure it was.
+
+"Well, then," said he, leaning over the pig-stye wall, and rubbing the
+spotted pig's back with his stick. "It's an ill wind that blows no good
+to nobody. You see, that night there was a little bird went an'
+whispered to 'em up at Longbeach about our little bit of a keg. So when
+we landed they was there."
+
+"Of course," said Oswald.
+
+"Well, if they was there they couldn't be somewheres else, could they?"
+
+We owned they could not.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder," he went on, "but what a bit of a cargo was run
+that night further up the beach: something as _wasn't_ sea-water. I
+don't say it was so, mind--and mind you don't go for to say it."
+
+Then we understood that there is a little smuggling done still, and that
+we had helped in it, though quite without knowing.
+
+We were jolly glad. Afterwards, when we had had that talk with Father,
+when he told us that the laws are made by the English people, and it is
+dishonourable for an Englishman not to stick to them, we saw that
+smuggling must be wrong.
+
+But we have never been able to feel really sorry. I do not know why this
+is.
+
+
+
+
+_ZAÏDA, THE MYSTERIOUS PROPHETESS OF THE GOLDEN ORIENT_
+
+
+THIS is the story of how we were gipsies and wandering minstrels. And,
+like everything else we did about that time, it was done to make money
+for Miss Sandal, whose poorness kept on, making our kind hearts ache.
+
+It is rather difficult to get up any good game in a house like Miss
+Sandal's, where there is nothing lying about, except your own things,
+and where everything is so neat and necessary. Your own clothes are
+seldom interesting, and even if you change hats with your sisters it is
+not a complete disguise.
+
+The idea of being gipsies was due to Alice. She had not at all liked
+being entirely out of the smuggling affray, though Oswald explained to
+her that it was her own fault for having been born a girl. And, of
+course, after the event, Dicky and I had some things to talk about that
+the girls hadn't, and we had a couple of wet days.
+
+You have no idea how dull you can be in a house like that, unless you
+happen to know the sort of house I mean. A house that is meant for
+plain living and high thinking, like Miss Sandal told us, may be very
+nice for the high thinkers, but if you are not accustomed to thinking
+high there is only the plain living left, and it is like boiled rice for
+every meal to any young mind, however much beef and Yorkshire there may
+be for the young insides. Mrs. Beale saw to our having plenty of nice
+things to eat, but, alas! it is not always dinner-time, and in between
+meals the cold rice-pudding feeling is very chilling. Of course we had
+the splendid drawings of winged things made by our Flying Lodger, but
+you cannot look at pictures all day long, however many coloured chalks
+they are drawn with, and however fond you may be of them.
+
+Miss Sandal's was the kind of house that makes you wander all round it
+and say, "What shall we do next?" And when it rains the little ones get
+cross.
+
+It was the second wet day when we were wandering round the house to the
+sad music of our boots on the clean, bare boards that Alice said--
+
+"Mrs. Beale has got a book at her house called 'Napoleon's book of
+Fate.' You might ask her to let you go and get it, Oswald. She likes you
+best."
+
+Oswald is as modest as any one I know, but the truth is the truth.
+
+"We could tell our fortunes, and read the dark future," Alice went on.
+"It would be better than high thinking without anything particular to
+think about."
+
+So Oswald went down to Mrs. Beale and said--
+
+"I say, Bealie dear, you've got a book up at your place. I wish you'd
+lend it to us to read."
+
+"If it's the Holy Book you mean, sir," replied Mrs. Beale, going on with
+peeling the potatoes that were to be a radiant vision later on, all
+brown and crisp in company with a leg of mutton--"if it's the Holy Book
+you want there's one up on Miss Sandal's chest of drawerses."
+
+"I know," said Oswald. He knew every book in the house. The backs of
+them were beautiful--leather and gold--but inside they were like whited
+sepulchres, full of poetry and improving reading. "No--we didn't want
+that book just now. It is a book called 'Napoleon's book of Fate.' Would
+you mind if I ran up to your place and got it?"
+
+"There's no one at home," said Mrs. Beale; "wait a bit till I go along
+to the bakus with the meat, and I'll fetch it along."
+
+"You might let me go," said Oswald, whose high spirit is always
+ill-attuned to waiting a bit. "I wouldn't touch anything else, and I
+know where you keep the key."
+
+"There's precious little as ye don't know, it seems to me," said Mrs.
+Beale. "There, run along do. It's on top of the mantelshelf alongside
+the picture tea-tin. It's a red book. Don't go taking the 'Wesleyan
+Conference Reports' by mistake, the two is both together on the mantel."
+
+[Illustration: "I SAY, BEALIE DEAR, YOU'VE GOT A BOOK UP AT YOUR
+PLACE."]
+
+Oswald in his macker splashed through the mud to Mrs. Beale's, found the
+key under the loose tile behind the water-butt, and got the book without
+adventure. He had promised not to touch anything else, so he could not
+make even the gentlest booby-trap as a little surprise for Mrs. Beale
+when she got back.
+
+And most of that day we were telling our fortunes by the ingenious means
+invented by the great Emperor, or by cards, which it is hard to remember
+the rules for, or by our dreams. The only blights were that the others
+all wanted to have the book all the time, and that Noël's dreams were so
+long and mixed that we got tired of hearing about them before he did.
+But he said he was quite sure he had dreamed every single bit of every
+one of them. And the author hopes this was the truth.
+
+We all went to bed hoping we should dream something that we could look
+up in the dream book, but none of us did.
+
+And in the morning it was still raining and Alice said--
+
+"Look here, if it ever clears up again let's dress up and be gipsies. We
+can go about in the distant villages telling people's fortunes. If
+you'll let me have the book all to-day I can learn up quite enough to
+tell them mysteriously and darkly. And gipsies always get their hands
+crossed with silver."
+
+Dicky said that was one way of keeping the book to herself, but Oswald
+said--
+
+"Let her try. She shall have it for an hour, and then we'll have an
+exam. to see how much she knows."
+
+This was done, but while she was swatting the thing up with her fingers
+in her ears we began to talk about how gipsies should be dressed.
+
+And when we all went out of the room to see if we could find anything in
+that tidy house to dress up in, she came after us to see what was up. So
+there was no exam.
+
+We peeped into the cupboards and drawers in Miss Sandal's room, but
+everything was grey or brown, not at all the sort of thing to dress up
+for children of the Sunny South in. The plain living was shown in all
+her clothes; and besides, grey shows every little spot you may happen to
+get on it.
+
+We were almost in despair. We looked in all the drawers in all the
+rooms, but found only sheets and tablecloths and more grey and brown
+clothing.
+
+We tried the attic, with fainting hearts. Servants' clothes are always
+good for dressing-up with; they have so many different colours. But Miss
+Sandal had no servant. Still, she might have had one once, and the
+servant might have left something behind her. Dora suggested this and
+added--
+
+"If you don't find anything in the attic you'll know it's Fate, and
+you're not to do it. Besides, I'm almost sure you can be put in prison
+for telling fortunes."
+
+"Not if you're a gipsy you can't," said Noël; "they have licences to
+tell fortunes, I believe, and judges can't do anything to them."
+
+So we went up to the attic. And it was as bare and tidy as the rest of
+the house. But there were some boxes and we looked in them. The smallest
+was full of old letters, so we shut it again at once. Another had books
+in it, and the last had a clean towel spread over what was inside. So we
+took off the towel, and then every one said "Oh!"
+
+In right on the top was a scarlet thing, embroidered heavily with gold.
+It proved, on unfolding, to be a sort of coat, like a Chinaman's. We
+lifted it out and laid it on the towel on the floor. And then the full
+glories of that box were revealed. There were cloaks and dresses and
+skirts and scarves, of all the colours of a well-chosen rainbow, and all
+made of the most beautiful silks and stuffs, with things worked on them
+with silk, as well as chains of beads and many lovely ornaments. We
+think Miss Sandal must have been very fond of pretty things when she was
+young, or when she was better off.
+
+"Well, there won't be any gipsies near by to come up to _us_," said
+Oswald joyously.
+
+"Do you think we ought to take them, without asking?" said Dora.
+
+"Of course not," said Oswald witheringly; "we ought to write to her and
+say, 'Please, Miss Sandal, we know how poor you are, and may we borrow
+your things to be gipsies in so as we get money for you---- All right!
+You go and write the letter, Dora."
+
+"I only just asked," said Dora.
+
+We tried the things on. Some of them were so ladylike that they were no
+good--evening dresses, and things like that. But there were enough
+useful things to go round. Oswald, in white shirt and flannel
+knee-breeches, tied a brick-coloured silk scarf round his middle part,
+and a green one round his head for a turban. The turban was fastened
+with a sparkling brooch with pink stones in it. He looked like a Moorish
+toreador. Dicky had the scarlet and gold coat, which was the right
+length when Dora had run a tuck in it.
+
+Alice had a blue skirt with embroidery of peacock's feathers on it, and
+a gold and black jacket very short with no sleeves, and a yellow silk
+handkerchief on her head like Italian peasants, and another handkie
+round her neck. Dora's skirt was green and her handkerchiefs purple and
+pink.
+
+Noël insisted on having his two scarves, one green and one yellow,
+twisted on his legs like putties, and a red scarf wound round his
+middle-part, and he stuck a long ostrich feather in his own bicycle cap
+and said he was a troubadour bard.
+
+H.O. was able to wear a lady's blouse of mouse-coloured silk,
+embroidered with poppies. It came down to his knees and a jewelled belt
+kept it in place.
+
+We made up our costumes into bundles, and Alice thoughtfully bought a
+pennyworth of pins. Of course it was idle to suppose that we could go
+through the village in our gipsy clothes without exciting _some_ remark.
+
+The more we thought of it the more it seemed as if it would be a good
+thing to get some way from our village before we began our gipsy career.
+
+The woman at the sweet shop where Alice got the pins has a donkey and
+cart, and for two shillings she consented to lend us this, so that some
+of us could walk while some of us would always be resting in the cart.
+
+And next morning the weather was bright and blue as ever, and we
+started. We were beautifully clean, but all our hairs had been arranged
+with the brush solely, because at the last moment nobody could find it's
+comb. Mrs. Beale had packed up a jolly sandwichy and apply lunch for us.
+We told her we were going to gather bluebells in the woods, and of
+course we meant to do that too.
+
+The donkey-cart drew up at the door and we started. It was found
+impossible to get every one into the cart at once, so we agreed to cast
+lots for who should run behind, and to take it in turns, mile and mile.
+The lot fell on Dora and H.O., but there was precious little running
+about it. Anything slower than that donkey Oswald has never known, and
+when it came to passing its own front door the donkey simply would not.
+It ended in Oswald getting down and going to the animal's head, and
+having it out with him, man to man. The donkey was small, but of
+enormous strength. He set all his four feet firm and leant back--and
+Oswald set his two feet firm and leant back--so that Oswald and the
+front part of the donkey formed an angry and contentious letter V. And
+Oswald gazed in the donkey's eyes in a dauntless manner, and the donkey
+looked at Oswald as though it thought he was hay or thistles.
+
+Alice beat the donkey from the cart with a stick that had been given us
+for the purpose. The rest shouted. But all was in vain. And four people
+in a motor car stopped it to see the heroic struggle, and laughed till I
+thought they would have upset their hateful motor. However, it was all
+for the best, though Oswald did not see it at the time. When they had
+had enough of laughing they started their machine again, and the noise
+it made penetrated the donkey's dull intelligence, and he started off
+without a word--I mean without any warning, and Oswald has only just
+time to throw himself clear of the wheels before he fell on the ground
+and rolled over, biting the dust.
+
+The motor car people behaved as you would expect. But accidents happen
+even to motor cars, when people laugh too long and too unfeelingly.
+The driver turned round to laugh, and the motor instantly took the bit
+between its teeth and bolted into the stone wall of the churchyard. No
+one was hurt except the motor, but that had to spend the day at the
+blacksmith's, we heard afterwards. Thus was the outraged Oswald avenged
+by Fate.
+
+[Illustration: ALICE BEAT THE DONKEY FROM THE CART. THE REST SHOUTED.]
+
+He was not hurt either--though much the motor people would have cared if
+he had been--and he caught up with the others at the end of the village,
+for the donkey's pace had been too good to last, and the triumphal
+progress was resumed.
+
+It was some time before we found a wood sufficiently lurking-looking for
+our secret purposes. There are no woods close to the village. But at
+last, up by Bonnington, we found one, and tying our noble steed to the
+sign-post that says how many miles it is to Ashford, we cast a hasty
+glance round, and finding no one in sight disappeared in the wood with
+our bundles.
+
+We went in just ordinary creatures. We came out gipsies of the deepest
+dye, for we had got a pennorth of walnut stain from Mr. Jameson the
+builder, and mixed with water--the water we had brought in a
+medicine-bottle--it was a prime disguise. And we knew it would wash off,
+unlike the Condy's fluid we once stained ourselves with during a
+never-to-be-forgotten game of Jungle-Book.
+
+We had put on all the glorious things we had bagged from Miss Sandal's
+attic treasures, but still Alice had a small bundle unopened.
+
+"What's that?" Dora asked.
+
+"I meant to keep it as a reserve force in case the fortune-telling
+didn't turn out all our fancy painted it," said Alice; "but I don't mind
+telling you now."
+
+She opened the bundle, and there was a tambourine, some black lace, a
+packet of cigarette papers, and our missing combs.
+
+"What ever on earth----" Dicky was beginning, but Oswald saw it all. He
+has a wonderfully keen nose. And he said--
+
+"Bully for you, Alice. I wish I'd thought it myself."
+
+Alice was much pleased by this handsome speech.
+
+"Yes," she said; "perhaps really it would be best to begin with it. It
+would attract the public's attention, and then we could tell the
+fortunes. You see," she kindly explained to Dicky and H.O. and Dora, who
+had not seen it yet--though Noël had, almost as soon as I did--"you see,
+we'll all play on the combs with the veils over our faces, so that no
+one can see what our instruments are. Why, they might be mouth-organs
+for anything any one will know, or some costly instruments from the
+far-off East, like they play to sultans in zenanas. Let's just try a
+tune or two before we go on, to be sure that all the combs work right.
+Dora's has such big teeth, I shouldn't wonder if it wouldn't act at
+all."
+
+So we all papered our combs and did "Heroes," but that sounded awful.
+"The Girl I Left Behind Me" went better, and so did "Bonnie Dundee." But
+we thought "See the Conquering" or "The Death of Nelson" would be the
+best to begin with.
+
+It was beastly hot doing it under the veils, but when Oswald had done
+one tune without the veil to see how the others looked he could not help
+owning that the veils did give a hidden mystery that was a stranger to
+simple combs.
+
+We were all a bit puffed when we had played for awhile, so we decided
+that as the donkey seemed calm and was eating grass and resting, we
+might as well follow his example.
+
+"We ought not to be too proud to take pattern by the brute creation,"
+said Dora.
+
+So we had our lunch in the wood. We lighted a little fire of sticks and
+fir-cones, so as to be as gipsyish as we could, and we sat round the
+fire. We made a charming picture in our bright clothes, among what would
+have been our native surroundings if we had been real gipsies, and we
+knew how nice we looked, and stayed there though the smoke got in our
+eyes, and everything we ate tasted of it.
+
+The woods were a little damp, and that was why the fire smoked so. There
+were the jackets we had cast off when we dressed up, to sit on, and
+there was a horse-cloth in the cart intended for the donkey's wear, but
+we decided that our need was greater than its, so we took the blanket
+to recline on.
+
+It was as jolly a lunch as ever I remember, and we lingered over that
+and looking romantic till we could not bear the smoke any more.
+
+Then we got a lot of bluebells and we trampled out the fire most
+carefully, because we know about not setting woods and places alight,
+rolled up our clothes in bundles, and went out of the shadowy woodland
+into the bright sunlight, as sparkling looking a crew of gipsies as any
+one need wish for.
+
+Last time we had seen the road it had been quite white and bare of
+persons walking on it, but now there were several. And not only walkers,
+but people in carts. And some carriages passed us too.
+
+Every one stared at us, but they did not seem so astonished as we had
+every right to expect, and though interested they were not rude, and
+this is very rare among English people--and not only poor people
+either--when they see anything at all out of the way.
+
+We asked one man, who was very Sunday-best indeed in black clothes and a
+blue tie, where every one was going, for every one was going the same
+way, and every one looked as if it was going to church, which was
+unlikely, it being but Thursday. He said--
+
+"Same place wot you're going to I expect."
+
+And when we said where was that we were requested by him to get along
+with us. Which we did.
+
+An old woman in the heaviest bonnet I have ever seen and the highest--it
+was like a black church--revealed the secret to us, and we learned that
+there was a Primrose _fête_ going on in Sir Willoughby Blockson's
+grounds.
+
+We instantly decided to go to the _fête_.
+
+"I've been to a Primrose _fête_, and so have you, Dora," Oswald
+remarked, "and people are so dull at them, they'd gladly give gold to
+see the dark future. And, besides, the villages will be unpopulated, and
+no one at home but idiots and babies and their keepers."
+
+So we went to the _fête_.
+
+The people got thicker and thicker, and when we got to Sir Willoughby's
+lodge gates, which have sprawling lions on the gate-posts, we were told
+to take the donkey cart round to the stable-yard.
+
+This we did, and proud was the moment when a stiff groom had to bend his
+proud stomach to go to the head of Bates's donkey.
+
+"This is something like," said Alice, and Noël added:
+
+"The foreign princes are well received at this palace."
+
+"We aren't princes, we're gipsies," said Dora, tucking his scarf in. It
+would keep on getting loose.
+
+"There _are_ gipsy princes, though," said Noël, "because there are gipsy
+kings."
+
+"You aren't always a prince first," said Dora; "don't wriggle so or I
+can't fix you. Sometimes being made a king just happens to some one who
+isn't any one in particular."
+
+"I don't think so," said Noël; "you have to be a prince before you're a
+king, just as you have to be a kitten before you're a cat, or a puppy
+before you're a dog, or a worm before you're a serpent, or----"
+
+"What about the King of Sweden?" Dora was beginning, when a very nice
+tall, thin man, with white flowers in his buttonhole like for a wedding,
+came strolling up and said--
+
+"And whose show is this? Eh, what?"
+
+We said it was ours.
+
+"Are you expected?" he asked.
+
+We said we thought not, but we hoped he didn't mind.
+
+"What are you? Acrobats? Tight-rope? That's a ripping Burmese coat
+you've got there."
+
+"Yes, it is. No we aren't," said Alice, with dignity. "I am Zaïda, the
+mysterious prophetess of the golden Orient, and the others are
+mysterious too, but we haven't fixed on their names yet."
+
+"By jove!" said the gentleman; "but who are you really?"
+
+"Our names are our secret," said Oswald, with dignity, but Alice said,
+"Oh, but we don't mind telling _you_, because I'm sure you're nice.
+We're really the Bastables, and we want to get some money for some one
+we know that's rather poor--of course I can't tell you _her_ name. And
+we've learnt how to tell fortunes--really we have. Do you think they'll
+let us tell them at the _fête_. People are often dull at _fêtes_, aren't
+they?"
+
+"By Jove!" said the gentleman again--"by Jove, they are!"
+
+He plunged for a moment in deep reflection.
+
+"We've got co--musical instruments," said Noël; "shall we play to you a
+little?"
+
+"Not here," said the gentleman; "follow me."
+
+He led the way by the backs of shrubberies to an old summer-house, and
+we asked him to wait outside.
+
+Then we put on our veils and tuned up. "See, see the conquering----"
+
+But he did not let us finish the tune; he burst in upon us, crying--
+
+"Ripping--oh, ripping! And now tell me my fortune."
+
+Alice took off her veil and looked at his hand.
+
+"You will travel in distant lands," she said; "you will have great
+wealth and honour; you will marry a beautiful lady--a very fine woman,
+it says in the book, but I think a beautiful lady sounds nicer, don't
+you?"
+
+[Illustration: "WE'VE GOT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS," SAID NOËL.]
+
+"Much; but I shouldn't mention the book when you're telling the
+fortune."
+
+"I wouldn't, except to you," said Alice, "and she'll have lots of money
+and a very sweet disposition. Trials and troubles beset your path, but
+do but be brave and fearless and you will overcome all your enemies.
+Beware of a dark woman--most likely a widow."
+
+"I will," said he, for Alice had stopped for breath. "Is that all?"
+
+"No. Beware of a dark woman and shun the society of drunkards and
+gamblers. Be very cautious in your choice of acquaintances, or you will
+make a false friend who will be your ruin. That's all, except that you
+will be married very soon and live to a green old age with the beloved
+wife of your bosom, and have twelve sons and----"
+
+"Stop, stop!" said the gentleman; "twelve sons are as many as I can
+bring up handsomely on my present income. Now, look here. You did that
+jolly well, only go slower, and pretend to look for things in the hand
+before you say them. Everything's free at the _fête_, so you'll get no
+money for your fortune-telling."
+
+Gloom was on each young brow.
+
+"It's like this," he went on, "there is a lady fortune-teller in a tent
+in the park."
+
+"Then we may as well get along home," said Dicky.
+
+"Not at all," said our new friend, for such he was now about to prove
+himself to be; "that lady does not want to tell fortunes to-day. She has
+a headache. Now, if you'll really stick to it, and tell the people's
+fortunes as well as you told mine, I'll stand you--let's see--two quid
+for the afternoon. Will that do? What?"
+
+We said we should just jolly well think it would.
+
+"I've got some Eau de Cologne in a medicine-bottle," Dora said; "my
+brother Noël has headaches sometimes, but I think he's going to be all
+right to-day. Do take it, it will do the lady's head good."
+
+"I'll take care of her head," he said, laughing, but he took the bottle
+and said, "Thank you."
+
+Then he told us to stay where we were while he made final arrangements,
+and we were left with palpitating breasts to look wildly through the
+Book of Fate, so as to have the things ready. But it turned out to be
+time thrown away, for when he came back he said to Alice--
+
+"It'll have to be only you and your sister, please, for I see they've
+stuck up a card with 'Esmeralda, the gipsy Princess, reads the hand and
+foretells the future' on it. So you boys will have to be mum. You can be
+attendants--mutes, by jove!--yes that's it. And, I say, kiddies, you
+will jolly well play up, won't you? Don't stand any cheek. Stick it on,
+you know. I can't tell you how important it is about----about the lady's
+headache."
+
+"I should think this would be a cool place for a headache to be quiet
+in," said Dora; and it was, for it was quite hidden in the shrubbery and
+no path to it.
+
+"By Jove!" he remarked yet once again, "so it would. You're right!"
+
+He led us out of the shrubbery and across the park. There were people
+dotted all about and they stared, but they touched their hats to the
+gentleman, and he returned their salute with stern politeness.
+
+Inside the tent with "Esmeralda, &c.," outside there was a lady in a hat
+and dust-cloak. But we could see her spangles under the cloak.
+
+"Now," said the gentleman to Dicky, "you stand at the door and let
+people in, one at a time. You others can just play a few bars on your
+instruments for each new person--only a very little, because you do get
+out of tune, though that's barbaric certainly. Now, here's the two quid.
+And you stick to the show till five; you'll hear the stable clock
+chime."
+
+The lady was very pale with black marks under her eyes, and her eyes
+looked red, Oswald thought. She seemed about to speak, but the gentleman
+said--
+
+"Do trust me, Ella. I'll explain everything directly. Just go to the old
+summer-house--_you_ know--and I'll be there directly. I'll take a couple
+of pegs out of the back and you can slip away among the trees. Hold your
+cloak close over your gown. Goodbye, kiddies. Stay, give me your
+address, and I'll write and tell you if my fortune comes true."
+
+So he shook hands with us and went. And we did stick to it, though it is
+far less fun than you would think telling fortunes all the afternoon in
+a stuffy tent, while outside you know there are things to eat and people
+enjoying themselves. But there were the two gold quid, and we were
+determined to earn them. It is very hard to tell a different fortune for
+each person, and there were a great many. The girls took it in turns,
+and Oswald wonders why their hairs did not go gray. Though of course it
+was much better fun for them than for us, because we had just to be
+mutes when we weren't playing on the combs.
+
+The people we told fortunes to at first laughed rather, and said we were
+too young to know anything. But Oswald said in a hollow voice that we
+were as old as the Pyramids, and after that Alice took the tucks out of
+Dicky's red coat and put it on and turbaned herself, and looked much
+older.
+
+The stable clock had chimed the quarter to five some little time, when
+an elderly gentleman with whiskers, who afterwards proved to be Sir
+Willoughby, burst into the tent.
+
+"Where's Miss Blockson?" he said, and we answered truthfully that we did
+not know.
+
+"How long have you been here?" he furiously asked.
+
+"Ever since two," said Alice wearily.
+
+He said a word that I should have thought a baronet would have been
+above using.
+
+"Who brought you here?"
+
+We described the gentleman who had done this, and again the baronet said
+things we should never be allowed to say. "That confounded Carew!" he
+added, with more words.
+
+"Is anything wrong?" asked Dora--"can we do anything? We'll stay on
+longer if you like--if you can't find the lady who was doing Esmeralda
+before we came."
+
+"I'm not very likely to find her," he said ferociously. "Stay longer
+indeed! Get away out of my sight before I have you locked up for
+vagrants and vagabonds."
+
+He left the scene in bounding and mad fury. We thought it best to do as
+he said, and went round the back way to the stables so as to avoid
+exciting his ungoverned rage by meeting him again. We found our cart and
+went home. We had got two quid and something to talk about.
+
+But none of us--not even Oswald the discerning--understood exactly what
+we had been mixed up in, till the pink satin box with three large
+bottles of A1 scent in it, and postmarks of foreign lands, came to Dora.
+And there was a letter. It said--
+
+"My dear Gipsies,--I beg to return the Eau de Cologne you so kindly lent
+me. The lady did use a little of it, but I found that foreign travel was
+what she really wanted to make her quite happy. So we caught the 4.15
+to town, and now we are married, and intend to live to a green old age,
+&c., as you foretold. But for your help my fortune couldn't have come
+true, because my wife's father, Sir Willoughby, thought I was not rich
+enough to marry. But you see I was. And my wife and I both thank you
+heartily for your kind help. I hope it was not an awful swat. I had to
+say five because of the train. Good luck to you, and thanks awfully.
+
+                                    "Yours faithfully,
+                                              "CARISBROOK CAREW."
+
+If Oswald had known beforehand we should never have made that two quid
+for Miss Sandal.
+
+For Oswald does not approve of marriages and would never, if he knew it,
+be the means of assisting one to occur.
+
+
+
+
+_THE LADY AND THE LICENSE; OR, FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND_
+
+
+          "MY DEAR KIDDIES,--Miss Sandal's married sister
+          has just come home from Australia, and she feels
+          very tired. No wonder, you will say, after such a
+          long journey. So she is going to Lymchurch to
+          rest. Now I want you all to be very quiet, because
+          when you are in your usual form you aren't exactly
+          restful, are you? If this weather lasts you will
+          be able to be out most of the time, and when you
+          are indoors for goodness' sake control your lungs
+          and your boots, especially H.O.'s. Mrs. Bax has
+          travelled about a good deal, and once was nearly
+          eaten by cannibals. But I hope you won't bother
+          her to tell you stories. She is coming on Friday.
+          I am glad to hear from Alice's letter that you
+          enjoyed the Primrose Fête. Tell Noël that
+          'poetticle' is not the usual way of spelling the
+          word he wants. I send you ten shillings for
+          pocket-money, and again implore you to let Mrs.
+          Bax have a little rest and peace.
+
+                                          "Your loving
+                                                    "FATHER."
+
+          "PS.--If you want anything sent down, tell me, and
+          I will get Mrs. Bax to bring it. I met your friend
+          Mr. Red House the other day at lunch."
+
+When the letter had been read aloud, and we had each read it to
+ourselves, a sad silence took place.
+
+Dicky was the first to speak.
+
+"It _is_ rather beastly, I grant you," he said, "but it might be worse."
+
+"I don't see how," said H.O. "I do wish Father would jolly well learn to
+leave my boots alone."
+
+"It might be worse, I tell you," said Dicky. "Suppose instead of telling
+us to keep out of doors it had been the other way?"
+
+"Yes," said Alice, "suppose it had been, 'Poor Mrs. Bax requires to be
+cheered up. Do not leave her side day or night. Take it in turns to make
+jokes for her. Let not a moment pass without some merry jest'? Oh yes,
+it might be much, much worse."
+
+"Being able to get out all day makes it all right about trying to make
+that two pounds increase and multiply," remarked Oswald. "Now who's
+going to meet her at the station? Because after all it's her sister's
+house, and we've got to be polite to visitors even if we're in a house
+we aren't related to."
+
+This was seen to be so, but no one was keen on going to the station. At
+last Oswald, ever ready for forlorn hopes, consented to go.
+
+We told Mrs. Beale, and she got the best room ready, scrubbing
+everything till it smelt deliciously of wet wood and mottled soap. And
+then we decorated the room as well as we could.
+
+"She'll want some pretty things," said Alice, "coming from the land of
+parrots and opossums and gum-trees and things."
+
+We did think of borrowing the stuffed wild-cat that is in the bar at the
+"Ship," but we decided that our decorations must be very quiet--and the
+wild-cat, even in its stuffed state, was anything but; so we borrowed a
+stuffed roach in a glass box and stood it on the chest of drawers. It
+looked very calm. Sea-shells are quiet things when they are vacant, and
+Mrs. Beale let us have the four big ones off her chiffonnier.
+
+The girls got flowers--bluebells and white wood-anemones. We might have
+had poppies or buttercups, but we thought the colours might be too loud.
+We took some books up for Mrs. Bax to read in the night. And we took the
+quietest ones we could find.
+
+"Sonnets on Sleep," "Confessions of an Opium Eater," "Twilight of the
+Gods," "Diary of a Dreamer," and "By Still Waters," were some of them.
+The girls covered them with grey paper, because some of the bindings
+were rather gay.
+
+The girls hemmed grey calico covers for the drawers and the
+dressing-table, and we drew the blinds half-down, and when all was done
+the room looked as quiet as a roosting wood-pigeon.
+
+We put in a clock, but we did not wind it up.
+
+"She can do that herself," said Dora, "if she feels she can bear to hear
+it ticking."
+
+Oswald went to the station to meet her. He rode on the box beside the
+driver. When the others saw him mount there I think they were sorry they
+had not been polite and gone to meet her themselves. Oswald had a jolly
+ride. We got to the station just as the train came in. Only one lady got
+out of it, so Oswald knew it must be Mrs. Bax. If he had not been told
+how quiet she wanted to be he would have thought she looked rather
+jolly. She had short hair and gold spectacles. Her skirts were short,
+and she carried a parrot-cage in her hand. It contained our parrot, and
+when we wrote to tell Father that it and Pincher were the only things we
+wanted sent we never thought she would have brought either.
+
+"Mrs. Bax, I believe," was the only break Oswald made in the polite
+silence that he took the parrot-cage and her bag from her in.
+
+"How do you do?" she said very briskly for a tired lady; and Oswald
+thought it was noble of her to make the effort to smile. "Are you Oswald
+or Dicky?"
+
+Oswald told her in one calm word which he was, and then Pincher rolled
+madly out of a dog-box almost into his arms. Pincher would not be
+quiet. Of course he did not understand the need for it. Oswald conversed
+with Pincher in low, restraining whispers as he led the way to the
+"Ship's" fly. He put the parrot-cage on the inside seat of the carriage,
+held the door open for Mrs. Bax with silent politeness, closed it as
+quietly as possible, and prepared to mount on the box.
+
+"Oh, won't you come inside?" asked Mrs. Bax. "Do!"
+
+"No, thank you," said Oswald in calm and mouse-like tones; and to avoid
+any more jaw he got at once on to the box with Pincher.
+
+So that Mrs. Bax was perfectly quiet for the whole six miles--unless you
+count the rattle and shake-up-and-down of the fly. On the box Oswald and
+Pincher "tasted the sweets of a blissful re-union," like it says in
+novels. And the man from the "Ship" looked on and said how well bred
+Pincher was. It was a happy drive.
+
+There was something almost awful about the sleek, quiet tidiness of the
+others, who were all standing in a row outside the cottage to welcome
+Mrs. Bax. They all said, "How do you do?" in hushed voices, and all
+looked as if butter would not melt in any of their young mouths. I never
+saw a more soothing-looking lot of kids.
+
+She went to her room, and we did not see her again till tea-time.
+
+Then, still exquisitely brushed and combed, we sat round the board--in
+silence. We had left the tea-tray place for Mrs. Bax, of course. But
+she said to Dora--
+
+"Wouldn't you like to pour out?"
+
+And Dora replied in low, soft tones, "If you wish me to, Mrs. Bax. I
+usually do." And she did.
+
+We passed each other bread-and-butter and jam and honey with silent
+courteousness. And of course we saw that she had enough to eat.
+
+"Do you manage to amuse yourself pretty well here?" she asked presently.
+
+We said, "Yes, thank you," in hushed tones.
+
+"What do you do?" she asked.
+
+We did not wish to excite her by telling her what we did, so Dicky
+murmured--
+
+"Nothing in particular," at the same moment that Alice said--
+
+"All sorts of things."
+
+"Tell me about them," said Mrs. Bax invitingly.
+
+We replied by a deep silence. She sighed, and passed her cup for more
+tea.
+
+"Do you ever feel shy," she asked suddenly. "I do, dreadfully, with new
+people."
+
+We liked her for saying that, and Alice replied that she hoped she would
+not feel shy with us.
+
+"I hope not," she said. "Do you know, there was such a funny woman in
+the train? She had seventeen different parcels, and she kept counting
+them, and one of them was a kitten, and it was always under the seat
+when she began to count, so she always got the number wrong."
+
+We should have liked to hear about that kitten--especially what colour
+it was and how old--but Oswald felt that Mrs. Bax was only trying to
+talk for our sakes, so that we shouldn't feel shy, so he simply said,
+"Will you have some more cake?" and nothing more was said about the
+kitten.
+
+Mrs. Bax seemed very noble. She kept trying to talk to us about Pincher,
+and trains and Australia, but we were determined she should be quiet, as
+she wished it so much, and we restrained our brimming curiosity about
+opossums up gum-trees, and about emus and kangaroos and wattles, and
+only said "Yes" or "No," or, more often, nothing at all.
+
+When tea was over we melted away, "like snow-wreaths in Thawjean," and
+went out on the beach and had a yelling match. Our throats felt as
+though they were full of wool, from the hushed tones we had used in
+talking to Mrs. Bax. Oswald won the match. Next day we kept carefully
+out of the way, except for meals. Mrs. Bax tried talking again at
+breakfast-time, but we checked our wish to listen, and passed the
+pepper, salt, mustard, bread, toast, butter, marmalade, and even the
+cayenne, vinegar, and oil, with such politeness that she gave up.
+
+We took it in turns to watch the house and drive away organ-grinders. We
+told them they must not play in front of that house, because there was
+an Australian lady who had to be kept quiet. And they went at once. This
+cost us expense, because an organ-grinder will never consent to fly the
+spot under twopence a flight.
+
+We went to bed early. We were quite weary with being so calm and still.
+But we knew it was our duty, and we liked the feel of having done it.
+
+The day after was the day Jake Lee got hurt. Jake is the man who drives
+about the country in a covered cart, with pins and needles, and combs
+and frying-pans, and all the sort of things that farmers' wives are
+likely to want in a hurry, and no shops for miles. I have always thought
+Jake's was a beautiful life. I should like to do it myself. Well, this
+particular day he had got his cart all ready to start and had got his
+foot on the wheel to get up, when a motor-car went by puffing and
+hooting. I always think motor-cars seem so rude somehow. And the horse
+was frightened; and no wonder. It shied, and poor Jake was thrown
+violently to the ground, and hurt so much that they had to send for the
+doctor. Of course we went and asked Mrs. Jake if we could do
+anything--such as take the cart out and sell the things to the farmers'
+wives.
+
+But she thought not.
+
+It was after this that Dicky said--
+
+"Why shouldn't we get things of our own and go and sell them--with
+Bates' donkey?"
+
+Oswald was thinking the same thing, but he wishes to be fair, so he owns
+that Dicky spoke first. We all saw at once that the idea was a good one.
+
+"Shall we dress up for it?" H.O. asked. We thought not. It is always
+good sport to dress up, but I have never heard of people selling things
+to farmers' wives in really beautiful disguises.
+
+"We ought to go as shabby as we can," said Alice; "but somehow that
+always seems to come natural to your clothes when you've done a few
+interesting things in them. We have plenty of clothes that look poor but
+deserving. What shall we buy to sell?"
+
+"Pins and needles, and tape and bodkins," said Dora.
+
+"Butter," said Noël; "it is terrible when there is no butter."
+
+"Honey is nice," said H.O., "and so are sausages."
+
+"Jake has ready-made shirts and corduroy trousers. I suppose a farmer's
+shirt and trousers may give at any moment," said Alice, "and if he can't
+get new ones he has to go to bed till they are mended."
+
+Oswald thought tin-tacks, and glue, and string must often be needed to
+mend barns and farm tools with if they broke suddenly. And Dicky said--
+
+"I think the pictures of ladies hanging on to crosses in foaming seas
+are good. Jake told me he sold more of them than anything. I suppose
+people suddenly break the old ones, and home isn't home without a lady
+holding on to a cross."
+
+We went to Munn's shop, and we bought needles and pins, and tapes and
+bodkins, a pound of butter, a pot of honey and one of marmalade, and
+tin-tacks, string, and glue. But we could not get any ladies with
+crosses, and the shirts and trousers were too expensive for us to dare
+to risk it. Instead, we bought a head-stall for eighteenpence, because
+how providential we should be to a farmer whose favourite horse had
+escaped and he had nothing to catch it with; and three tin-openers, in
+case of a distant farm subsisting entirely on tinned things, and the
+only opener for miles lost down the well or something. We also bought
+several other thoughtful and far-sighted things.
+
+That night at supper we told Mrs. Bax we wanted to go out for the day.
+She had hardly said anything that supper-time, and now she said--
+
+"Where are you going? Teaching Sunday school?"
+
+As it was Monday, we felt her poor brain was wandering--most likely for
+want of quiet. And the room smelt of tobacco smoke, so we thought some
+one had been to see her and perhaps been too noisy for her. So Oswald
+said gently--
+
+"No, we are not going to teach Sunday school."
+
+Mrs. Bax sighed. Then she said--
+
+"I am going out myself to-morrow--for the day."
+
+"I hope it will not tire you too much," said Dora, with soft-voiced and
+cautious politeness. "If you want anything bought we could do it for
+you, with pleasure, and you could have a nice, quiet day at home."
+
+"Thank you," said Mrs. Bax shortly; and we saw she would do what she
+chose, whether it was really for her own good or not.
+
+She started before we did next morning, and we were careful to be
+mouse-quiet till the "Ship's" fly which contained her was out of
+hearing. Then we had another yelling competition, and Noël won with that
+new shriek of his that is like railway engines in distress; and then we
+went and fetched Bates' donkey and cart and packed our bales in it and
+started, some riding and some running behind.
+
+Any faint distant traces of respectableness that were left to our
+clothes were soon covered up by the dust of the road and by some of the
+ginger-beer bursting through the violence of the cart, which had no
+springs.
+
+The first farm we stopped at the woman really did want some pins, for
+though a very stupid person, she was making a pink blouse, and we
+said--
+
+"Do have some tape! You never know when you may want it."
+
+"I believe in buttons," she said. "No strings for me, thank you."
+
+But when Oswald said, "What about pudding-strings? You can't button up
+puddings as if they were pillows!" she consented to listen to reason.
+But it was only twopence altogether.
+
+But at the next place the woman said we were "mummickers," and told us
+to "get along, do." And she set her dog at us; but when Pincher sprang
+from the inmost recesses of the cart she called her dog off. But too
+late, for it and Pincher were locked in the barking, scuffling, growling
+embrace of deadly combat. When we had separated the dogs she went into
+her house and banged the door, and we went on through the green flat
+marshes, among the buttercups and may-bushes.
+
+"I wonder what she meant by 'mummickers'?" said H.O.
+
+"She meant she saw our high-born airs through our shabby clothes," said
+Alice. "It's always happening, especially to princes. There's nothing so
+hard to conceal as a really high-bred air."
+
+"I've been thinking," said Dicky, "whether honesty wouldn't perhaps be
+the best policy--not always, of course; but just this once. If people
+knew what we were doing it for they might be glad to help on the good
+work---- What?"
+
+So at the next farm, which was half hidden by trees, like the picture at
+the beginning of "Sensible Susan," we tied the pony to the gate-post and
+knocked at the door. It was opened by a man this time, and Dora said to
+him--
+
+"We are honest traders. We are trying to sell these things to keep a
+lady who is poor. If you buy some you will be helping too. Wouldn't you
+like to do that? It is a good work, and you will be glad of it
+afterwards, when you come to think over the acts of your life."
+
+"Upon my word an' 'onner!" said the man, whose red face was surrounded
+by a frill of white whiskers. "If ever I see a walkin' Tract 'ere it
+stands!"
+
+"She doesn't mean to be tractish," said Oswald quickly; "it's only her
+way. But we really are trying to sell things to help a poor person--no
+humbug, sir--so if we _have_ got anything you want we shall be glad. And
+if not--well, there's no harm in asking, is there, sir?"
+
+The man with the frilly whiskers was very pleased to be called
+"sir"--Oswald knew he would be--and he looked at everything we'd got,
+and bought the head-stall and two tin-openers, and a pot of marmalade,
+and a ball of string, and a pair of braces. This came to four and
+twopence, and we were very pleased. It really seemed that our business
+was establishing itself root and branch.
+
+When it came to its being dinner-time, which was first noticed through
+H.O. beginning to cry and say he did not want to play any more, it was
+found that we had forgotten to bring any dinner. So we had to eat some
+of our stock--the jam, the biscuits, and the cucumber.
+
+"I feel a new man," said Alice, draining the last of the ginger-beer
+bottles. "At that homely village on the brow of yonder hill we shall
+sell all that remains of the stock, and go home with money in both
+pockets."
+
+But our luck had changed. As so often happens, our hearts beat high with
+hopeful thoughts, and we felt jollier than we had done all day. Merry
+laughter and snatches of musical song re-echoed from our cart, and from
+round it as we went up the hill. All Nature was smiling and gay. There
+was nothing sinister in the look of the trees or the road--or anything.
+
+Dogs are said to have inside instincts that warn them of intending
+perils, but Pincher was not a bit instinctive that day somehow. He
+sported gaily up and down the hedge-banks after pretending rats, and
+once he was so excited that I believe he was playing at weasels and
+stoats. But of course there was really no trace of these savage denizens
+of the jungle. It was just Pincher's varied imagination.
+
+We got to the village, and with joyful expectations we knocked at the
+first door we came to.
+
+Alice had spread out a few choice treasures--needles, pins, tape, a
+photograph-frame, and the butter, rather soft by now, and the last of
+the tin-openers--on a basket-lid, like the fish-man does with herrings
+and whitings and plums and apples (you cannot sell fish in the country
+unless you sell fruit too. The author does not know why this is).
+
+The sun was shining, the sky was blue. There was no sign at all of the
+intending thunderbolt, not even when the door was opened. This was done
+by a woman.
+
+She just looked at our basket-lid of things any one might have been
+proud to buy, and smiled. I saw her do it. Then she turned her
+traitorous head and called "Jim!" into the cottage.
+
+A sleepy grunt rewarded her.
+
+"Jim, I say!" she repeated. "Come here directly minute."
+
+Next moment Jim appeared. He was Jim to her because she was his wife, I
+suppose, but to us he was the Police, with his hair ruffled--from his
+hateful sofa-cushions, no doubt--and his tunic unbuttoned.
+
+"What's up?" he said in a husky voice, as if he had been dreaming that
+he had a cold. "Can't a chap have a minute to himself to read the paper
+in?"
+
+"You told me to," said the woman. "You said if any folks come to the
+door with things I was to call you, whether or no."
+
+Even now we were blind to the disaster that was entangling us in the
+meshes of its trap. Alice said--
+
+"We've sold a good deal, but we've _some_ things left--very nice things.
+These crochet needles----"
+
+But the Police, who had buttoned up his tunic in a hurry, said quite
+fiercely--
+
+"Let's have a look at your license."
+
+"We didn't bring any," said Noël, "but if you will give us an order
+we'll bring you some to-morrow." He thought a lisen was a thing to sell
+that we ought to have thought of.
+
+"None of your lip," was the unexpected reply of the now plainly brutal
+constable. "Where's your license, I say?"
+
+"We have a license for our dog, but Father's got it," said Oswald,
+always quick-witted, but not, this time, quite quick enough.
+
+"Your 'awker's license is what I want, as well you knows, you young
+limb. Your pedlar's license--your license to sell things. You ain't half
+so half-witted as you want to make out."
+
+"We haven't got a pedlar's license," said Oswald. If we had been in a
+book the Police would have been touched to tears by Oswald's simple
+honesty. He would have said "Noble boy!" and then gone on to say he had
+only asked the question to test our honour. But life is not really at
+all the same as books. I have noticed lots of differences. Instead of
+behaving like the book-Police, this thick-headed constable said--
+
+"Blowed if I wasn't certain of it! Well, my young blokes, you'll just
+come along o' me to Sir James. I've got orders to bring up the next case
+afore him."
+
+"_Case!_" said Dora. "_Oh, don't!_ We didn't know we oughtn't to. We
+only wanted----"
+
+"Ho, yes," said the constable, "you can tell all that to the magistrate;
+and anything you say will be used against you."
+
+"I'm sure it will," said Oswald. "Dora, don't lower yourself to speak to
+him. Come, we'll go home."
+
+The Police was combing its hair with a half-toothless piece of comb, and
+we turned to go. But it was vain.
+
+Ere any of our young and eager legs could climb into the cart the Police
+had seized the donkey's bridle. We could not desert our noble steed--and
+besides, it wasn't really ours, but Bates's, and this made any hope of
+flight quite a forlorn one. For better, for worse, we had to go with the
+donkey.
+
+"Don't cry, for goodness' sake!" said Oswald in stern undertones. "Bite
+your lips. Take long breaths. Don't let him see we mind. This beast's
+only the village police. Sir James will be a gentleman. _He'll_
+understand. Don't disgrace the house of Bastable. Look here! Fall into
+line--no, Indian file will be best, there are so few of us. Alice, if
+you snivel I'll never say you ought to have been a boy again. H.O., shut
+your mouth; no one's going to hurt you--you're too young."
+
+"I _am_ trying," said Alice, gasping.
+
+"Noël," Oswald went on--now, as so often, showing the brilliant
+qualities of the born leader and general--"don't _you_ be in a funk.
+Remember how Byron fought for the Greeks at Missy-what's-its-name. _He_
+didn't grouse, and he was a poet, like you! Now look here, let's be
+_game_. Dora, you're the eldest. Strike up--any tune. We'll _march_ up,
+and show this sneak we Bastables aren't afraid, whoever else is."
+
+You will perhaps find it difficult to believe, but we _did_ strike up.
+We sang "The British Grenadiers," and when the Police told us to stow it
+we did not. And Noël said--
+
+"Singing isn't dogs or pedlaring. You don't want a license for that."
+
+"I'll soon show you!" said the Police.
+
+But he had to jolly well put up with our melodious song, because he knew
+that there isn't really any law to prevent you singing if you want to.
+
+We went on singing. It soon got easier than at first, and we followed
+Bates's donkey and cart through some lodge gates and up a drive with big
+trees, and we came out in front of a big white house, and there was a
+lawn. We stopped singing when we came in sight of the house, and got
+ready to be polite to Sir James. There were some ladies on the lawn in
+pretty blue and green dresses. This cheered us. Ladies are seldom quite
+heartless, especially when young.
+
+The Police drew up Bates's donkey opposite the big front door with
+pillars, and rang the bell. Our hearts were beating desperately. We cast
+glances of despair at the ladies. Then, quite suddenly, Alice gave a
+yell that wild Indian war-whoops are simply nothing to, and tore across
+the lawn and threw her arms round the green waist of one of the ladies.
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad!" she cried; "oh, save us! We haven't done anything
+wrong, really and truly we haven't."
+
+And then we all saw that the lady was our own Mrs. Red House, that we
+liked so much. So we all rushed to her, and before that Police had got
+the door answered we had told her our tale. The other ladies had turned
+away when we approached her, and gone politely away into a shrubbery.
+
+"There, there," she said, patting Alice and Noël and as much of the
+others as she could get hold of. "Don't you worry, dears, don't. I'll
+make it all right with Sir James. Let's all sit down in a comfy heap,
+and get our breaths again. I am so glad to see you all. My husband met
+your father at lunch the other day. I meant to come over and see you
+to-morrow."
+
+You cannot imagine the feelings of joy and safeness that we felt now we
+had found someone who knew we were Bastables, and not vagrant outcasts
+like the Police thought.
+
+The door had now been answered. We saw the base Police talking to the
+person who answered it. Then he came towards us, very red in the face.
+
+"Leave off bothering the lady," he said, "and come along of me. Sir
+James is in his lib_ra_ry, and he's ready to do justice on you, so he
+is."
+
+Mrs. Red House jumped up, and so did we. She said with smiles, as if
+nothing was wrong--
+
+"Good morning, Inspector!"
+
+He looked pleased and surprised, as well he might, for it'll be long
+enough before he's within a mile of being _that_.
+
+"Good morning, miss, I'm sure," he replied.
+
+"I think there's been a little mistake, Inspector," she said. "I expect
+it's some of your men--led away by zeal for their duties. But I'm sure
+_you'll_ understand. I am staying with Lady Harborough, and these
+children are very dear friends of mine."
+
+The Police looked very silly, but he said something about hawking
+without a license.
+
+"Oh no, not _hawking_," said Mrs. Red House, "not _hawking_, surely!
+They were just _playing_ at it, you know. Your subordinates must have
+been quite mistaken."
+
+Our honesty bade us say that he was his own only subordinate, and that
+he hadn't been mistaken; but it is rude to interrupt, especially a lady,
+so we said nothing.
+
+The Police said firmly, "You'll excuse me, miss, but Sir James expressly
+told me to lay a information directly next time I caught any of 'em at
+it without a license."
+
+"But, you see, you didn't catch them at it." Mrs. Red House took some
+money out of her purse. "You might just give this to your subordinates
+to console them for the mistake they've made. And look here, these
+mistakes do lead to trouble sometimes. So I'll tell you what I'll do.
+I'll promise not to tell Sir James a word about it. _So_ nobody will be
+blamed."
+
+We listened breathless for his reply. He put his hands behind him--
+
+"Well, miss," he said at last, "you've managed to put the Force in the
+wrong somehow, which isn't often done, and I'm blest if I know how you
+make it out. But there's Sir James a-waiting for me to come before him
+with my complaint. What am I a-goin' to say to him?"
+
+"Oh, anything," said Mrs. Red House; "surely some one else has done
+something wrong that you can tell him about?"
+
+"There was a matter of a couple of snares and some night lines," he said
+slowly, drawing nearer to Mrs. Red House; "but I couldn't take no money,
+of course."
+
+"Of course not," she said; "I beg your pardon for offering it. But I'll
+give you my name and address, and if ever I can be of any use to
+you----"
+
+She turned her back on us while she wrote it down with a stumpy pencil
+he lent her; but Oswald could swear that he heard money chink, and that
+there was something large and round wrapped up in the paper she gave
+him.
+
+"Sorry for any little misunderstanding," the Police now said, feeling
+the paper with his fingers; "and my respects to you, miss, and your
+young friends. I'd best be going."
+
+And he went--to Sir James, I suppose. He seemed quite tamed. I hope the
+people who set the snares got off.
+
+"So _that's_ all right," said Mrs. Red House. "Oh, you dear children,
+you must stay to lunch, and we'll have a splendid time."
+
+"What a darling Princess you are!" Noël said slowly. "You are a witch
+Princess, too, with magic powers over the Police."
+
+"It's not a very pretty sort of magic," she said, and she sighed.
+
+"Everything about you is pretty," said Noël. And I could see him
+beginning to make the faces that always precur his poetry-fits. But
+before the fit could break out thoroughly the rest of us awoke from our
+stupor of grateful safeness and began to dance round Mrs. Red House in a
+ring. And the girls sang--
+
+          "The rose is red, the violet's blue,
+           Carnation's sweet, and so are you,"
+
+over and over again, so we had to join in; though I think "She's a jolly
+good fellow would have been more manly and less like a poetry book."
+
+Suddenly a known voice broke in on our singing.
+
+"_Well!_" it said. And we stopped dancing. And there were the other two
+ladies who had politely walked off when we first discovered Mrs. Red
+House. And one of them was Mrs. Bax--of all people in the world! And she
+was smoking a cigarette. So now we knew where the smell of tobacco came
+from, in the White House.
+
+We said, "_Oh!_" in one breath, and were silent.
+
+"Is it possible," said Mrs. Bax, "that these are the Sunday-school
+children I've been living with these three long days?"
+
+"We're sorry," said Dora, softly; "we wouldn't have made a noise if we'd
+know you were here."
+
+"So I suppose," said Mrs. Bax. "Chloe, you seem to be a witch. How have
+you galvanised my six rag dolls into life like this?"
+
+"Rag dolls!" said H.O., before we could stop him. "I think you're jolly
+mean and ungrateful; and it was sixpence for making the organs fly."
+
+"My brain's reeling," said Mrs. Bax, putting her hands to her head.
+
+"H.O. is very rude, and I am sorry," said Alice, "but it _is_ hard to be
+called rag dolls, when you've only tried to do as you were told."
+
+And then, in answer to Mrs. Red House's questions, we told how father
+had begged us to be quiet, and how we had earnestly tried to. When it
+was told, Mrs. Bax began to laugh, and so did Mrs. Red House, and at
+last Mrs. Bax said--
+
+"Oh, my dears! you don't know how glad I am that you're really alive! I
+began to think--oh--I don't know what I thought! And you're not rag
+dolls. You're heroes and heroines, every man jack of you. And I do thank
+you. But I never wanted to be quiet like _that_. I just didn't want to
+be bothered with London and tiresome grown-up people. And now let's
+enjoy ourselves! Shall it be rounders, or stories about cannibals?"
+
+"Rounders first and stories after," said H.O. And it was so.
+
+Mrs. Bax, now that her true nature was revealed, proved to be A1. The
+author does not ask for a jollier person to be in the house with. We had
+rare larks the whole time she stayed with us.
+
+And to think that we might never have known her true character if she
+hadn't been an old school friend of Mrs. Red House's, and if Mrs. Red
+House hadn't been such a friend of ours!
+
+"Friendship," as Mr. William Smith so truly says in his book about
+Latin, "is the crown of life."
+
+
+
+
+_THE POOR AND NEEDY_
+
+
+"WHAT shall we do to-day, kiddies?" said Mrs. Bax. We had discovered her
+true nature but three days ago, and already she had taken us out in a
+sailing-boat and in a motor car, had given us sweets every day, and
+taught us eleven new games that we had not known before; and only four
+of the new games were rotters. How seldom can as much be said for the
+games of a grown-up, however gifted!
+
+The day was one of cloudless blue perfectness, and we were all basking
+on the beach. We had all bathed. Mrs. Bax said we might. There are
+points about having a grown-up with you, if it is the right kind. You
+can then easily get it to say "Yes" to what you want, and after that, if
+anything goes wrong it is their fault, and you are pure from blame. But
+nothing had gone wrong with the bathe, and, so far, we were all alive,
+and not cold at all, except our fingers and feet.
+
+"What would you _like_ to do?" asked Mrs. Bax. We were far away from
+human sight along the beach, and Mrs. Bax was smoking cigarettes as
+usual.
+
+"I don't know," we all said politely. But H.O. said--
+
+"What about poor Miss Sandal?"
+
+"Why poor?" asked Mrs. Bax.
+
+"Because she is," said H.O.
+
+"But how? What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Bax.
+
+"Why, isn't she?" said H.O.
+
+"Isn't she what?" said Mrs. Bax.
+
+"What you said why about," said H.O.
+
+She put her hands to her head. Her short hair was still damp and rumpled
+from contact with the foaming billows of ocean.
+
+"Let's have a fresh deal and start fair," she said; "why do you think my
+sister is poor?"
+
+"I forgot she was your sister," said H.O., "or I wouldn't have said
+it--honour bright I wouldn't."
+
+"Don't mention it," said Mrs. Bax, and began throwing stones at a groin
+in amiable silence.
+
+We were furious with H.O., first because it is such bad manners to throw
+people's poverty in their faces, or even in their sisters' faces, like
+H.O. had just done, and second because it seemed to have put out of Mrs.
+Bax's head what she was beginning to say about what would we like to do.
+
+So Oswald presently remarked, when he had aimed at the stump she was
+aiming at, and hit it before she did, for though a fair shot for a lady,
+she takes a long time to get her eye in.
+
+"Mrs. Bax, we should like to do whatever _you_ like to do." This was
+real politeness and true too, as it happened, because by this time we
+could quite trust her not to want to do anything deeply duffing.
+
+"That's very nice of you," she replied, "but don't let me interfere with
+any plans of yours. My own idea was to pluck a waggonette from the
+nearest bush. I suppose they grow freely in these parts?"
+
+"There's one at the 'Ship,'" said Alice; "it costs seven-and-six to
+pluck it, just for going to the station."
+
+"Well, then! And to stuff our waggonette with lunch and drive over to
+Lynwood Castle, and eat it there."
+
+"A picnic!" fell in accents of joy from the lips of one and all.
+
+"We'll also boil the billy in the castle courtyard, and eat buns in the
+shadow of the keep."
+
+"Tea as well?" said H.O., "with buns? You can't be poor and needy any
+way, whatever your----"
+
+We hastily hushed him, stifling his murmurs with sand.
+
+"I always think," said Mrs. Bax dreamily, "that 'the more the merrier,'
+is peculiarly true of picnics. So I have arranged--always subject to
+your approval, of course--to meet your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Red House,
+there, and----"
+
+We drowned her conclusive remarks with a cheer. And Oswald, always
+willing to be of use, offered to go to the 'Ship' and see about the
+waggonette. I like horses and stable-yards, and the smell of hay and
+straw, and talking to ostlers and people like that.
+
+There turned out to be two horses belonging to the best waggonette, or
+you could have a one-horse one, much smaller, with the blue cloth of the
+cushions rather frayed, and mended here and there, and green in patches
+from age and exposition to the weather.
+
+Oswald told Mrs. Bax this, not concealing about how shabby the little
+one was, and she gloriously said--
+
+"The pair by all means! We don't kill a pig every day!"
+
+"No, indeed," said Dora, but if "killing a pig" means having a lark,
+Mrs. Bax is as good a pig-killer as any I ever knew.
+
+It was splendid to drive (Oswald, on the box beside the driver, who had
+his best coat with the bright buttons) along the same roads that we had
+trodden as muddy pedestrinators, or travelled along behind Bates's
+donkey.
+
+It was a perfect day, as I said before. We were all clean and had our
+second-best things on. I think second-bests are much more comfy than
+first-bests. You feel equivalent to meeting any one, and have "a heart
+for any fate," as it says in the poetry-book, and yet you are not
+starched and booted and stiffened and tightened out of all human
+feelings.
+
+Lynwood Castle is in a hollow in the hills. It has a moat all round it
+with water-lily leaves on it. I suppose there are lilies when in
+season. There is a bridge over the moat--not the draw kind of bridge.
+And the castle has eight towers--four round and four square ones, and a
+courtyard in the middle, all green grass, and heaps of stones--stray
+bits of castle, I suppose they are--and a great white may-tree in the
+middle that Mrs. Bax said was hundreds of years old.
+
+Mrs. Red House was sitting under the may-tree when we got there, nursing
+her baby, in a blue dress and looking exactly like a picture on the top
+of a chocolate-box.
+
+The girls instantly wanted to nurse the baby so we let them. And we
+explored the castle. We had never happened to explore one thoroughly
+before. We did not find the deepest dungeon below the castle moat,
+though we looked everywhere for it, but we found everything else you can
+think of belonging to castles--even the holes they used to pour boiling
+lead through into the eyes of besiegers when they tried to squint up to
+see how strong the garrison was in the keep--and the little slits they
+shot arrows through, and the mouldering remains of the portcullis. We
+went up the eight towers, every single one of them, and some parts were
+jolly dangerous, I can tell you. Dicky and I would not let H.O. and Noël
+come up the dangerous parts. There was no lasting ill-feeling about
+this. By the time we had had a thorough good explore lunch was ready.
+
+It was a glorious lunch--not too many meaty things, but all sorts of
+cakes and sweets, and grapes and figs and nuts.
+
+We gazed at the feast, and Mrs. Bax said--
+
+"There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread you've got."
+
+"_They_ had currant wine," said Noël, who has only just read the book by
+Mr. Charles Dickens.
+
+"Well, so have you," said Mrs. Bax. And we had. Two bottles of it.
+
+"I never knew any one like you," said Noël to Mrs. Red House, dreamily
+with his mouth full, "for knowing the things people really like to eat,
+not the things that are good for them, but what they _like_, and Mrs.
+Bax is just the same."
+
+"It was one of the things they taught at our school," said Mrs. Bax. "Do
+you remember the Saturday night feasts, Chloe, and how good the cocoanut
+ice tasted after extra strong peppermints?"
+
+"Fancy you knowing _that_!" said H.O. "I thought it was us found _that_
+out."
+
+"I really know much more about things to eat than _she_ does," said Mrs.
+Bax. "I was quite an old girl when she was a little thing in pinafores.
+She was such a nice little girl."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if she was always nice," said Noël, "even when she
+was a baby!"
+
+Everybody laughed at this, except the existing baby, and it was asleep
+on the waggonette cushions, under the white may-tree, and perhaps if it
+had been awake it wouldn't have laughed, for Oswald himself, though
+possessing a keen sense of humour, did not see anything to laugh at.
+
+Mr. Red House made a speech after dinner, and said drink to the health
+of everybody, one after the other, in currant wine, which was done,
+beginning with Mrs. Bax and ending with H.O.
+
+Then he said--
+
+"Somnus, avaunt! What shall we play at?" and nobody, as so often
+happens, had any idea ready. Then suddenly Mrs. Red House said--
+
+"Good gracious, look there!" and we looked there, and where we were to
+look was the lowest piece of the castle wall, just beside the keep that
+the bridge led over to, and what we were to look at was a strange
+blobbiness of knobbly bumps along the top, that looked exactly like
+human heads.
+
+It turned out, when we had talked about cannibals and New Guinea, that
+human heads were just exactly what they were. Not loose heads, stuck on
+pikes or things like that, such as there often must have been while the
+castle stayed in the olden times it was built in and belonged to, but
+real live heads with their bodies still in attendance on them.
+
+They were, in fact, the village children.
+
+"Poor little Lazaruses!" said Mr. Red House.
+
+"There's not such a bad slice of Dives' feast left," said Mrs. Bax.
+"Shall we----?"
+
+So Mr. Red House went out by the keep and called the heads in (with the
+bodies they were connected with, of course), and they came and ate up
+all that was left of the lunch. Not the buns, of course, for those were
+sacred to tea-time, but all the other things, even the nuts and figs,
+and we were quite glad that they should have them--really and truly we
+were, even H.O.!
+
+They did not seem to be very clever children, or just the sort you would
+choose for your friends, but I suppose you like to play, however little
+you are other people's sort. So, after they had eaten all there was,
+when Mrs. Red House invited them all to join in games with us we knew we
+ought to be pleased. But village children are not taught rounders, and
+though we wondered at first why their teachers had not seen to this, we
+understood presently. Because it is most awfully difficult to make them
+understand the very simplest thing.
+
+But they could play all the ring games, and "Nuts and May," and "There
+Came Three Knights"--and another one we had never heard of before. The
+singing part begins:--
+
+          "Up and down the green grass,
+             This and that and thus,
+           Come along, my pretty maid,
+             And take a walk with us.
+           You shall have a duck, my dear,
+             And you shall have a drake,
+           And you shall have a handsome man
+             For your father's sake."
+
+I forget the rest, and if anybody who reads this knows it, and will
+write and tell me, the author will not have laboured in vain.
+
+The grown-ups played with all their heart and soul--I expect it is but
+seldom they are able to play, and they enjoy the novel excitement. And
+when we'd been at it some time we saw there was another head looking
+over the wall.
+
+"Hullo!" said Mrs. Bax, "here's another of them, run along and ask it to
+come and join in."
+
+She spoke to the village children, but nobody ran.
+
+"Here, you go," she said, pointing at a girl in red plaits tied with
+dirty sky-blue ribbon.
+
+"Please, miss, I'd leifer not," replied the red-haired. "Mother says we
+ain't to play along of him."
+
+"Why, what's the matter with him?" asked Mrs. Red House.
+
+"His father's in jail, miss, along of snares and night lines, and no one
+won't give his mother any work, so my mother says we ain't to demean
+ourselves to speak to him."
+
+"But it's not the child's fault," said Mrs. Red House, "is it now?"
+
+"I don't know, miss," said the red-haired.
+
+"But it's cruel," said Mrs. Bax. "How would you like it if your father
+was sent to prison, and nobody would speak to you?"
+
+"Father's always kep' hisself respectable," said the girl with the dirty
+blue ribbon. "You can't be sent to gaol, not if you keeps yourself
+respectable, you can't, miss."
+
+"And do none of you speak to him?"
+
+The other children put their fingers in their mouths, and looked silly,
+showing plainly that they didn't.
+
+"Don't you feel sorry for the poor little chap?" said Mrs. Bax.
+
+No answer transpired.
+
+"Can't you imagine how you'd feel if it was _your_ father?"
+
+"My father always kep' hisself respectable," the red-haired girl said
+again.
+
+"Well, I shall ask him to come and play with us," said Mrs. Red House.
+"Little pigs!" she added in low tones only heard by the author and Mr.
+Red House.
+
+But Mr. Red House said in a whisper that no one overheard except Mrs. R.
+H. and the present author.
+
+"Don't, Puss-cat; it's no good. The poor little pariah wouldn't like it.
+And these kids only do what their parents teach them."
+
+If the author didn't know what a stainless gentleman Mr. Red House is he
+would think he heard him mutter a word that gentlemen wouldn't say.
+
+"Tell off a detachment of consolation," Mr. Red House went on; "look
+here, _our_ kids--who'll go and talk to the poor little chap?"
+
+We all instantly said, "_I_ will!"
+
+The present author was chosen to be the one.
+
+When you think about yourself there is a kind of you that is not what
+you generally are but that you know you would like to be if only you
+were good enough. Albert's uncle says this is called your ideal of
+yourself. I will call it your best I, for short. Oswald's "best I" was
+glad to go and talk to that boy whose father was in prison, but the
+Oswald that generally exists hated being out of the games. Yet the whole
+Oswald, both the best and the ordinary, was pleased that he was the one
+chosen to be a detachment of consolation.
+
+He went out under the great archway, and as he went he heard the games
+beginning again. This made him feel noble, and yet he was ashamed of
+feeling it. Your feelings are a beastly nuisance, if once you begin to
+let yourself think about them. Oswald soon saw the broken boots of the
+boy whose father was in jail so nobody would play with him, standing on
+the stones near the top of the wall where it was broken to match the
+boots.
+
+He climbed up and said, "Hullo!"
+
+To this remark the boy replied, "Hullo!"
+
+Oswald now did not know what to say. The sorrier you are for people the
+harder it is to tell them so.
+
+But at last he said--
+
+"I've just heard about your father being where he is. It's beastly rough
+luck. I hope you don't mind my saying I'm jolly sorry for you."
+
+The boy had a pale face and watery blue eyes. When Oswald said this his
+eyes got waterier than ever, and he climbed down to the ground before he
+said--
+
+"I don't care so much, but it do upset mother something crool."
+
+It is awfully difficult to console those in affliction. Oswald thought
+this, then he said--
+
+"I say; never mind if those beastly kids won't play with you. It isn't
+your fault, you know."
+
+"Nor it ain't father's neither," the boy said; "he broke his arm
+a-falling off of a rick, and he hadn't paid up his club money along of
+mother's new baby costing what it did when it come, so there warn't
+nothing--and what's a hare or two, or a partridge? It ain't as if it was
+pheasants as is as dear to rear as chicks."
+
+Oswald did not know what to say, so he got out his new
+pen-and-pencil-combined and said--
+
+"Look here! You can have this to keep if you like."
+
+The pale-eyed boy took it and looked at it and said--
+
+"You ain't foolin' me?"
+
+And Oswald said no he wasn't, but he felt most awfully rum and uncomfy,
+and though he wanted most frightfully to do something for the boy he
+felt as if he wanted to get away more than anything else, and he never
+was gladder in his life than when he saw Dora coming along, and she
+said--
+
+"You go back and play, Oswald. I'm tired and I'd like to sit down a
+bit."
+
+She got the boy to sit down beside her, and Oswald went back to the
+others.
+
+Games, however unusually splendid, have to come to an end. And when the
+games were over and it was tea, and the village children were sent away,
+and Oswald went to call Dora and the prisoner's son, he found nothing
+but Dora, and he saw at once, in his far-sighted way, that she had been
+crying.
+
+It was one of the A1est days we ever had, and the drive home was good,
+but Dora was horribly quiet, as though the victim of dark interior
+thoughts.
+
+And the next day she was but little better.
+
+We were all paddling on the sands, but Dora would not. And presently
+Alice left us and went back to Dora, and we all saw across the sandy
+waste that something was up.
+
+And presently Alice came down and said--
+
+"Dry your feet and legs and come to a council. Dora wants to tell you
+something."
+
+We dried our pink and sandy toes and we came to the council. Then Alice
+said: "I don't think H.O. is wanted at the council, it isn't anything
+amusing; you go and enjoy yourself by the sea, and catch the nice little
+crabs, H.O. dear."
+
+H.O. said: "You always want me to be out of everything. I can be
+councils as well as anybody else."
+
+"Oh, H.O.!" said Alice, in pleading tones, "not if I give you a
+halfpenny to go and buy bulls-eyes with?"
+
+So then he went, and Dora said--
+
+"I can't think how I could do it when you'd all trusted me so. And yet I
+couldn't help it. I remember Dicky saying when you decided to give it me
+to take care of--about me being the most trustworthy of all of us. I'm
+not fit for any one to speak to. But it did seem the really right thing
+at the time, it really and truly did. And now it all looks different."
+
+"What has she done?" Dicky asked this, but Oswald almost knew.
+
+"Tell them," said Dora, turning over on her front and hiding her face
+partly in her hands, and partly in the sand.
+
+"She's given all Miss Sandal's money to that little boy that the father
+of was in prison," said Alice.
+
+"It was one pound thirteen and sevenpence halfpenny," sobbed Dora.
+
+"You ought to have consulted us, I do think, really," said Dicky. "Of
+course, I see you're sorry now, but I do think that."
+
+"How could I consult you?" said Dora; "you were all playing Cat and
+Mouse, and he wanted to get home. I only wish you'd heard what he told
+me--that's all--about his mother being ill, and nobody letting her do
+any work because of where his father is, and his baby brother ill, poor
+little darling, and not enough to eat, and everything as awful as you
+can possibly think. I'll save up and pay it all back out of my own
+money. Only do forgive me, all of you, and say you don't despise me for
+a forger and embezzlementer. I couldn't help it."
+
+"I'm glad you couldn't," said the sudden voice of H.O., who had sneaked
+up on his young stomach unobserved by the council. "You shall have all
+my money too, Dora, and here's the bulls-eye halfpenny to begin with."
+He crammed it into her hand. "Listen? I should jolly well think I did
+listen," H.O. went on. "I've just as much right as anybody else to be in
+at a council, and I think Dora was quite right, and the rest of you are
+beasts not to say so, too, when you see how she's blubbing. Suppose it
+had been _your_ darling baby-brother ill, and nobody hadn't given you
+nothing when they'd got pounds and pounds in their silly pockets?"
+
+He now hugged Dora, who responded.
+
+"It wasn't her own money," said Dicky.
+
+"If you think _you're_ our darling baby-brother----" said Oswald.
+
+But Alice and Noël began hugging Dora and H.O., and Dicky and I felt it
+was no go. Girls have no right and honourable feelings about business,
+and little boys are the same.
+
+"All right," said Oswald rather bitterly, "if a majority of the council
+backs Dora up, we'll give in. But we must all save up and repay the
+money, that's all. We shall all be beastly short for ages."
+
+"Oh," said Dora, and now her sobs were beginning to turn into sniffs,
+"you don't know how I felt! And I've felt most awful ever since, but
+those poor, poor people----"
+
+At this moment Mrs. Bax came down on to the beach by the wooden steps
+that lead from the sea-wall where the grass grows between the stones.
+
+"Hullo!" she said, "hurt yourself, my Dora-dove?"
+
+Dora was rather a favourite of hers.
+
+"It's all right now," said Dora.
+
+"_That's_ all right," said Mrs. Bax, who has learnt in
+anti-what's-its-name climes the great art of not asking too many
+questions. "Mrs. Red House has come to lunch. She went this morning to
+see that boy's mother--you know, the boy the others wouldn't play with?"
+
+We said "Yes."
+
+"Well, Mrs. Red House has arranged to get the woman some work--like the
+dear she is--the woman told her that the little lady--and that's you,
+Dora--had given the little boy one pound thirteen and sevenpence."
+
+Mrs. Bax looked straight out to sea through her gold-rimmed spectacles,
+and went on--
+
+"That must have been about all you had among the lot of you. I don't
+want to jaw, but I think you're a set of little bricks, and I must say
+so or expire on the sandy spot."
+
+There was a painful silence.
+
+H.O. looked, "There, what did I tell you?" at the rest of us.
+
+Then Alice said, "We others had nothing to do with it. It was Dora's
+doing." I suppose she said this because we did not mean to tell Mrs. Bax
+anything about it, and if there was any brickiness in the act we wished
+Dora to have the consolement of getting the credit of it.
+
+But of course Dora couldn't stand that. She said--
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Bax, it was very wrong of me. It wasn't my own money, and I'd
+no business to, but I was so sorry for the little boy and his mother and
+his darling baby-brother. The money belonged to some one else."
+
+"Who?" Mrs. Bax asked ere she had time to remember the excellent
+Australian rule about not asking questions.
+
+And H.O. blurted out, "It was Miss Sandal's money--every penny," before
+we could stop him.
+
+Once again in our career concealment was at an end. The rule about
+questions was again unregarded, and the whole thing came out.
+
+It was a long story, and Mrs. Red House came out in the middle, but
+nobody could mind her hearing things.
+
+When she knew all, from the plain living to the pedlar who hadn't a
+license, Mrs. Bax spoke up like a man, and said several kind things that
+I won't write down.
+
+She then went on to say that her sister was not poor and needy at all,
+but that she lived plain and thought high just because she liked it!
+
+We were very disappointed as soon as we had got over our hardly
+believing any one could--like it, I mean--and then Mrs. Red House said--
+
+"Sir James gave me five pounds for the poor woman, and she sent back
+thirty of your shillings. She had spent three and sevenpence, and they
+had a lovely supper of boiled pork and greens last night. So now you've
+only got that to make up, and you can buy a most splendid present for
+Miss Sandal."
+
+It is difficult to choose presents for people who live plain and think
+high because they like it. But at last we decided to get books. They
+were written by a person called Emerson, and of a dull character, but
+the backs were very beautiful, and Miss Sandal was most awfully pleased
+with them when she came down to her cottage with her partially repaired
+brother, who had fallen off the scaffold when treating a bricklayer to
+tracts.
+
+This is the end of the things we did when we were at Lymchurch in Miss
+Sandal's house.
+
+It is the last story that the present author means ever to be the author
+of. So goodbye, if you have got as far as this.
+
+                                  Your affectionate author,
+                                                   OSWALD BASTABLE.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 39, "Noel" changed to "Noël" (cost?" Noël asked)
+
+Page 77, "peacable" changed to "peaceable" (the peaceable quietness)
+
+Page 162, "alway" changed to "alway" (they always sing in)
+
+Page 196, "Its" changed to "It's" (It's not much to do)
+
+Page 217, "But" changed to "but" (but he will just say)
+
+Page 221, "birds" changed to "bird's" (like a bird's)
+
+Page 289, "anenomes" changed to "anemones" (wood-anemones)
+
+Page 294, "Mr." changed to "Mrs." (talking to Mrs. Bax.)
+
+Varied hyphenation retained: armchair and arm-chair; boathouse and
+boat-house; halfway and half-way; postmark and post-mark; stationmaster
+and station-master; tablecloths and table-cloths; thoroughbred and
+thorough-bred; wastepaper and waste-paper; motor car; motor-car.
+
+Both Krikey and crikey and handkie and hankie were used and retained.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW TREASURE SEEKERS***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 25496-8.txt or 25496-8.zip *******
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, New Treasure Seekers, by E. (Edith) Nesbit,
+Illustrated by Gordon Browne and Lewis Baumer</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: New Treasure Seekers</p>
+<p>       or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune</p>
+<p>Author: E. (Edith) Nesbit</p>
+<p>Release Date: May 16, 2008  [eBook #25496]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW TREASURE SEEKERS***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Emmy,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1>NEW TREASURE SEEKERS</h1>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 395px;"><a name="front" id="front"></a>
+<img src="images/cover01.jpg" width="395" height="600" alt="Cover" title="Cover" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 243px;">
+<img src="images/gs01.png" width="243" height="400" alt="THE STAIR WAS OF STONE, ARCHED OVERHEAD LIKE CHURCHES." title="THE STAIR WAS OF STONE, ARCHED OVERHEAD LIKE CHURCHES." />
+<span class="caption">THE STAIR WAS OF STONE, ARCHED OVERHEAD LIKE CHURCHES.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>New<br />
+Treasure Seekers</h1>
+
+<h2>OR THE BASTABLE CHILDREN<br/>
+IN SEARCH OF A FORTUNE</h2>
+
+
+<h3>By</h3>
+
+<h2>E. NESBIT</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+AUTHOR OF "THE TREASURE SEEKERS,"<br />
+"THE WOULD-BE-GOODS," ETC.<br />
+<br />
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY GORDON<br />
+BROWNE AND LEWIS BAUMER<br />
+<br /><br /><br /></div>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 106px;">
+<img src="images/tp01.png" width="106" height="125" alt="Emblem" title="Emblem" />
+</div>
+<div class='center'><br />
+<br />
+<small>NEW YORK</small><br />
+FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY<br />
+<small>PUBLISHERS</small><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class='center'>
+TO<br />
+ARTHUR WATTS<br />
+<small>(OSWALD IN PARIS)</small><br />
+<small>FROM</small><br />
+E. NESBIT<br />
+<br />
+<i><small>Montparnasse, 1904.</small></i><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>NEW TREASURE<br />
+SEEKERS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THE ROAD TO ROME; OR, THE SILLY STOWAWAY</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THE CONSCIENCE-PUDDING</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>ARCHIBALD THE UNPLEASANT</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>OVER THE WATER TO CHINA</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THE YOUNG ANTIQUARIES</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_113">113</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THE INTREPID EXPLORER AND HIS LIEUTENANT</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THE TURK IN CHAINS; OR, RICHARD'S REVENGE</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THE GOLDEN GONDOLA</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_185">185</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THE FLYING LODGER</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_209">209</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THE SMUGGLER'S REVENGE</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_236">236</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>ZA&Iuml;DA, THE MYSTERIOUS PROPHETESS OF THE GOLDEN ORIENT</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_262">262</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THE LADY AND THE LICENSE; OR, FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_287">287</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THE POOR AND NEEDY</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_311">311</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="List of Illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THE STAIR WAS OF STONE, ARCHED OVERHEAD LIKE CHURCHES</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#front"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>DORA DID SOME WHITE SEWING</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_20">19</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THEY LAUGHED EVER SO</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_35">34</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>AND HE WAS AWFULLY RUDE TO THE SERVANTS</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_70">69</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THE OTHERS CAME UP BY THE ROPE-LADDER</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_74">73</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>SO OSWALD OPENED THE TRAP-DOOR AND SQUINTED DOWN, AND THERE WAS THAT ARCHIBALD</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_76">75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>"WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT?" HE ASKED. "NYANG, NYANG," JANE ANSWERED TAUNTINGLY</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_84">83</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>WHEN FATHER CAME HOME THERE WAS AN AWFUL ROW</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_86">85</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>IT SEEMS THE SAILOR WAS ASLEEP, BUT OF COURSE WE DID NOT KNOW, OR WE SHOULD NOT HAVE DISTURBED HIM</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_95">94</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>WE WENT ROUND A CORNER RATHER FAST, AND CAME SLAP INTO THE LARGEST WOMAN I HAVE EVER SEEN</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_100">99</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>IT WAS INDEED A CELESTIAL CHINAMAN IN DEEP DIFFICULTIES</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_104">103</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>ON THE SIDEBOARD WAS A BLUEY-WHITE CROCKERY IMAGE</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_104">107</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>OSWALD LISTENED AS CAREFULLY AS HE COULD, BUT DENNY ALWAYS BUZZES SO WHEN HE WHISPERS</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_118">117</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>IT WAS NOT TILL NEXT DAY THAT HE OWNED THAT THE TYPEWRITER HAD BEEN A FIEND IN DISGUISE</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_124">123</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THE STATIONMASTER AND PORTER LOOKED RESPECTFULLY AT US</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_128">127</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>HER VOICE WHEN SHE TOLD US WE WERE TRESPASSING WAS NOT SO FURIOUS</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_132">131</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THE LUNCH WAS A PERFECT DREAM OF A.1.-NESS</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_138">137</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>OSWALD DID NOT STRIKE THE NEXT MATCH CAREFULLY ENOUGH</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_146">145</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>WITH SCISSORS AND GAS PLIERS THEY CUT EVERY FUSE</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_158">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>"HI, BRIGANDS!" HE EXCLAIMED</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_168">167</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>IT WAS RATHER DIFFICULT TO GET ANYTHING THE SHAPE OF A TURKEY</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_174">173</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>WHEN THE DOOR WAS SHUT HE SAID, "I AIN'T GOT MUCH TO SAY, YOUNG GEMMEN"</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_180">179</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>THE FIVE OTHERS</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_192">191</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>OSWALD SAW THE DRIVER WINK AS HE PUT HIS BOOT ON THE STEP, AND THE PORTER WHO WAS OPENING THE CAB DOOR WINKED BACK</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_202">201</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>HE LOOKED AT OSWALD'S BOOTS</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_204">203</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>HE FETCHED DOWN HALF A DOZEN PLANKS AND THE WORKMAN</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_219">218</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>"HOW MUCH?" SAID THE GENTLEMAN SHORTLY</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_223">222</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>"THEN I'LL MAKE YOU!" HE SAID, CATCHING HOLD OF OSWALD</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_233">232</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>A COASTGUARD ORDERED US QUITE HARSHLY</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_245">244</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>SURE ENOUGH IT WAS SEA-WATER, AS THE UNAMIABLE ONE SAID WHEN HE HAD TASTED IT</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_260">259</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>"I SAY, BEALIE DEAR, YOU'VE GOT A BOOK UP AT YOUR PLACE"</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_266">265</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>ALICE BEAT THE DONKEY FROM THE CART, THE REST SHOUTED</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_273">272</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='hang1'>"WE'VE GOT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS," SAID NO&Euml;L</div></td><td align='right' valign='bottom'><a href="#Page_281">280</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
+<h2><i>THE ROAD TO ROME; OR, THE<br />
+SILLY STOWAWAY</i></h2>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">We</span> Bastables have only two uncles, and
+neither of them, are our own natural-born
+relatives. One is a great-uncle, and the other
+is the uncle from his birth of Albert, who used
+to live next door to us in the Lewisham Road.
+When we first got to know him (it was over
+some baked potatoes, and is quite another
+story) we called him Albert-next-door's-Uncle,
+and then Albert's uncle for short. But
+Albert's uncle and my father joined in taking
+a jolly house in the country, called the Moat
+House, and we stayed there for our summer
+holidays; and it was there, through an accident
+to a pilgrim with peas in his shoes&mdash;that's
+another story too&mdash;that we found
+Albert's uncle's long-lost love; and as she
+was very old indeed&mdash;twenty-six next birthday&mdash;and
+he was ever so much older in the
+vale of years, he had to get married almost
+directly, and it was fixed for about Christmas-time.
+And when our holidays came the
+whole six of us went down to the Moat
+House with Father and Albert's uncle. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+never had a Christmas in the country before.
+It was simply ripping. And the long-lost love&mdash;her
+name was Miss Ashleigh, but we were
+allowed to call her Aunt Margaret even before
+the wedding made it really legal for us to do
+so&mdash;she and her jolly clergyman brother used
+to come over, and sometimes we went to the
+Cedars, where they live, and we had games
+and charades, and hide-and-seek, and Devil
+in the Dark, which is a game girls pretend
+to like, and very few do really, and crackers
+and a Christmas-tree for the village children,
+and everything you can jolly well think of.</div>
+
+<p>And all the time, whenever we went to the
+Cedars, there was all sorts of silly fuss going
+on about the beastly wedding; boxes coming
+from London with hats and jackets in, and
+wedding presents&mdash;all glassy and silvery, or
+else brooches and chains&mdash;and clothes sent
+down from London to choose from. I can't
+think how a lady can want so many petticoats
+and boots and things just because she's
+going to be married. No man would think
+of getting twenty-four shirts and twenty-four
+waistcoats, and so on, just to be married
+in.</p>
+
+<p>"It's because they're going to Rome, I
+think," Alice said, when we talked it over
+before the fire in the kitchen the day Mrs.
+Pettigrew went to see her aunt, and we were
+allowed to make toffee. "You see, in Rome
+you can only buy Roman clothes, and I think
+they're all stupid bright colours&mdash;at least I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+know the sashes are. You stir now, Oswald.
+My face is all burnt black."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald took the spoon, though it was really
+not his turn by three; but he is one whose
+nature is so that he cannot make a fuss about
+little things&mdash;and he knows he can make
+toffee.</p>
+
+<p>"Lucky hounds," H.O. said, "to be going to
+Rome. I wish I was."</p>
+
+<p>"Hounds isn't polite, H.O., dear," Dora said;
+and H.O. said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Well, lucky bargees, then."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the dream of my life to go to Rome,"
+No&euml;l said. No&euml;l is our poet brother. "Just
+think of what the man says in the 'Roman
+Road.' I wish they'd take me."</p>
+
+<p>"They won't," Dicky said. "It costs a
+most awful lot. I heard Father saying so
+only yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"It would only be the fare," No&euml;l answered;
+"and I'd go third, or even in a cattle-truck, or
+a luggage van. And when I got there I could
+easily earn my own living. I'd make ballads
+and sing them in the streets. The Italians
+would give me lyres&mdash;that's the Italian kind
+of shilling, they spell it with an <i>i</i>. It shows
+how poetical they are out there, their calling
+it that."</p>
+
+<p>"But you couldn't make Italian poetry,"
+H.O. said, staring at No&euml;l with his mouth open.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know so much about that,"
+No&euml;l said. "I could jolly soon learn anyway,
+and just to begin with I'd do it in English.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+There are sure to be some people who would
+understand. And if they didn't, don't you
+think their warm Southern hearts would be
+touched to see a pale, slender, foreign figure
+singing plaintive ballads in an unknown
+tongue? I do. Oh! they'd chuck along the
+lyres fast enough&mdash;they're not hard and cold
+like North people. Why, every one here is a
+brewer, or a baker, or a banker, or a butcher,
+or something dull. Over there they're all
+bandits, or vineyardiners, or play the guitar,
+or something, and they crush the red grapes
+and dance and laugh in the sun&mdash;you know
+jolly well they do."</p>
+
+<p>"This toffee's about done," said Oswald suddenly.
+"H.O., shut your silly mouth and get
+a cupful of cold water." And then, what
+with dropping a little of the toffee into the
+water to see if it was ready, and pouring some
+on a plate that wasn't buttered and not being
+able to get it off again when it was cold without
+breaking the plate, and the warm row
+there was about its being one of the best
+dinner-service ones, the wild romances of
+No&euml;l's poetical intellect went out of our
+heads altogether; and it was not till later,
+and when deep in the waters of affliction,
+that they were brought back to us.</p>
+
+<p>Next day H.O. said to Dora, "I want to
+speak to you all by yourself and me." So they
+went into the secret staircase that creaks and
+hasn't been secret now for countless years;
+and after that Dora did some white sewing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+she wouldn't let us look at, and H.O. helped
+her.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 321px;">
+<img src="images/gs02.png" width="321" height="400" alt="DORA DID SOME WHITE SEWING." title="DORA DID SOME WHITE SEWING." />
+<span class="caption">DORA DID SOME WHITE SEWING.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"It's another wedding present, you may
+depend," Dicky said&mdash;"a beastly surprise, I
+shouldn't wonder." And no more was said.
+The rest of us were busy skating on the moat,
+for it was now freezing hard. Dora never did
+care for skating; she says it hurts her feet.</p>
+
+<p>And now Christmas and Boxing Day passed
+like a radiating dream, and it was the wedding-day.
+We all had to go to the bride's mother's
+house before the wedding, so as to go to
+church with the wedding party. The girls
+had always wanted to be somebody's bridesmaids,
+and now they were&mdash;in white cloth
+coats like coachmen, with lots of little capes,
+and white beaver bonnets. They didn't look
+so bad, though rather as if they were in a
+Christmas card; and their dresses were white
+silk like pocket-handkerchiefs under the long
+coats. And their shoes had real silver buckles
+our great Indian uncle gave them. H.O.
+went back just as the waggonette was starting,
+and came out with a big brown-paper
+parcel. We thought it was the secret surprise
+present Dora had been making, and, indeed,
+when I asked her she nodded. We little
+recked what it really was, or how our young
+brother was going to shove himself forward
+once again. He <i>will</i> do it. Nothing you say
+is of any lasting use.</p>
+
+<p>There were a great many people at the
+wedding&mdash;quite crowds. There was lots to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+eat and drink, and though it was all cold, it
+did not matter, because there were blazing
+fires in every fireplace in the house, and the
+place all decorated with holly and mistletoe
+and things. Every one seemed to enjoy
+themselves very much, except Albert's uncle
+and his blushing bride; and they looked
+desperate. Every one said how sweet she
+looked, but Oswald thought she looked as if
+she didn't like being married as much as she
+expected. She was not at all a blushing bride
+really; only the tip of her nose got pink,
+because it was rather cold in the church.
+But she is very jolly.</p>
+
+<p>Her reverend but nice brother read the
+marriage service. He reads better than any
+one I know, but he is not a bit of a prig
+really, when you come to know him.</p>
+
+<p>When the rash act was done Albert's uncle
+and his bride went home in a carriage all by
+themselves, and then we had the lunch and
+drank the health of the bride in real
+champagne, though Father said we kids must
+only have just a taste. I'm sure Oswald, for
+one, did not want any more; one taste was
+quite enough. Champagne is like soda-water
+with medicine in it. The sherry we put sugar
+in once was much more decent.</p>
+
+<p>Then Miss Ashleigh&mdash;I mean Mrs. Albert's
+uncle&mdash;went away and took off her white
+dress and came back looking much warmer.
+Dora heard the housemaid say afterwards
+that the cook had stopped the bride on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+stairs with "a basin of hot soup, that would
+take no denial, because the bride, poor dear
+young thing, not a bite or sup had passed her
+lips that day." We understood then why she
+had looked so unhappy. But Albert's uncle
+had had a jolly good breakfast&mdash;fish and eggs
+and bacon and three goes of marmalade. So
+it was not hunger made him sad. Perhaps he
+was thinking what a lot of money it cost to
+be married and go to Rome.</p>
+
+<p>A little before the bride went to change,
+H.O. got up and reached his brown-paper
+parcel from under the sideboard and sneaked
+out. We thought he might have let us see it
+given, whatever it was. And Dora said she had
+understood he meant to; but it was his secret.</p>
+
+<p>The bride went away looking quite comfy
+in a furry cloak, and Albert's uncle cheered
+up at the last and threw off the burden of his
+cares and made a joke. I forget what it was;
+it wasn't a very good one, but it showed he
+was trying to make the best of things.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Bridal Sufferers drove away, with
+the luggage on a cart&mdash;heaps and heaps of it,
+and we all cheered and threw rice and
+slippers. Mrs. Ashleigh and some other old
+ladies cried.</p>
+
+<p>And then every one said, "What a pretty
+wedding!" and began to go. And when our
+waggonette came round we all began to get
+in. And suddenly Father said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Where's H.O.?" And we looked round.
+He was in absence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Fetch him along sharp&mdash;some of you,"
+Father said; "I don't want to keep the horses
+standing here in the cold all day."</p>
+
+<p>So Oswald and Dicky went to fetch him
+along. We thought he might have wandered
+back to what was left of the lunch&mdash;for he is
+young and he does not always know better.
+But he was not there, and Oswald did not
+even take a crystallised fruit in passing. He
+might easily have done this, and no one would
+have minded, so it would not have been
+wrong. But it would have been ungentlemanly.
+Dicky did not either. H.O. was not
+there.</p>
+
+<p>We went into the other rooms, even the
+one the old ladies were crying in, but of
+course we begged their pardons. And at
+last into the kitchen, where the servants
+were smart with white bows and just sitting
+down to their dinner, and Dicky said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I say, cookie love, have you seen H.O.?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't come here with your imperence!"
+the cook said, but she was pleased with
+Dicky's unmeaning compliment all the same.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> see him," said the housemaid. "He
+was colloguing with the butcher in the yard
+a bit since. He'd got a brown-paper parcel.
+Perhaps he got a lift home."</p>
+
+<p>So we went and told Father, and about the
+white present in the parcel.</p>
+
+<p>"I expect he was ashamed to give it after
+all," Oswald said, "so he hooked off home
+with it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And we got into the wagonette.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't a present, though," Dora said;
+"it was a different kind of surprise&mdash;but it
+really is a secret."</p>
+
+<p>Our good Father did not command her to
+betray her young brother.</p>
+
+<p>But when we got home H.O. wasn't there.
+Mrs. Pettigrew hadn't seen him, and he was
+nowhere about. Father biked back to the
+Cedars to see if he'd turned up. No. Then
+all the gentlemen turned out to look for him
+through the length and breadth of the
+land.</p>
+
+<p>"He's too old to be stolen by gipsies," Alice
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"And too ugly," said Dicky.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh <i>don't!</i>" said both the girls; "and now
+when he's lost, too!"</p>
+
+<p>We had looked for a long time before Mrs.
+Pettigrew came in with a parcel she said the
+butcher had left. It was not addressed, but
+we knew it was H.O.'s, because of the label
+on the paper from the shop where Father gets
+his shirts. Father opened it at once.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the parcel we found H.O.'s boots and
+braces, his best hat and his chest-protector.
+And Oswald felt as if we had found his
+skeleton.</p>
+
+<p>"Any row with any of you?" Father asked.
+But there hadn't been any.</p>
+
+<p>"Was he worried about anything? Done
+anything wrong, and afraid to own up?"</p>
+
+<p>We turned cold, for we knew what he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+meant. That parcel was so horribly like the
+lady's hat and gloves that she takes off on the
+seashore and leaves with a letter saying it has
+come to this.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>No</i>, <i>no</i>, <span class="smcap">no</span>, NO!" we all said. "He was
+perfectly jolly all the morning."</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly Dicky leaned on the table
+and one of H.O.'s boots toppled over, and
+there was something white inside. It was a
+letter. H.O. must have written it before we
+left home. It said&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Father and Every One</span>,&mdash;I am
+going to be a Clown. When I am rich and
+reveared I will come back rolling.</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 3em;">"Your affectionate son,</span><br />
+"<span class="smcap">Horace Octavius Bastable.</span>"<br />
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Rolling?" Father said.</p>
+
+<p>"He means rolling in money," Alice said.
+Oswald noticed that every one round the
+table where H.O.'s boots were dignifiedly
+respected as they lay, was a horrid pale
+colour, like when the salt is thrown into
+snapdragons.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear!" Dora cried, "that was it. He
+asked me to make him a clown's dress and
+keep it deeply secret. He said he wanted to
+surprise Aunt Margaret and Albert's uncle.
+And I didn't think it was wrong," said Dora,
+screwing up her face; she then added, "Oh
+dear, oh dear, oh, oh!" and with these concluding
+remarks she began to howl.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Father thumped her on the back in an
+absent yet kind way.</p>
+
+<p>"But where's he gone?" he said, not to
+any one in particular. "I saw the butcher; he
+said H.O. asked him to take a parcel home
+and went back round the Cedars."</p>
+
+<p>Here Dicky coughed and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't think he meant anything, but the
+day after No&euml;l was talking about singing
+ballads in Rome, and getting poet's lyres
+given him, H.O. did say if No&euml;l had been
+really keen on the Roman lyres and things he
+could easily have been a stowaway, and gone
+unknown."</p>
+
+<p>"A stowaway!" said my Father, sitting
+down suddenly and hard.</p>
+
+<p>"In Aunt Margaret's big dress basket&mdash;the
+one she let him hide in when we had hide-and-seek
+there. He talked a lot about it after
+No&euml;l had said that about the lyres&mdash;and the
+Italians being so poetical, you know. You
+remember that day we had toffee."</p>
+
+<p>My Father is prompt and decisive in action,
+so is his eldest son.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm off to the Cedars," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Do let me come, Father," said the decisive
+son. "You may want to send a message."</p>
+
+<p>So in a moment Father was on his bike and
+Oswald on the step&mdash;a dangerous but delightful
+spot&mdash;and off to the Cedars.</p>
+
+<p>"Have your teas; and <i>don't</i> any more of
+you get lost, and don't sit up if we're late,"
+Father howled to them as we rushed away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+How glad then the thoughtful Oswald was
+that he was the eldest. It was very cold in
+the dusk on the bicycle, but Oswald did not
+complain.</p>
+
+<p>At the Cedars my father explained in a few
+manly but well-chosen words, and the apartment
+of the dear departed bride was searched.</p>
+
+<p>"Because," said my father, "if H.O. really
+was little ass enough to get into that basket,
+he must have turned out something to make
+room for himself."</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough, when they came to look, there
+was a great bundle rolled in a sheet under
+the bed&mdash;all lace things and petticoats and
+ribbons and dressing-gowns and ladies'
+flummery.</p>
+
+<p>"If you will put the things in something
+else, I'll catch the express to Dover and take
+it with me," Father said to Mrs. Ashleigh; and
+while she packed the things he explained to
+some of the crying old ladies who had been
+unable to leave off, how sorry he was that a
+son of his&mdash;but you know the sort of thing.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald said: "Father, I wish you'd let me
+come too. I won't be a bit of trouble."</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was partly because my Father
+didn't want to let me walk home in the dark,
+and he didn't want to worry the Ashleighs
+any more by asking them to send me home.
+He said this was why, but I hope it was his
+loving wish to have his prompt son, so like
+himself in his decisiveness, with him.</p>
+
+<p>We went.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was an anxious journey. We knew how
+far from pleased the bride would be to find
+no dressing-gowns and ribbons, but only H.O.
+crying and cross and dirty, as likely as not,
+when she opened the basket at the hotel at
+Dover.</p>
+
+<p>Father smoked to pass the time, but Oswald
+had not so much as a peppermint or a bit of
+Spanish liquorice to help him through the
+journey. Yet he bore up.</p>
+
+<p>When we got out at Dover there were Mr.
+and Mrs. Albert's uncle on the platform.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo," said Albert's uncle. "What's up?
+Nothing wrong at home, I hope."</p>
+
+<p>"We've only lost H.O.," said my father.
+"You don't happen to have him with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; but you're joking," said the bride.
+"We've lost a dress-basket."</p>
+
+<p><i>Lost a dress-basket!</i> The words struck us
+dumb, but my father recovered speech and
+explained. The bride was very glad when we
+said we had brought her ribbons and things,
+but we stood in anxious gloom, for now H.O.
+was indeed lost. The dress-basket might be
+on its way to Liverpool, or rocking on the
+Channel, and H.O. might never be found
+again. Oswald did not say these things. It
+is best to hold your jaw when you want to
+see a thing out, and are liable to be sent to
+bed at a strange hotel if any one happens to
+remember you.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly the station master came
+with a telegram.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It said: "A dress-basket without label at
+Cannon Street detained for identification
+suspicious sounds from inside detain
+inquirers dynamite machine suspected."</p>
+
+<p>He did not show us this till my Father had
+told him about H.O., which it took some time
+for him to believe, and then he did and
+laughed, and said he would wire them to get
+the dynamite machine to speak, and if so, to
+take it out and keep it till its Father called for
+it.</p>
+
+<p>So back we went to London, with hearts a
+little lighter, but not gay, for we were a very
+long time from the last things we had had to
+eat. And Oswald was almost sorry he had
+not taken those crystallised fruits.</p>
+
+<p>It was quite late when we got to Cannon
+Street, and we went straight into the cloakroom,
+and there was the man in charge, a
+very jolly chap, sitting on a stool. And there
+was H.O., the guilty stowaway, dressed in a
+red-and-white clown's dress, very dusty, and
+his face as dirty as I have ever seen it, sitting
+on some one else's tin box, with his feet on
+some body else's portmanteau, eating bread
+and cheese, and drinking ale out of a can.</p>
+
+<p>My Father claimed him at once, and Oswald
+identified the basket. It was very large.
+There was a tray on the top with hats in it,
+and H.O. had this on top of him. We all
+went to bed in Cannon Street Hotel. My
+Father said nothing to H.O. that night.
+When we were in bed I tried to get H.O. to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+tell me all about it, but he was too sleepy
+and cross. It was the beer and the knocking
+about in the basket, I suppose. Next day we
+went back to the Moat House, where the raving
+anxiousness of the others had been cooled
+the night before by a telegram from Dover.</p>
+
+<p>My Father said he would speak to H.O. in
+the evening. It is very horrid not to be
+spoken to at once and get it over. But H.O.
+certainly deserved something.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to tell this tale, because so much
+of it happened all at once but at different
+places. But this is what H.O. said to us
+about it. He said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Don't bother&mdash;let me alone."</p>
+
+<p>But we were all kind and gentle, and at
+last we got it out of him what had happened.
+He doesn't tell a story right from the
+beginning like Oswald and some of the
+others do, but from his disjunctured words
+the author has made the following narration.
+This is called editing, I believe.</p>
+
+<p>"It was all No&euml;l's fault," H.O. said; "what
+did he want to go jawing about Rome for?&mdash;and
+a clown's as good as a beastly poet, anyhow!
+You remember that day we made toffee? Well, I
+thought of it then."</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't tell us."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I did. I half told Dicky. He never
+said don't, or you'd better not, or gave me
+any good advice or anything. It's his fault
+as much as mine. Father ought to speak to
+him to-night the same as me&mdash;and No&euml;l, too."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We bore with him just then because we
+wanted to hear the story. And we made him
+go on.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;so I thought if No&euml;l's a cowardy
+custard I'm not&mdash;and I wasn't afraid of being
+in the basket, though it was quite dark till
+I cut the air-holes with my knife in the
+railway van. I think I cut the string off the
+label. It fell off afterwards, and I saw it
+through the hole, but of course I couldn't say
+anything. I thought they'd look after their
+silly luggage better than that. It was all
+their fault I was lost."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell us how you did it, H.O. dear," Dora
+said; "never mind about it being everybody
+else's fault."</p>
+
+<p>"It's yours as much as any one's, if you
+come to that," H.O. said. "You made me
+the clown dress when I asked you. You never
+said a word about not. So there!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, H.O., you <i>are</i> unkind!" Dora said.
+"You know you said it was for a surprise for
+the bridal pair."</p>
+
+<p>"So it would have been, if they'd found me
+at Rome, and I'd popped up like what I meant
+to&mdash;like a jack-in-the-box&mdash;and said, 'Here we
+are again!' in my clown's clothes, at them.
+But it's all spoiled, and father's going to speak
+to me this evening." H.O. sniffed every time
+he stopped speaking. But we did not correct
+him then. We wanted to hear about everything.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you tell me straight out what
+you were going to do?" Dicky asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Because you'd jolly well have shut me up.
+You always do if I want to do anything you
+haven't thought of yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you take with you, H.O.?"
+asked Alice in a hurry, for H.O. was now
+sniffing far beyond a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'd saved a lot of grub, only I forgot
+it at the last. It's under the chest of drawers
+in our room. And I had my knife&mdash;and I
+changed into the clown's dress in the cupboard
+at the Ashleighs&mdash;over my own things
+because I thought it would be cold. And
+then I emptied the rotten girl's clothes out
+and hid them&mdash;and the top-hatted tray I just
+put it on a chair near, and I got into the
+basket, and I lifted the tray up over my head
+and sat down and fitted it down over me&mdash;it's
+got webbing bars, you know, across it. And
+none of you would ever have thought of it,
+let alone doing it."</p>
+
+<p>"I should hope not," Dora said, but H.O.
+went on unhearing.</p>
+
+<p>"I began to think perhaps I wished I hadn't
+directly they strapped up the basket. It was
+beastly hot and stuffy&mdash;I had to cut an air-hole
+in the cart, and I cut my thumb; it was
+so bumpety. And they threw me about as if
+I was coals&mdash;and wrong way up as often as
+not. And the train was awful wobbly, and I
+felt so sick, and if I'd had the grub I couldn't
+have eaten it. I had a bottle of water. And
+that was all right till I dropped the cork, and
+I couldn't find it in the dark till the water<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+got upset, and then I found the cork that
+minute.</p>
+
+<p>"And when they dumped the basket on to
+the platform I was so glad to sit still a minute
+without being jogged I nearly went to sleep.
+And then I looked out, and the label was off,
+and lying close by. And then some one gave
+the basket a kick&mdash;big brute, I'd like to kick
+him!&mdash;and said, 'What's this here?' And I
+daresay I did squeak&mdash;like a rabbit-noise, you
+know&mdash;and then some one said, 'Sounds like
+live-stock, don't it? No label.' And he was
+standing on the label all the time. I saw the
+string sticking out under his nasty boot. And
+then they trundled me off somewhere, on a
+wheelbarrow it felt like, and dumped me down
+again in a dark place&mdash;and I couldn't see
+anything more."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," said the thoughtful Oswald,
+"what made them think you were a dynamite
+machine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that was awful!" H.O. said. "It was
+my watch. I wound it up, just for something
+to do. You know the row it makes since it
+was broken, and I heard some one say, 'Shish!
+what's that?' and then, 'Sounds like an infernal
+machine'&mdash;don't go shoving me, Dora,
+it was him said it, not me&mdash;and then, 'If I
+was the inspector I'd dump it down in the
+river, so I would. Any way, let's shift it.'
+But the other said, 'Let well alone,' so I
+wasn't dumped any more. And they fetched
+another man, and there was a heap of jaw,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+and I heard them say 'Police,' so I let them
+have it."</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 471px;">
+<img src="images/gs03.png" width="471" height="400" alt="THEY LAUGHED EVER SO." title="THEY LAUGHED EVER SO." />
+<span class="caption">THEY LAUGHED EVER SO.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"What <i>did</i> you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I just kicked about in the basket, and
+I heard them all start off, and I shouted, 'Hi,
+here! let me out, can't you!'"</p>
+
+<p>"And did they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but not for ever so long, I had to
+jaw at them through the cracks of the basket.
+And when they opened it there was quite a
+crowd, and they laughed ever so, and gave me
+bread and cheese, and said I was a plucky
+youngster&mdash;and I am, and I do wish Father
+wouldn't put things off so. He might just as
+well have spoken to me this morning. And
+I can't see I've done anything so awful&mdash;and
+it's all your faults for not looking after me.
+Aren't I your little brother? and it's your duty
+to see I do what's right. You've told me so
+often enough."</p>
+
+<p>These last words checked the severe reprimand
+trembling on the hitherto patient
+Oswald's lips. And then H.O. began to cry,
+and Dora nursed him, though generally he is
+much too big for this and knows it. And he
+went to sleep on her lap, and said he didn't
+want any dinner.</p>
+
+<p>When it came to Father's speaking to H.O.
+that evening it never came off, because H.O.
+was ill in bed, not sham, you know, but real,
+send-for-the-doctor ill. The doctor said it was
+fever from chill and excitement, but I think
+myself it was very likely the things he ate at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+lunch, and the shaking up, and then the
+bread and cheese, and the beer out of a can.</p>
+
+<p>He was ill a week. When he was better,
+not much was said. My Father, who is the
+justest man in England, said the boy had been
+punished enough&mdash;and so he had, for he
+missed going to the pantomime, and to
+"Shock-Headed Peter" at the Garrick Theatre,
+which is far and away the best play that ever
+was done, and quite different from any other
+acting I ever saw. They are exactly like real
+boys; I think they must have been reading
+about us. And he had to take a lot of the
+filthiest medicine I ever tasted. I wonder if
+Father told the doctor to make it nasty on
+purpose? A woman would have directly, but
+gentlemen are not generally so sly. Any way,
+you live and learn. None of us would now
+ever consent to be a stowaway, no matter who
+wanted us to, and I don't think H.O.'s very
+likely to do it again.</p>
+
+<p>The only <i>meant</i> punishment he had was
+seeing the clown's dress burnt before his eyes
+by Father. He had bought it all with his own
+saved-up money, red trimmings and all.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, when he got well we soon taught
+him not to say again that it was any of our
+faults. As he owned himself, he <i>is</i> our little
+brother, and we are not going to stand that
+kind of cheek from <i>him</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p>
+<h2><i>THE CONSCIENCE-PUDDING</i></h2>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">It</span> was Christmas, nearly a year after Mother
+died. I cannot write about Mother&mdash;but I
+will just say one thing. If she had only been
+away for a little while, and not for always,
+we shouldn't have been so keen on having a
+Christmas. I didn't understand this then,
+but I am much older now, and I think it was
+just because everything was so different and
+horrid we felt we <i>must</i> do something; and
+perhaps we were not particular enough <i>what</i>.
+Things make you much more unhappy when
+you loaf about than when you are doing
+events.</div>
+
+<p>Father had to go away just about Christmas.
+He had heard that his wicked partner, who
+ran away with his money, was in France,
+and he thought he could catch him, but
+really he was in Spain, where catching criminals
+is never practised. We did not know
+this till afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>Before Father went away he took Dora
+and Oswald into his study, and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I'm awfully sorry I've got to go away,
+but it is very serious business, and I must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+go. You'll be good while I'm away, kiddies,
+won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>We promised faithfully. Then he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There are reasons&mdash;you wouldn't understand
+if I tried to tell you&mdash;but you can't
+have much of a Christmas this year. But
+I've told Matilda to make you a good plain
+pudding. Perhaps next Christmas will be
+brighter."</p>
+
+<p>(It was; for the next Christmas saw us the
+affluent nephews and nieces of an Indian
+uncle&mdash;but that is quite another story, as
+good old Kipling says.)</p>
+
+<p>When Father had been seen off at Lewisham
+Station with his bags, and a plaid rug
+in a strap, we came home again, and it was
+horrid. There were papers and things littered
+all over his room where he had packed. We
+tidied the room up&mdash;it was the only thing we
+could do for him. It was Dicky who accidentally
+broke his shaving-glass, and H.O.
+made a paper boat out of a letter we found
+out afterwards Father particularly wanted to
+keep. This took us some time, and when we
+went into the nursery the fire was black out,
+and we could not get it alight again, even with
+the whole <i>Daily Chronicle</i>. Matilda, who was
+our general then, was out, as well as the fire,
+so we went and sat in the kitchen. There is
+always a good fire in kitchens. The kitchen
+hearthrug was not nice to sit on, so we spread
+newspapers on it.</p>
+
+<p>It was sitting in the kitchen, I think, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+brought to our minds my Father's parting
+words&mdash;about the pudding, I mean.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald said, "Father said we couldn't have
+much of a Christmas for secret reasons, and
+he said he had told Matilda to make us a plain
+pudding."</p>
+
+<p>The plain pudding instantly cast its shadow
+over the deepening gloom of our young
+minds.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder <i>how</i> plain she'll make it?" Dicky
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"As plain as plain, you may depend," said
+Oswald. "A here-am-I-where-are-you pudding&mdash;that's
+her sort."</p>
+
+<p>The others groaned, and we gathered closer
+round the fire till the newspapers rustled
+madly.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I could make a pudding that
+<i>wasn't</i> plain, if I tried," Alice said. "Why
+shouldn't we?"</p>
+
+<p>"No chink," said Oswald, with brief sadness.</p>
+
+<p>"How much would it cost?" <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Noel'">No&euml;l</ins> asked,
+and added that Dora had twopence and H.O.
+had a French halfpenny.</p>
+
+<p>Dora got the cookery-book out of the dresser
+drawer, where it lay doubled up among clothes-pegs,
+dirty dusters, scallop shells, string, penny
+novelettes, and the dining-room corkscrew.
+The general we had then&mdash;it seemed as if she
+did all the cooking on the cookery-book
+instead of on the baking-board, there were
+traces of so many bygone meals upon its
+pages.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't say Christmas pudding at all,"
+said Dora.</p>
+
+<p>"Try plum," the resourceful Oswald instantly
+counselled.</p>
+
+<p>Dora turned the greasy pages anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"'Plum-pudding, 518.</p>
+
+<p>"'A rich, with flour, 517.</p>
+
+<p>"'Christmas, 517.</p>
+
+<p>"'Cold brandy sauce for, 241.'</p>
+
+<p>"We shouldn't care about that, so it's no
+use looking.</p>
+
+<p>"'Good without eggs, 518.</p>
+
+<p>"'Plain, 518.'</p>
+
+<p>"We don't want <i>that</i> anyhow. 'Christmas,
+517'&mdash;that's the one."</p>
+
+<p>It took her a long time to find the page.
+Oswald got a shovel of coals and made up the
+fire. It blazed up like the devouring elephant
+the <i>Daily Telegraph</i> always calls it. Then
+Dora read&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Christmas plum-pudding. Time six hours.'"</p>
+
+<p>"To eat it in?" said H.O.</p>
+
+<p>"No, silly! to make it."</p>
+
+<p>"Forge ahead, Dora," Dicky replied.</p>
+
+<p>Dora went on&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'2072. One pound and a half of raisins;
+half a pound of currants; three quarters of a
+pound of breadcrumbs; half a pound of flour;
+three-quarters of a pound of beef suet; nine
+eggs; one wine glassful of brandy; half a
+pound of citron and orange peel; half a
+nutmeg; and a little ground ginger.' I wonder
+<i>how</i> little ground ginger."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A teacupful would be enough, I think,"
+Alice said; "we must not be extravagant."</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't got anything yet to be extravagant
+<i>with</i>," said Oswald, who had toothache
+that day. "What would you do with the
+things if you'd got them?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'd 'chop the suet as fine as possible'&mdash;I
+wonder how fine that is?" replied Dora and
+the book together&mdash;"'and mix it with the
+breadcrumbs and flour; add the currants
+washed and dried.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Not starched, then," said Alice.</p>
+
+<p>"'The citron and orange peel cut into thin
+slices'&mdash;I wonder what they call thin?
+Matilda's thin bread-and-butter is quite
+different from what I mean by it&mdash;'and the
+raisins stoned and divided.' How many heaps
+would you divide them into?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seven, I suppose," said Alice; "one for each
+person and one for the pot&mdash;I mean pudding."</p>
+
+<p>"'Mix it all well together with the grated
+nutmeg and ginger. Then stir in nine eggs
+well beaten, and the brandy'&mdash;we'll leave that
+out, I think&mdash;'and again mix it thoroughly
+together that every ingredient may be
+moistened; put it into a buttered mould, tie
+over tightly, and boil for six hours. Serve it
+ornamented with holly and brandy poured
+over it.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I should think holly and brandy poured
+over it would be simply beastly," said Dicky.</p>
+
+<p>"I expect the book knows. I daresay holly
+and water would do as well though. 'This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+pudding may be made a month before'&mdash;it's no
+use reading about that though, because we've
+only got four days to Christmas."</p>
+
+<p>"It's no use reading about any of it,"
+said Oswald, with thoughtful repeatedness,
+"because we haven't got the things, and we
+haven't got the coin to get them."</p>
+
+<p>"We might get the tin somehow," said
+Dicky.</p>
+
+<p>"There must be lots of kind people who
+would subscribe to a Christmas pudding for
+poor children who hadn't any," No&euml;l said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm going skating at Penn's," said
+Oswald. "It's no use thinking about puddings.
+We must put up with it plain."</p>
+
+<p>So he went, and Dicky went with him.</p>
+
+<p>When they returned to their home in the
+evening the fire had been lighted again in the
+nursery, and the others were just having tea.
+We toasted our bread-and-butter on the bare
+side, and it gets a little warm among the
+butter. This is called French toast. "I like
+English better, but it is more expensive,"
+Alice said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Matilda is in a frightful rage about your
+putting those coals on the kitchen fire, Oswald.
+She says we shan't have enough to last over
+Christmas as it is. And Father gave her a
+talking to before he went about them&mdash;asked
+her if she ate them, she says&mdash;but I don't
+believe he did. Anyway, she's locked the coal-cellar
+door, and she's got the key in her pocket.
+I don't see how we can boil the pudding."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What pudding?" said Oswald dreamily.
+He was thinking of a chap he had seen at
+Penn's who had cut the date 1899 on the ice
+with four strokes.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The</i> pudding," Alice said. "Oh, we've had
+such a time, Oswald! First Dora and I went to
+the shops to find out exactly what the pudding
+would cost&mdash;it's only two and elevenpence
+halfpenny, counting in the holly."</p>
+
+<p>"It's no good," Oswald repeated; he is very
+patient and will say the same thing any number
+of times. "It's no good. You know we've
+got no tin."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said Alice, "but No&euml;l and I went out,
+and we called at some of the houses in Granville
+Park and Dartmouth Hill&mdash;and we got a
+lot of sixpences and shillings, besides pennies,
+and one old gentleman gave us half-a-crown.
+He was so nice. Quite bald, with a knitted
+red and blue waistcoat. We've got eight-and-sevenpence."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald did not feel quite sure Father would
+like us to go asking for shillings and sixpences,
+or even half-crowns from strangers,
+but he did not say so. The money had been
+asked for and got, and it couldn't be helped&mdash;and
+perhaps he wanted the pudding&mdash;I am not
+able to remember exactly why he did not speak
+up and say, "This is wrong," but anyway he
+didn't.</p>
+
+<p>Alice and Dora went out and bought the
+things next morning. They bought double
+quantities, so that it came to five shillings and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+elevenpence, and was enough to make a
+noble pudding. There was a lot of holly left
+over for decorations. We used very little for
+the sauce. The money that was left we spent
+very anxiously in other things to eat, such as
+dates and figs and toffee.</p>
+
+<p>We did not tell Matilda about it. She was
+a red-haired girl, and apt to turn shirty at the
+least thing.</p>
+
+<p>Concealed under our jackets and overcoats
+we carried the parcels up to the nursery, and
+hid them in the treasure-chest we had there.
+It was the bureau drawer. It was locked up
+afterwards because the treacle got all over the
+green baize and the little drawers inside it while
+we were waiting to begin to make the pudding.
+It was the grocer told us we ought to put
+treacle in the pudding, and also about not so
+much ginger as a teacupful.</p>
+
+<p>When Matilda had begun to pretend to
+scrub the floor (she pretended this three times
+a week so as to have an excuse not to let us
+in the kitchen, but I know she used to read
+novelettes most of the time, because Alice and
+I had a squint through the window more than
+once), we barricaded the nursery door and set
+to work. We were very careful to be quite
+clean. We washed our hands as well as the
+currants. I have sometimes thought we did
+not get all the soap off the currants. The
+pudding smelt like a washing-day when
+the time came to cut it open. And we
+washed a corner of the table to chop the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+suet on. Chopping suet looks easy till you
+try.</p>
+
+<p>Father's machine he weighs letters with
+did to weigh out the things. We did this very
+carefully, in case the grocer had not done
+so. Everything was right except the raisins.
+H.O. had carried them home. He was very
+young then, and there was a hole in the
+corner of the paper bag and his mouth was
+sticky.</p>
+
+<p>Lots of people have been hanged to a
+gibbet in chains on evidence no worse than
+that, and we told H.O. so till he cried. This
+was good for him. It was not unkindness to
+H.O., but part of our duty.</p>
+
+<p>Chopping suet as fine as possible is much
+harder than any one would think, as I said
+before. So is crumbling bread&mdash;especially
+if your loaf is new, like ours was. When
+we had done them the breadcrumbs and the
+suet were both very large and lumpy, and of
+a dingy gray colour, something like pale slate
+pencil.</p>
+
+<p>They looked a better colour when we had
+mixed them with the flour. The girls had
+washed the currants with Brown Windsor
+soap and the sponge. Some of the currants
+got inside the sponge and kept coming out
+in the bath for days afterwards. I see now
+that this was not quite nice. We cut the
+candied peel as thin as we wish people would
+cut our bread-and-butter. We tried to take
+the stones out of the raisins, but they were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+too sticky, so we just divided them up in
+seven lots. Then we mixed the other things
+in the wash-hand basin from the spare bedroom
+that was always spare. We each put
+in our own lot of raisins and turned it all
+into a pudding-basin, and tied it up in one
+of Alice's pinafores, which was the nearest
+thing to a proper pudding-cloth we could
+find&mdash;at any rate clean. What was left
+sticking to the wash-hand basin did not taste
+so bad.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a little bit soapy," Alice said, "but
+perhaps that will boil out; like stains in
+table-cloths."</p>
+
+<p>It was a difficult question how to boil the
+pudding. Matilda proved furious when asked
+to let us, just because some one had happened
+to knock her hat off the scullery door and
+Pincher had got it and done for it. However,
+part of the embassy nicked a saucepan while
+the others were being told what Matilda
+thought about the hat, and we got hot water
+out of the bath-room and made it boil over
+our nursery fire. We put the pudding in&mdash;it
+was now getting on towards the hour of
+tea&mdash;and let it boil. With some exceptions&mdash;owing
+to the fire going down, and Matilda not
+hurrying up with coals&mdash;it boiled for an hour
+and a quarter. Then Matilda came suddenly
+in and said, "I'm not going to have you
+messing about in here with my saucepans";
+and she tried to take it off the fire. You will
+see that we couldn't stand this; it was not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+likely. I do not remember who it was that
+told her to mind her own business, and I
+think I have forgotten who caught hold of
+her first to make her chuck it. I am sure no
+needless violence was used. Anyway, while
+the struggle progressed, Alice and Dora took
+the saucepan away and put it in the boot-cupboard
+under the stairs and put the key in
+their pocket.</p>
+
+<p>This sharp encounter made every one very
+hot and cross. We got over it before Matilda
+did, but we brought her round before bedtime.
+Quarrels should always be made up
+before bedtime. It says so in the Bible. If
+this simple rule was followed there would not
+be so many wars and martyrs and law suits
+and inquisitions and bloody deaths at the
+stake.</p>
+
+<p>All the house was still. The gas was out
+all over the house except on the first landing,
+when several darkly-shrouded figures might
+have been observed creeping downstairs to
+the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>On the way, with superior precaution, we
+got out our saucepan. The kitchen fire was
+red, but low; the coal-cellar was locked, and
+there was nothing in the scuttle but a little
+coal-dust and the piece of brown paper that is
+put in to keep the coals from tumbling out
+through the bottom where the hole is. We
+put the saucepan on the fire and plied it with
+fuel&mdash;two <i>Chronicles</i>, a <i>Telegraph</i>, and two
+<i>Family Herald</i> novelettes were burned in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+vain. I am almost sure the pudding did not
+boil at all that night.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," Alice said. "We can each
+nick a piece of coal every time we go into the
+kitchen to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>This daring scheme was faithfully performed,
+and by night we had nearly half a
+waste-paper basket of coal, coke, and cinders.
+And in the depth of night once more we
+might have been observed, this time with our
+collier-like waste-paper basket in our guarded
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>There was more fire left in the grate that
+night, and we fed it with the fuel we had
+collected. This time the fire blazed up, and
+the pudding boiled like mad. This was the
+time it boiled two hours&mdash;at least I think it
+was about that, but we dropped asleep on the
+kitchen tables and dresser. You dare not be
+lowly in the night in the kitchen, because of
+the beetles. We were aroused by a horrible
+smell. It was the pudding-cloth burning. All
+the water had secretly boiled itself away.
+We filled it up at once with cold, and the
+saucepan cracked. So we cleaned it and put
+it back on the shelf and took another and
+went to bed. You see what a lot of trouble
+we had over the pudding. Every evening till
+Christmas, which had now become only the
+day after to-morrow, we sneaked down in the
+inky midnight and boiled that pudding for as
+long as it would.</p>
+
+<p>On Christmas morning we chopped the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+holly for the sauce, but we put hot water
+(instead of brandy) and moist sugar. Some
+of them said it was not so bad. Oswald was
+not one of these.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the moment when the plain
+pudding Father had ordered smoked upon the
+board. Matilda brought it in and went away
+at once. She had a cousin out of Woolwich
+Arsenal to see her that day, I remember.
+Those far-off days are quite distinct in
+memory's recollection still.</p>
+
+<p>Then we got out our own pudding from its
+hiding-place and gave it one last hurried boil&mdash;only
+seven minutes, because of the general
+impatience which Oswald and Dora could not
+cope with.</p>
+
+<p>We had found means to secrete a dish, and
+we now tried to dish the pudding up, but it
+stuck to the basin, and had to be dislodged
+with the chisel. The pudding was horribly
+pale. We poured the holly sauce over it, and
+Dora took up the knife and was just cutting
+it when a few simple words from H.O. turned
+us from happy and triumphing cookery artists
+to persons in despair.</p>
+
+<p>He said: "How pleased all those kind ladies
+and gentlemen would be if they knew <i>we</i> were
+the poor children they gave the shillings and
+sixpences and things for!"</p>
+
+<p>We all said, "<i>What?</i>" It was no moment
+for politeness.</p>
+
+<p>"I say," H.O. said, "they'd be glad if
+they knew it was us was enjoying the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+pudding, and not dirty little, really poor
+children."</p>
+
+<p>"You should say 'you were,' not 'you was,'"
+said Dora, but it was as in a dream and only
+from habit.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say"&mdash;Oswald spoke firmly,
+yet not angrily&mdash;"that you and Alice went
+and begged for money for poor children, and
+then <i>kept</i> it?"</p>
+
+<p>"We didn't keep it," said H.O., "we
+spent it."</p>
+
+<p>"We've kept the <i>things</i>, you little duffer!"
+said Dicky, looking at the pudding sitting
+alone and uncared for on its dish. "You
+begged for money for poor children, and then
+<i>kept</i> it. It's stealing, that's what it is. I
+don't say so much about you&mdash;you're only a
+silly kid&mdash;but Alice knew better. Why did
+you do it?"</p>
+
+<p>He turned to Alice, but she was now too
+deep in tears to get a word out.</p>
+
+<p>H.O. looked a bit frightened, but he
+answered the question. We have taught
+him this. He said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I thought they'd give us more if I said
+poor children than if I said just us."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>That's</i> cheating," said Dicky&mdash;"downright
+beastly, mean, low cheating."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not," said H.O.; "and you're another."
+Then he began to cry too. I do not know
+how the others felt, but I understand from
+Oswald that he felt that now the honour of
+the house of Bastable had been stamped on in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+the dust, and it didn't matter what happened.
+He looked at the beastly holly that had been
+left over from the sauce and was stuck up
+over the pictures. It now appeared hollow
+and disgusting, though it had got quite a lot
+of berries, and some of it was the varied kind&mdash;green
+and white. The figs and dates and
+toffee were set out in the doll's dinner service.
+The very sight of it all made Oswald blush
+sickly. He owns he would have liked to cuff
+H.O., and, if he did for a moment wish to
+shake Alice, the author, for one, can make
+allowances.</p>
+
+<p>Now Alice choked and spluttered, and wiped
+her eyes fiercely, and said, "It's no use ragging
+H.O. It's my fault. I'm older than he is."</p>
+
+<p>H.O. said, "It couldn't be Alice's fault. I
+don't see as it was wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"That, not as," murmured Dora, putting her
+arm round the sinner who had brought this
+degrading blight upon our family tree, but
+such is girls' undetermined and affectionate
+silliness. "Tell sister all about it, H.O. dear.
+Why couldn't it be Alice's fault?"</p>
+
+<p>H.O. cuddled up to Dora and said
+snufflingly in his nose&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Because she hadn't got nothing to do with
+it. I collected it all. She never went into
+one of the houses. She didn't want to."</p>
+
+<p>"And then took all the credit of getting the
+money," said Dicky savagely.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald said, "Not much <i>credit</i>," in scornful
+tones.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you are <i>beastly</i>, the whole lot of you,
+except Dora!" Alice said, stamping her foot in
+rage and despair. "I tore my frock on a nail
+going out, and I didn't want to go back, and I
+got H.O. to go to the houses alone, and I
+waited for him outside. And I asked him not
+to say anything because I didn't want Dora to
+know about the frock&mdash;it's my best. And I
+don't know what he said inside. He never
+told me. But I'll bet anything he didn't <i>mean</i>
+to cheat."</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>said</i> lots of kind people would be
+ready to give money to get pudding for poor
+children. So I asked them to."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald, with his strong right hand, waved a
+wave of passing things over.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll talk about that another time," he
+said; "just now we've got weightier things to
+deal with."</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to the pudding, which had
+grown cold during the conversation to
+which I have alluded. H.O. stopped crying,
+but Alice went on with it. Oswald now
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We're a base and outcast family. Until
+that pudding's out of the house we shan't be
+able to look any one in the face. We must
+see that that pudding goes to poor children&mdash;not
+grisling, grumpy, whiney-piney, pretending
+poor children&mdash;but real poor ones, just as
+poor as they can stick."</p>
+
+<p>"And the figs too&mdash;and the dates," said No&euml;l,
+with regretting tones.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Every fig," said Dicky sternly. "Oswald
+is quite right."</p>
+
+<p>This honourable resolution made us feel a
+bit better. We hastily put on our best things,
+and washed ourselves a bit, and hurried out to
+find some really poor people to give the pudding
+to. We cut it in slices ready, and put it
+in a basket with the figs and dates and toffee.
+We would not let H.O. come with us at first
+because he wanted to. And Alice would not
+come because of him. So at last we had to let
+him. The excitement of tearing into your
+best things heals the hurt that wounded
+honour feels, as the poetry writer said&mdash;or at
+any rate it makes the hurt feel better.</p>
+
+<p>We went out into the streets. They were
+pretty quiet&mdash;nearly everybody was eating its
+Christmas dessert. But presently we met a
+woman in an apron. Oswald said very
+politely&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Please, are you a poor person?" And she
+told us to get along with us.</p>
+
+<p>The next we met was a shabby man with a
+hole in his left boot.</p>
+
+<p>Again Oswald said, "Please, are you a poor
+person, and have you any poor little children?"</p>
+
+<p>The man told us not to come any of our
+games with him, or we should laugh on the
+wrong side of our faces. We went on sadly.
+We had no heart to stop and explain to him
+that we had no games to come.</p>
+
+<p>The next was a young man near the Obelisk.
+Dora tried this time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She said, "Oh, if you please we've got some
+Christmas pudding in this basket, and if
+you're a poor person you can have some."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor as Job," said the young man in a
+hoarse voice, and he had to come up out of a
+red comforter to say it.</p>
+
+<p>We gave him a slice of the pudding, and he
+bit into it without thanks or delay. The next
+minute he had thrown the pudding slap in
+Dora's face, and was clutching Dicky by the
+collar.</p>
+
+<p>"Blime if I don't chuck ye in the river, the
+whole bloomin' lot of you!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>The girls screamed, the boys shouted, and
+though Oswald threw himself on the insulter
+of his sister with all his manly vigour, yet but
+for a friend of Oswald's, who is in the police,
+passing at that instant, the author shudders
+to think what might have happened, for he
+was a strong young man, and Oswald is not
+yet come to his full strength, and the Quaggy
+runs all too near.</p>
+
+<p>Our policeman led our assailant aside, and
+we waited anxiously, as he told us to. After
+long uncertain moments the young man in
+the comforter loafed off grumbling, and our
+policeman turned to us.</p>
+
+<p>"Said you give him a dollop o' pudding, and
+it tasted of soap and hair-oil."</p>
+
+<p>I suppose the hair-oil must have been the
+Brown Windsoriness of the soap coming out.
+We were sorry, but it was still our duty to get
+rid of the pudding. The Quaggy was handy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+it is true, but when you have collected money
+to feed poor children and spent it on pudding
+it is not right to throw that pudding in the
+river. People do not subscribe shillings and
+sixpences and half-crowns to feed a hungry
+flood with Christmas pudding.</p>
+
+<p>Yet we shrank from asking any more
+people whether they were poor persons, or
+about their families, and still more from
+offering the pudding to chance people who
+might bite into it and taste the soap before
+we had time to get away.</p>
+
+<p>It was Alice, the most paralysed with
+disgrace of all of us, who thought of the
+best idea.</p>
+
+<p>She said, "Let's take it to the workhouse.
+At any rate they're all poor people there, and
+they mayn't go out without leave, so they
+can't run after us to do anything to us after
+the pudding. No one would give them leave
+to go out to pursue people who had brought
+them pudding, and wreck vengeance on them,
+and at any rate we shall get rid of the conscience-pudding&mdash;it's
+a sort of conscience-money,
+you know&mdash;only it isn't money but
+pudding."</p>
+
+<p>The workhouse is a good way, but we stuck
+to it, though very cold, and hungrier than we
+thought possible when we started, for we had
+been so agitated we had not even stayed to
+eat the plain pudding our good Father had so
+kindly and thoughtfully ordered for our
+Christmas dinner.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The big bell at the workhouse made a man
+open the door to us, when we rang it. Oswald
+said (and he spoke because he is next eldest to
+Dora, and she had had jolly well enough of
+saying anything about pudding)&mdash;he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Please we've brought some pudding for
+the poor people."</p>
+
+<p>He looked us up and down, and he looked
+at our basket, then he said: "You'd better see
+the Matron."</p>
+
+<p>We waited in a hall, feeling more and more
+uncomfy, and less and less like Christmas.
+We were very cold indeed, especially our
+hands and our noses. And we felt less and
+less able to face the Matron if she was horrid,
+and one of us at least wished we had chosen
+the Quaggy for the pudding's long home, and
+made it up to the robbed poor in some other
+way afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>Just as Alice was saying earnestly in the
+burning cold ear of Oswald, "Let's put down
+the basket and make a bolt for it. Oh, Oswald,
+<i>let's!</i>" a lady came along the passage. She
+was very upright, and she had eyes that went
+through you like blue gimlets. I should not
+like to be obliged to thwart that lady if she
+had any design, and mine was opposite. I am
+glad this is not likely to occur.</p>
+
+<p>She said, "What's all this about a pudding?"</p>
+
+<p>H.O. said at once, before we could stop him,
+"They say I've stolen the pudding, so we've
+brought it here for the poor people."</p>
+
+<p>"No, we didn't!" "That wasn't why!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+"The money was given!" "It was meant
+for the poor!" "Shut up, H.O.!" said the
+rest of us all at once.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was an awful silence. The lady
+gimleted us again one by one with her blue
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Then she said: "Come into my room. You
+all look frozen."</p>
+
+<p>She took us into a very jolly room with
+velvet curtains and a big fire, and the gas
+lighted, because now it was almost dark, even
+out of doors. She gave us chairs, and Oswald
+felt as if his was a dock, he felt so criminal,
+and the lady looked so Judgular.</p>
+
+<p>Then she took the arm-chair by the fire
+herself, and said, "Who's the eldest?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am," said Dora, looking more like a
+frightened white rabbit than I've ever seen
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Then tell me all about it."</p>
+
+<p>Dora looked at Alice and began to cry.
+That slab of pudding in the face had totally
+unnerved the gentle girl. Alice's eyes were
+red, and her face was puffy with crying; but
+she spoke up for Dora and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please let Oswald tell. Dora can't.
+She's tired with the long walk. And a young
+man threw a piece of it in her face, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The lady nodded and Oswald began. He
+told the story from the very beginning, as he
+has always been taught to, though he hated
+to lay bare the family honour's wound before
+a stranger, however judgelike and gimlet-eyed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+He told all&mdash;not concealing the pudding-throwing,
+nor what the young man said
+about soap.</p>
+
+<p>"So," he ended, "we want to give the conscience-pudding
+to you. It's like conscience-money&mdash;you
+know what that is, don't you?
+But if you really think it is soapy and not
+just the young man's horridness, perhaps
+you'd better not let them eat it. But the
+figs and things are all right."</p>
+
+<p>When he had done the lady said, for most
+of us were crying more or less&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Come, cheer up! It's Christmas-time, and
+he's very little&mdash;your brother, I mean. And I
+think the rest of you seem pretty well able
+to take care of the honour of the family.
+I'll take the conscience-pudding off your
+minds. Where are you going now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Home, I suppose," Oswald said. And he
+thought how nasty and dark and dull it
+would be. The fire out most likely and
+Father away.</p>
+
+<p>"And your Father's not at home, you say,"
+the blue-gimlet lady went on. "What do you
+say to having tea with me, and then seeing
+the entertainment we have got up for our
+old people?"</p>
+
+<p>Then the lady smiled and the blue gimlets
+looked quite merry.</p>
+
+<p>The room was so warm and comfortable
+and the invitation was the last thing we
+expected. It was jolly of her, I do think.</p>
+
+<p>No one thought quite at first of saying how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+pleased we should be to accept her kind
+invitation. Instead we all just said "Oh!"
+but in a tone which must have told her we
+meant "Yes, please," very deeply.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald (this has more than once happened)
+was the first to restore his manners. He
+made a proper bow like he has been taught,
+and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you very much. We should like
+it very much. It is very much nicer than
+going home. Thank you very much."</p>
+
+<p>I need not tell the reader that Oswald could
+have made up a much better speech if he had
+had more time to make it up in, or if he had
+not been so filled with mixed flusteredness
+and furification by the shameful events of the
+day.</p>
+
+<p>We washed our faces and hands and had a
+first rate muffin and crumpet tea, with slices
+of cold meats, and many nice jams and cakes.
+A lot of other people were there, most of
+them people who were giving the entertainment
+to the aged poor.</p>
+
+<p>After tea it was the entertainment. Songs
+and conjuring and a play called "Box and
+Cox," very amusing, and a lot of throwing
+things about in it&mdash;bacon and chops and
+things&mdash;and nigger minstrels. We clapped
+till our hands were sore.</p>
+
+<p>When it was over we said goodbye. In
+between the songs and things Oswald had
+had time to make up a speech of thanks to
+the lady.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We all thank you heartily for your goodness.
+The entertainment was beautiful. We
+shall never forget your kindness and hospitableness."</p>
+
+<p>The lady laughed, and said she had been
+very pleased to have us. A fat gentleman
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And your teas? I hope you enjoyed those&mdash;eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Oswald had not had time to make up an
+answer to that, so he answered straight from
+the heart, and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ra&mdash;<i>ther!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>And every one laughed and slapped us boys
+on the back and kissed the girls, and the
+gentleman who played the bones in the nigger
+minstrels saw us home. We ate the cold pudding
+that night, and H.O. dreamed that something
+came to eat him, like it advises you to
+in the advertisements on the hoardings. The
+grown-ups said it was the pudding, but I don't
+think it could have been that, because, as I
+have said more than once, it was so very
+plain.</p>
+
+<p>Some of H.O.'s brothers and sisters thought
+it was a judgment on him for pretending
+about who the poor children were he was
+collecting the money for. Oswald does not
+believe such a little boy as H.O. would have
+a real judgment made just for him and nobody
+else, whatever he did.</p>
+
+<p>But it certainly is odd. H.O. was the only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+one who had bad dreams, and he was also the
+only one who got any of the things we bought
+with that ill-gotten money, because, you remember,
+he picked a hole in the raisin-paper
+as he was bringing the parcel home. The rest of
+us had nothing, unless you count the scrapings
+of the pudding-basin, and those don't really
+count at all.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
+<h2><i>ARCHIBALD THE UNPLEASANT</i></h2>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">The</span> house of Bastable was once in poor, but
+honest, circs. That was when it lived in a
+semi-detached house in the Lewisham Road,
+and looked for treasure. There were six
+scions of the house who looked for it&mdash;in
+fact there were seven, if you count Father.
+I am sure he looked right enough, but he
+did not do it the right way. And we did.
+And so we found a treasure of a great-uncle,
+and we and Father went to live with him in a
+very affluent mansion on Blackheath&mdash;with
+gardens and vineries and pineries and everything
+jolly you can think of. And then, when
+we were no longer so beastly short of pocket-money,
+we tried to be good, and sometimes
+it came out right, and sometimes it didn't.
+Something like sums.</div>
+
+<p>And then it was the Christmas holidays&mdash;and
+we had a bazaar and raffled the most
+beautiful goat you ever saw, and we gave
+the money to the poor and needy.</p>
+
+<p>And then we felt it was time to do something
+new, because we were as rich as our worthy
+relative, the uncle, and our Father&mdash;now also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+wealthy, at least, compared to what he used to
+be&mdash;thought right for us; and we were as
+good as we could be without being good for
+nothing and muffs, which I hope no one
+calling itself a Bastable will ever stoop to.</p>
+
+<p>So then Oswald, so often the leader in
+hazardous enterprises, thought long and
+deeply in his interior self, and he saw that
+something must be done, because, though
+there was still the goat left over, unclaimed
+by its fortunate winner at the Bazaar,
+somehow no really fine idea seemed to come
+out of it, and nothing else was happening.
+Dora was getting a bit domineering, and
+Alice was too much taken up with trying
+to learn to knit. Dicky was bored and so
+was Oswald, and No&euml;l was writing far more
+poetry than could be healthy for any poet,
+however young, and H.O. was simply a
+nuisance. His boots are always much louder
+when he is not amused, and that gets the rest
+of us into rows, because there are hardly any
+grown-up persons who can tell the difference
+between his boots and mine. Oswald decided
+to call a council (because even if nothing comes
+of a council it always means getting Alice to
+drop knitting, and making No&euml;l chuck the
+poetical influences, that are no use and
+only make him silly), and he went into
+the room that is our room. It is called the
+common-room, like in colleges, and it is very
+different from the room that was ours when
+we were poor, but honest. It is a jolly room,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+with a big table and a big couch, that is most
+useful for games, and a thick carpet because
+of H.O.'s boots.</p>
+
+<p>Alice was knitting by the fire; it was for
+Father, but I am sure his feet are not at all
+that shape. He has a high and beautifully
+formed instep like Oswald's. No&euml;l was writing
+poetry, of course.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"My dear sister sits<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And knits,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I hope to goodness the stocking fits,"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>was as far as he had got.</div>
+
+<p>"It ought to be 'my dearest sister' to sound
+right," he said, "but that wouldn't be kind to
+Dora."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Dora, "You needn't
+trouble to be kind to me, if you don't
+want to."</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up, Dora!" said Dicky, "No&euml;l didn't
+mean anything."</p>
+
+<p>"He never does," said H.O., "nor yet his
+poetry doesn't neither."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>And</i> his poetry doesn't <i>either</i>," Dora
+corrected; "and besides, you oughtn't to say
+that at all, it's unkind&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You're too jolly down on the kid," said
+Dicky.</p>
+
+<p>And Alice said, "Eighty-seven, eighty-eight&mdash;oh,
+do be quiet half a sec.!&mdash;eighty-nine,
+ninety&mdash;now I shall have to count the stitches
+all over again!"</p>
+
+<p>Oswald alone was silent and not cross.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+I tell you this to show that the sort of
+worryingness was among us that is catching,
+like measles. Kipling calls it the cameelious
+hump, and, as usual, that great and good
+writer is quite correct.</p>
+
+<p>So Oswald said, "Look here, let's have a
+council. It says in Kipling's book when
+you've got the hump go and dig till you
+gently perspire. Well, we can't do that,
+because it's simply pouring, but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The others all interrupted him, and said
+they hadn't got the hump and they didn't
+know what he meant. So he shrugged his
+shoulders patiently (it is not his fault that
+the others hate him to shrug his shoulders
+patiently) and he said no more.</p>
+
+<p>Then Dora said, "Oh, don't be so disagreeable,
+Oswald, for goodness' sake!"</p>
+
+<p>I assure you she did, though he had done
+simply nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Matters were in this cryptical state when
+the door opened and Father came in.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, kiddies!" he remarked kindly.
+"Beastly wet day, isn't it? And dark too.
+I can't think why the rain can't always come
+in term time. It seems a poor arrangement
+to have it in 'vac.,' doesn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>I think every one instantly felt better. I
+know one of us did, and it was me.</p>
+
+<p>Father lit the gas, and sat down in the
+armchair and took Alice on his knee.</p>
+
+<p>"First," he said, "here is a box of chocs."
+It was an extra big and beautiful one and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+Fuller's best. "And besides the chocs., a
+piece of good news! You're all asked to
+a party at Mrs. Leslie's. She's going to
+have all sorts of games and things, with
+prizes for every one, and a conjurer and a
+magic lantern."</p>
+
+<p>The shadow of doom seemed to be lifted
+from each young brow, and we felt how
+much fonder we were of each other than
+any one would have thought. At least Oswald
+felt this, and Dicky told me afterwards he felt
+Dora wasn't such a bad sort after all.</p>
+
+<p>"It's on Tuesday week," said Father. "I see
+the prospect pleases. Number three is that
+your cousin Archibald has come here to stay
+a week or two. His little sister has taken it
+into her head to have whooping-cough. And
+he's downstairs now, talking to your uncle."</p>
+
+<p>We asked what the young stranger was
+like, but Father did not know, because he and
+cousin Archibald's father had not seen much
+of each other for some years. Father said
+this, but we knew it was because Archibald's
+father hadn't bothered to see ours when he
+was poor and honest, but now he was the
+wealthy sharer of the red-brick, beautiful
+Blackheath house it was different. This
+made us not like Uncle Archibald very much,
+but we were too just to blame it on to young
+Archibald. All the same we should have liked
+him better if his father's previous career had
+not been of such a worldly and stuck-up sort.
+Besides, I do think Archibald is quite the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+rotten sort of name. We should have called
+him Archie, of course, if he had been at all
+decent.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be as jolly to him as you can, I
+know," Father said; "he's a bit older than
+you, Oswald. He's not a bad-looking chap."</p>
+
+<p>Then Father went down and Oswald had to
+go with him, and there was Archibald sitting
+upright in a chair and talking to our Indian
+uncle as if he was some beastly grown-up.
+Our cousin proved to be dark and rather tall,
+and though he was only fourteen he was
+always stroking his lip to see if his moustache
+had begun to come.</p>
+
+<p>Father introduced us to each other, and we
+said, "How do you do?" and looked at each
+other, and neither of us could think of anything
+else to say. At least Oswald couldn't.
+So then we went upstairs. Archibald shook
+hands with the others, and every one was
+silent except Dora, and she only whispered to
+H.O. to keep his feet still.</p>
+
+<p>You cannot keep for ever in melancholy
+silence however few things you have to say,
+and presently some one said it was a wet day,
+and this well-chosen remark made us able to
+begin to talk.</p>
+
+<p>I do not wish to be injurious to anybody,
+especially one who was a Bastable, by birth
+at least if not according to the nobler attributes,
+but I must say that Oswald never did
+dislike a boy so much as he did that young
+Archibald. He was as cocky as though he'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+done something to speak of&mdash;been captain of
+his eleven, or passed a beastly exam., or something&mdash;but
+we never could find that he had
+done anything. He was always bragging
+about the things he had at home, and the
+things he was allowed to do, and all the
+things he knew all about, but he was a most
+untruthful chap. He laughed at No&euml;l's being
+a poet&mdash;a thing we never do, because it
+makes him cry and crying makes him ill&mdash;and
+of course Oswald and Dicky could not punch
+his head in their own house because of the
+laws of hospitableness, and Alice stopped it at
+last by saying she didn't care if it was being a
+sneak, she would tell Father the very next
+time. I don't think she would have, because
+we made a rule, when we were poor and
+honest, not to bother Father if we could
+possibly help it. And we keep it up still.
+But Archibald didn't know that. Then this
+cousin, who is, I fear, the black sheep of the
+Bastables, and hardly worthy to be called one,
+used to pull the girls' hair, and pinch them at
+prayers when they could not call out or do
+anything to him back.</p>
+
+<p>And he was awfully rude to the servants,
+ordering them about, and playing tricks on
+them, not amusing tricks like other Bastables
+might have done&mdash;such as booby-traps and
+mice under dish-covers, which seldom leaves
+any lasting ill-feeling&mdash;but things no decent
+boy would do&mdash;like hiding their letters and
+not giving them to them for days, and then it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+was too late to meet the young man the letter
+was from, and squirting ink on their aprons
+when they were just going to open the door,
+and once he put a fish-hook in the cook's
+pocket when she wasn't looking. He did not
+do anything to Oswald at that time. I suppose
+he was afraid. I just tell you this to
+show you that Oswald didn't cotton to him
+for no selfish reason, but because Oswald has
+been taught to feel for others.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 339px;">
+<img src="images/gs04.png" width="339" height="400" alt="AND HE WAS AWFULLY RUDE TO THE SERVANTS." title="AND HE WAS AWFULLY RUDE TO THE SERVANTS." />
+<span class="caption">AND HE WAS AWFULLY RUDE TO THE SERVANTS.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He called us all kids&mdash;and he was that kind
+of boy we knew at once it was no good trying
+to start anything new and jolly&mdash;so Oswald,
+ever discreet and wary, shut up entirely about
+the council. We played games with him
+sometimes, not really good ones, but Snap
+and Beggar my Neighbour, and even then he
+used to cheat. I hate to say it of one of our
+blood, but I can hardly believe he was. I
+think he must have been changed at nurse
+like the heirs to monarchies and dukeries.</p>
+
+<p>Well, the days passed slowly. There was
+Mrs. Leslie's party shining starrishly in the
+mysteries of the future. Also we had another
+thing to look forward to, and that was when
+Archibald would have to go back to school.
+But we could not enjoy that foreshadowing
+so much because of us having to go back at
+nearly the same time.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald always tries to be just, no matter
+how far from easy, and so I will say that I am
+not quite sure that it was Archibald that set
+the pipes leaking, but we were all up in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+loft the day before, snatching a golden opportunity
+to play a brief game of robbers in a
+cave, while Archibald had gone down to the
+village to get his silly hair cut. Another
+thing about him that was not natural was his
+being always looking in the glass and wanting
+to talk about whether people were handsome
+or not; and he made as much fuss about his
+ties as though he had been a girl. So when
+he was gone Alice said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Hist! The golden moment. Let's be
+robbers in the loft, and when he comes back
+he won't know where we are."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll hear us," said No&euml;l, biting his pencil.</p>
+
+<p>"No, he won't. We'll be the Whispering
+Band of Weird Bandits. Come on, No&euml;l; you
+can finish the poetry up here."</p>
+
+<p>"It's about <i>him</i>," said No&euml;l gloomily, "when
+he's gone back to&mdash;&mdash;" (Oswald will not give
+the name of Archibald's school for the sake of
+the other boys there, as they might not like
+everybody who reads this to know about there
+being a chap like him in their midst.) "I
+shall do it up in an envelope and put a stamp
+on it and post it to him, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Haste!" cried Alice. "Bard of the Bandits,
+haste while yet there's time."</p>
+
+<p>So we tore upstairs and put on our slippers
+and socks over them, and we got the high-backed
+chair out of the girls' bedroom, and
+the others held it steady while Oswald agilitively
+mounted upon its high back and
+opened the trap-door and got up into the place
+between the roof and the ceiling (the boys in
+"Stalky &amp; Co." found this out by accident,
+and they were surprised and pleased, but we
+have known all about it ever since we can
+remember).</p>
+
+<p>Then the others put the chair back, and
+Oswald let down the rope ladder that we
+made out of bamboo and clothes-line after
+uncle told us the story of the missionary lady
+who was shut up in a rajah's palace, and
+some one shot an arrow to her with a string
+tied to it, and it might have killed her I should
+have thought, but it didn't, and she hauled in
+the string and there was a rope and a bamboo
+ladder, and so she escaped, and we made one
+like it on purpose for the loft. No one had
+ever told us not to make ladders.</p>
+
+<p>The others came up by the rope-ladder (it
+was partly bamboo, but rope-ladder does for
+short) and we shut the trap-door down. It is
+jolly up there. There are two big cisterns,
+and one little window in a gable that gives
+you just enough light. The floor is plaster
+with wooden things going across, beams and
+joists they are called. There are some planks
+laid on top of these here and there. Of course
+if you walk on the plaster you will go through
+with your foot into the room below.</p>
+
+<p>We had a very jolly game, in whispers, and
+No&euml;l sat by the little window, and was quite
+happy, being the bandit bard. The cisterns
+are rocks you hide behind. But the jolliest
+part was when we heard Archibald shouting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+out, "Hullo! kids, where are you?" and we all
+stayed as still as mice, and heard Jane say she
+thought we must have gone out. Jane was
+the one that hadn't got her letter, as well as
+having her apron inked all over.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 279px;">
+<img src="images/gs05.png" width="279" height="500" alt="THE OTHERS CAME UP BY THE ROPE-LADDER." title="THE OTHERS CAME UP BY THE ROPE-LADDER." />
+<span class="caption">THE OTHERS CAME UP BY THE ROPE-LADDER.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then we heard Archibald going all over the
+house looking for us. Father was at business
+and uncle was at his club. And we were
+<i>there</i>. And so Archibald was all alone. And
+we might have gone on for hours enjoying
+the spectacle of his confusion and perplexedness,
+but No&euml;l happened to sneeze&mdash;the least
+thing gives him cold and he sneezes louder
+for his age than any one I know&mdash;just when
+Archibald was on the landing underneath.
+Then he stood there and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I know where you are. Let me come
+up."</p>
+
+<p>We cautiously did not reply. Then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"All right. I'll go and get the step-ladder."</p>
+
+<p>We did not wish this. We had not been
+told not to make rope-ladders, nor yet about
+not playing in the loft; but if he fetched the
+step-ladder Jane would know, and there are
+some secrets you like to keep to yourself.</p>
+
+<p>So Oswald opened the trap-door and squinted
+down, and there was that Archibald with his
+beastly hair cut. Oswald said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We'll let you up if you promise not to tell
+you've been up here."</p>
+
+<p>So he promised, and we let down the rope-ladder.
+And it will show you the kind of boy
+he was that the instant he had got up by it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+he began to find fault with the way it was
+made.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 282px;">
+<img src="images/gs06.png" width="282" height="500" alt="SO OSWALD OPENED THE TRAP-DOOR AND SQUINTED DOWN, AND THERE WAS THAT ARCHIBALD." title="SO OSWALD OPENED THE TRAP-DOOR AND SQUINTED DOWN, AND THERE WAS THAT ARCHIBALD." />
+<span class="caption">SO OSWALD OPENED THE TRAP-DOOR AND SQUINTED DOWN, AND THERE WAS THAT ARCHIBALD.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then he wanted to play with the ball-cock.
+But Oswald knows it is better not to do this.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay <i>you're</i> forbidden," Archibald said,
+"little kids like you. But <i>I</i> know all about
+plumbing."</p>
+
+<p>And Oswald could not prevent his fiddling
+with the pipes and the ball-cock a little. Then
+we went down. All chance of further banditry
+was at an end. Next day was Sunday.
+The leak was noticed then. It was slow,
+but steady, and the plumber was sent for
+on Monday morning.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald does not know whether it was Archibald
+who made the leak, but he does know
+about what came after.</p>
+
+<p>I think our displeasing cousin found that
+piece of poetry that No&euml;l was beginning
+about him, and read it, because he is a
+sneak. Instead of having it out with No&euml;l
+he sucked up to him and gave him a six-penny
+fountain-pen which No&euml;l liked, although
+it is really no good for him to try to write
+poetry with anything but a pencil, because
+he always sucks whatever he writes with, and
+ink is poisonous, I believe.</p>
+
+<p>Then in the afternoon he and No&euml;l got quite
+thick, and went off together. And afterwards
+No&euml;l seemed very peacocky about
+something, but he would not say what, and
+Archibald was grinning in a way Oswald
+would have liked to pound his head for.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then, quite suddenly, the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'peacable'">peaceable</ins> quietness
+of that happy Blackheath home was brought
+to a close by screams. Servants ran about
+with brooms and pails, and the water was
+coming through the ceiling of uncle's room
+like mad, and No&euml;l turned white and looked
+at our unattractive cousin and said: "Send
+him away."</p>
+
+<p>Alice put her arm round No&euml;l and said:
+"Do go, Archibald."</p>
+
+<p>But he wouldn't.</p>
+
+<p>So then No&euml;l said he wished he had never
+been born, and whatever would Father say.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what is it, No&euml;l?" Alice asked that.
+"Just tell us, we'll all stand by you. What's
+he been doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"You won't let him do anything to me if I
+tell?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell tale tit," said Archibald.</p>
+
+<p>"He got me to go up into the loft and he
+said it was a secret, and would I promise not
+to tell, and I won't tell; only I've done it, and
+now the water's coming in."</p>
+
+<p>"You've done it? You young ass, I was
+only kidding you!" said our detestable cousin.
+And he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand," said Oswald. "What
+did you tell No&euml;l?"</p>
+
+<p>"He can't tell you because he promised&mdash;and
+I won't&mdash;unless you vow by the honour
+of the house you talk so much about
+that you'll never tell I had anything to do
+with it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That will show you what he was. We had
+never mentioned the honour of the house
+except once quite at the beginning, before we
+knew how discapable he was of understanding
+anything, and how far we were from
+wanting to call him Archie.</p>
+
+<p>We had to promise, for No&euml;l was getting
+greener and more gurgly every minute, and at
+any moment Father or uncle might burst in
+foaming for an explanation, and none of us
+would have one except No&euml;l, and him in this
+state of all-anyhow.</p>
+
+<p>So Dicky said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We promise, you beast, you!" And we all
+said the same.</p>
+
+<p>Then Archibald said, drawling his words
+and feeling for the moustache that wasn't
+there, and I hope he'll be quite old before he
+gets one&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It's just what comes of trying to amuse
+silly little kids. I told the foolish little animal
+about people having arteries cut, and your
+having to cut the whole thing to stop the
+bleeding. And he said, 'Was that what the
+plumber would do to the leaky pipe?' And
+how pleased your governor would be to find
+it mended. And then he went and did it."</p>
+
+<p>"You told me to," said No&euml;l, turning greener
+and greener.</p>
+
+<p>"Go along with Alice," said Oswald. "We'll
+stand by you. And No&euml;l, old chap, you must
+keep your word and not sneak about that
+sneaking hound."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Alice took him away, and we were left with
+the horrid Archibald.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said Oswald, "I won't break my
+word, no more will the rest of us. But we
+won't speak another word to you as long as
+we live."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Oswald," said Dora, "what about the
+sun going down?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let it jolly well go," said Dicky in furiousness.
+"Oswald didn't say we'd go on being
+angry for ever, but I'm with Oswald all the
+way. I won't talk to cads&mdash;no, not even before
+grown-ups. They can jolly well think what
+they like."</p>
+
+<p>After this no one spoke to Archibald.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald rushed for a plumber, and such was
+his fiery eloquence he really caught one and
+brought him home. Then he and Dicky waited
+for Father when he came in, and they got him
+into the study, and Oswald said what they had
+all agreed on. It was this:</p>
+
+<p>"Father, we are all most awfully sorry, but
+one of us has cut the pipe in the loft, and if
+you make us tell you any more it will not be
+honourable, and we are very sorry. Please,
+please don't ask who it was did it."</p>
+
+<p>Father bit his moustache and looked worried,
+and Dicky went on&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oswald has got a plumber and he is doing
+it now."</p>
+
+<p>Then Father said, "How on earth did you
+get into the loft?"</p>
+
+<p>And then of course the treasured secret of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+the rope-ladder had to be revealed. We had
+never been told not to make rope-ladders and
+go into the loft, but we did not try to soften
+the anger of our Father by saying this. It
+would not have been any good either. We
+just had to stick it. And the punishment of
+our crime was most awful. It was that we
+weren't to go to Mrs. Leslie's party. And
+Archibald was to go, because when Father
+asked him if he was in it with the rest of
+us, he said "No." I cannot think of any really
+gentle, manly, and proper words to say what
+I think about my unnatural cousin.</p>
+
+<p>We kept our word about not speaking to
+him, and I think Father thought we were
+jealous because he was going to that conjuring,
+magic lantern party and we were not.
+No&euml;l was the most unhappy, because he knew
+we were all being punished for what he had
+done. He was very affectionate and tried to
+write pieces of poetry to us all, but he was so
+unhappy he couldn't even write, and he went
+into the kitchen and sat on Jane's knee and
+said his head ached.</p>
+
+<p>Next day it was the day of the party and
+we were plunged in gloom. Archibald got
+out his Etons and put his clean shirt ready,
+and a pair of flashy silk socks with red spots,
+and then he went into the bath-room.</p>
+
+<p>No&euml;l and Jane were whispering on the
+stairs. Jane came up and No&euml;l went down,
+Jane knocked at the bath-room door and
+said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Here's the soap, Master Archerbald. I
+didn't put none in to-day."</p>
+
+<p>He opened the door and put out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Half a moment," said Jane, "I've got
+something else in my hand."</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke the gas all over the house
+went down blue, and then went out. We
+held our breaths heavily.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is," she said; "I'll put it in your
+hand. I'll go down and turn off the burners
+and see about the gas. You'll be late, sir. If
+I was you I should get on a bit with the washing
+of myself in the dark. I daresay the gas'll
+be five or ten minutes, and it's five o'clock
+now."</p>
+
+<p>It wasn't, and of course she ought not to
+have said it, but it was useful all the same.</p>
+
+<p>No&euml;l came stumping up the stairs in the
+dark. He fumbled about and then whispered,
+"I've turned the little white china knob that
+locks the bath-room door on the outside."</p>
+
+<p>The water was bubbling and hissing in the
+pipes inside, and the darkness went on.
+Father and uncle had not come in yet, which
+was a fortunate blessing.</p>
+
+<p>"Do be quiet!" said No&euml;l. "Just you
+wait."</p>
+
+<p>We all sat on the stairs and waited. No&euml;l
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask me yet&mdash;you'll see&mdash;you wait."</p>
+
+<p>And we waited, and the gas did not come
+back.</p>
+
+<p>At last Archibald tried to come out&mdash;he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+thought he had washed himself clean, I suppose&mdash;and
+of course the door was fastened.
+He kicked and he hammered and he shouted,
+and we were glad.</p>
+
+<p>At last No&euml;l banged on the door and
+screamed through the keyhole&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If we let you out will you let us off
+our promise not to tell about you and the
+pipes? We won't tell till you've gone back
+to school."</p>
+
+<p>He wouldn't for a long time, but at last he
+had to.</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't ever come to your beastly house
+again," he bellowed through the keyhole, "so
+I don't mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Turn off the gas-burners then," said Oswald,
+ever thoughtful, though he was still
+in ignorance of the beautiful truth.</p>
+
+<p>Then No&euml;l sang out over the stairs, "Light
+up!" and Jane went round with a taper, and
+when the landing gas was lighted No&euml;l turned
+the knob of the bath-room, and Archibald exited
+in his Indian red and yellow dressing-gown
+that he thought so much of. Of course we
+expected his face to be red with rage, or white
+with passion, or purple with mixed emotions,
+but you cannot think what our feelings were&mdash;indeed,
+we hardly knew what they were
+ourselves&mdash;when we saw that he was not red
+or white or purple, but <i>black</i>. He looked like
+an uneven sort of bluish nigger. His face and
+hands were all black and blue in streaks,
+and so were the bits of his feet that showed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+between his Indian dressing-gown and his
+Turkish slippers.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 453px;">
+<img src="images/gs07.png" width="453" height="400" alt="&quot;WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT?&quot; HE ASKED. &quot;NYANG, NYANG!&quot; JANE ANSWERED TAUNTINGLY." title="&quot;WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT?&quot; HE ASKED. &quot;NYANG, NYANG!&quot; JANE ANSWERED TAUNTINGLY." />
+<span class="caption">&quot;WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT?&quot; HE ASKED. &quot;NYANG, NYANG!&quot; JANE ANSWERED TAUNTINGLY.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The word "Krikey" fell from more than
+one lip.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you staring at?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>We did not answer even then, though I
+think it was less from keep-your-wordishness
+than amazement. But Jane did.</p>
+
+<p>"Nyang, Nyang!" she uttered tauntingly.
+"You thought it was soap I was giving you,
+and all the time it was Maple's dark bright
+navy-blue indelible dye&mdash;won't wash out."
+She flashed a looking-glass in his face, and
+he looked and saw the depth of his dark
+bright navy-blueness.</p>
+
+<p>Now, you may think that we shouted with
+laughing to see him done brown and dyed blue
+like this, but we did not. There was a spellbound
+silence. Oswald, I know, felt a quite
+uncomfortable feeling inside him.</p>
+
+<p>When Archibald had had one good look at
+himself he did not want any more. He ran to
+his room and bolted himself in.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>He</i> won't go to no parties," said Jane, and
+she flounced downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>We never knew how much No&euml;l had told
+her. He is very young, and not so strong as
+we are, and we thought it better not to ask.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald and Dicky and H.O.&mdash;particularly
+H.O.&mdash;told each other it served him right, but
+after a bit Dora asked No&euml;l if he would mind
+her trying to get some of it off our unloved
+cousin, and he said "No."</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 406px;">
+<img src="images/gs08.png" width="406" height="400" alt="WHEN FATHER CAME HOME THERE WAS AN AWFUL ROW." title="WHEN FATHER CAME HOME THERE WAS AN AWFUL ROW." />
+<span class="caption">WHEN FATHER CAME HOME THERE WAS AN AWFUL ROW.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But nothing would get it off him; and when
+Father came home there was an awful row.
+And he said we had disgraced ourselves and
+forgotten the duties of hospitality. We got it
+pretty straight, I can tell you. And we bore
+it all. I do not say we were martyrs to the
+honour of our house and to our plighted word,
+but I do say that we got it very straight
+indeed, and we did not tell the provocativeness
+we had had from our guest that drove the
+poet No&euml;l to this wild and desperate revenge.</p>
+
+<p>But some one told, and I have always
+thought it was Jane, and that is why we did
+not ask too many questions about what No&euml;l
+had told her, because late that night Father
+came and said he now understood that we had
+meant to do right, except perhaps the one
+who cut the pipe with a chisel, and that must
+have been more silliness than naughtiness;
+and perhaps the being dyed blue served our
+cousin rather right. And he gave Archibald
+a few remarks in private, and when the dye
+began to come off&mdash;it was not a fast dye,
+though it said so on the paper it was wrapped
+in&mdash;Archibald, now a light streaky blue, really
+did seem to be making an effort to be something
+like decent. And when, now merely a
+pale grey, he had returned to school, he sent
+us a letter. It said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"<i>My dear Cousins</i>,&mdash;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I think that I was beastlier than I meant to
+be, but I am not accustomed to young kids.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+And I think uncle was right, and the way you
+stand up for the honour of our house is not
+all nonsense, like I said it was. If we ever meet
+in the future life I hope you will not keep a
+down on me about things. I don't think you
+can expect me to say more. From your affectionate
+cousin,</i></p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+"<i>Archibald Bastable.</i>"<br />
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So I suppose rays of remorse penetrated
+that cold heart, and now perhaps he will be a
+reformed Bastable. I am sure I hope so, but
+I believe it is difficult, if not impossible, for a
+leopard to change his skin.</p>
+
+<p>Still, I remember how indelibly black he
+looked when he came out of the fatal bath-room;
+and it nearly all wore off. And perhaps
+spots on the honourable inside parts of
+your soul come off with time. I hope so.
+The dye never came off the inside of the
+bath though. I think that was what annoyed
+our good great-uncle the most.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span></p>
+<h2><i>OVER THE WATER TO CHINA</i></h2>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Oswald</span> is a very modest boy, I believe, but
+even he would not deny that he has an active
+brain. The author has heard both his Father
+and Albert's uncle say so. And the most far-reaching
+ideas often come to him quite
+naturally&mdash;just as silly notions that aren't
+any good might come to you. And he had
+an idea which he meant to hold a council;
+about with his brothers and sisters; but just
+as he was going to unroll his idea to them our
+Father occurred suddenly in our midst and
+said a strange cousin was coming, and he
+came, and he was strange indeed! And when
+Fate had woven the threads of his dark
+destiny and he had been dyed a dark bright
+navy-blue, and had gone from our midst,
+Oswald went back to the idea that he had
+not forgotten. The words "tenacious of
+purpose" mean sticking to things, and these
+words always make me think of the character
+of the young hero of these pages. At least
+I suppose his brothers Dicky and No&euml;l and
+H.O. are heroes too, in a way, but somehow
+the author of these lines knows more about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+Oswald's inside realness than he does about
+the others. But I am getting too deep for
+words.</div>
+
+<p>So Oswald went into the common-room.
+Every one was busy. No&euml;l and H.O. were
+playing Halma. Dora was covering boxes
+with silver paper to put sweets in for a school
+treat, and Dicky was making a cardboard
+model of a new screw he has invented for
+ocean steamers. But Oswald did not mind
+interrupting, because Dora ought not to work
+too hard, and Halma always ends in a row,
+and I would rather not say what I think of
+Dicky's screw. So Oswald said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I want a council. Where's Alice?"</p>
+
+<p>Every one said they didn't know, and they
+made haste to say that we couldn't have a
+council without her. But Oswald's determined
+nature made him tell H.O. to chuck that
+rotten game and go and look for her. H.O.
+is our youngest brother, and it is right that
+he should remember this and do as he was
+told. But he happened to be winning the
+beastly Halma game, and Oswald saw that there
+was going to be trouble&mdash;"big trouble," as
+Mr. Kipling says. And he was just bracing his
+young nerves for the conflict with H.O., because
+he was not going to stand any nonsense from
+his young brother about his not fetching Alice
+when he was jolly well told to, when the
+missing maiden bounced into the room bearing
+upon her brow the marks of ravaging agitatedness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Have any of you seen Pincher?" she cried,
+in haste.</p>
+
+<p>We all said, "No, not since last night."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, he's lost," Alice said, making
+the ugly face that means you are going to
+blub in half a minute.</p>
+
+<p>Every one had sprung to their feet. Even
+No&euml;l and H.O. saw at once what a doddering
+game Halma is, and Dora and Dicky, whatever
+their faults, care more for Pincher than for
+boxes and screws. Because Pincher is our fox-terrier.
+He is of noble race, and he was ours
+when we were poor, lonely treasure-seekers
+and lived in humble hard-upness in the
+Lewisham Road.</p>
+
+<p>To the faithful heart of young Oswald the
+Blackheath affluent mansion and all it contains,
+even the stuffed fox eating a duck in the glass
+case in the hall that he is so fond of, and even
+the council he wanted to have, seemed to
+matter much less than old Pincher.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you all to let's go out and look for
+him," said Alice, carrying out the meaning of
+the faces she had made and beginning to howl.
+"Oh, Pincher, suppose something happens to
+him; you might get my hat and coat, Dora.
+Oh, oh, oh!"</p>
+
+<p>We all got our coats and hats, and by the
+time we were ready Alice had conquered it to
+only sniffing, or else, as Oswald told her kindly,
+she wouldn't have been allowed to come.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go on the Heath," No&euml;l said. "The
+dear departed dog used to like digging there."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So we went. And we said to every single
+person we met&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Please have you seen a thorough-bred fox-terrier
+dog with a black patch over one eye,
+and another over his tail, and a tan patch on
+his right shoulder?" And every one said, "No,
+they hadn't," only some had more polite ways
+of saying it than others. But after a bit we
+met a policeman, and he said, "I see one when
+I was on duty last night, like what you
+describe, but it was at the end of a string.
+There was a young lad at the other end. The
+dog didn't seem to go exactly willing."</p>
+
+<p>He also told us the lad and the dog had
+gone over Greenwich way. So we went down,
+not quite so wretched in our insides, because
+now it seemed that there was some chance,
+though we wondered the policeman <i>could</i> have
+let Pincher go when he saw he didn't want to,
+but he said it wasn't his business. And now
+we asked every one if they'd seen a lad and
+a thoroughbred fox-terrier with a black patch,
+and cetera.</p>
+
+<p>And one or two people said they had, and
+we thought it must be the same the policeman
+had seen, because they said, too, that the dog
+didn't seem to care about going where he was
+going.</p>
+
+<p>So we went on and through the Park and
+past the Naval College, and we didn't even
+stop to look at that life-sized firm ship in the
+playground that the Naval Collegians have to
+learn about ropes and spars on, and Oswald<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+would willingly give a year of his young life
+to have that ship for his very own.</p>
+
+<p>And we didn't go into the Painted Hall
+either, because our fond hearts were with
+Pincher, and we could not really have enjoyed
+looking at Nelson's remains, of the shipwrecks
+where the drowning people all look so dry,
+or even the pictures where young heroes are
+boarding pirates from Spain, just as Oswald
+would do if he had half a chance, with the
+pirates fighting in attitudes more twisted and
+Spanish than the pirates of any nation could
+manage even if they were not above it. It is
+an odd thing, but all those pictures are awfully
+bad weather&mdash;even the ones that are not shipwrecks.
+And yet in books the skies are
+usually a stainless blue and the sea is a liquid
+gem when you are engaged in the avocation
+of pirate-boarding.</p>
+
+<p>The author is sorry to see that he is not
+going on with the story.</p>
+
+<p>We walked through Greenwich Hospital
+and asked there if they have seen Pincher,
+because I heard Father say once that dogs
+are sometimes stolen and taken to hospitals
+and never seen again. It is wrong to steal,
+but I suppose the hospital doctors forget this
+because they are so sorry for the poor ill
+people, and like to give them dogs to play
+with them and amuse them on their beds of
+anguish. But no one had seen our Pincher,
+who seemed to be becoming more dear to our
+hearts every moment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When we got through the Hospital grounds&mdash;they
+are big and the buildings are big, and I
+like it all because there's so much room everywhere
+and nothing niggling&mdash;we got down
+to the terrace over the river, next to the
+Trafalgar Hotel. And there was a sailor
+leaning on the railings, and we asked him the
+usual question. It seems that he was asleep,
+but of course we did not know, or we would
+not have disturbed him. He was very angry,
+and he swore, and Oswald told the girls to
+come away; but Alice pulled away from
+Oswald and said,</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't be so cross. Do tell us if you've
+seen our dog? He is&mdash;&mdash;" and she recited
+Pincher's qualifications.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho yes," said the sailor&mdash;he had a red and
+angry face. "I see 'im a hour ago 'long of a
+Chinaman. 'E crossed the river in a open
+boat. You'd best look slippy arter 'im." He
+grinned and spat; he was a detestable
+character, I think. "Chinamen puts puppy-dogs
+in pies. If 'e catches you three young
+chaps 'e'll 'ave a pie as'll need a big crust to
+cover it. Get along with your cheek!"</p>
+
+<p>So we got along. Of course, we knew that
+the Chinese are not cannibals, so we were not
+frightened by that rot; but we knew, too,
+that the Chinese do really eat dogs, as well as
+rats and birds' nests and other disgraceful
+forms of eating.</p>
+
+
+<p>H.O. was very tired, and he said his boots
+hurt him; and No&euml;l was beginning to look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+like a young throstle&mdash;all eyes and beak. He
+always does when he is tired. The others
+were tired too, but their proud spirits would
+never have owned it. So we went round to
+the Trafalgar Hotel's boathouse, and there
+was a man in slippers, and we said could we
+have a boat, and he said he would send a
+boatman, and would we walk in?</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 528px;">
+<img src="images/gs09.png" width="528" height="400" alt="IT SEEMS THE SAILOR WAS ASLEEP, BUT OF COURSE WE DID NOT KNOW, OR WE SHOULD NOT HAVE DISTURBED HIM." title="IT SEEMS THE SAILOR WAS ASLEEP, BUT OF COURSE WE DID NOT KNOW, OR WE SHOULD NOT HAVE DISTURBED HIM." />
+<span class="caption">IT SEEMS THE SAILOR WAS ASLEEP, BUT OF COURSE WE DID NOT KNOW, OR WE SHOULD NOT HAVE DISTURBED HIM.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We did, and we went through a dark room
+piled up to the ceiling with boats and out on
+to a sort of thing half like a balcony and half
+like a pier. And there were boats there too,
+far more than you would think any one could
+want; and then a boy came. We said we
+wanted to go across the river, and he said,
+"Where to?"</p>
+
+<p>"To where the Chinamen live," said Alice.</p>
+
+<p>"You can go to Millwall if you want to," he
+said, beginning to put oars into the boat.</p>
+
+<p>"Are there any Chinese people there?" Alice
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>And the boy replied, "I dunno." He added
+that he supposed we could pay for the boat.</p>
+
+<p>By a fortunate accident&mdash;I think Father
+had rather wanted to make up to us for our
+martyr-like enduring when our cousin was
+with us&mdash;we were fairly flush of chink.
+Oswald and Dicky were proudly able to
+produce handfuls of money; it was mostly
+copper, but it did not fail of its effect.</p>
+
+<p>The boy seemed not to dislike us quite so
+much as before, and he helped the girls into
+the boat, which was now in the water at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+edge of a sort of floating, unsteady raft, with
+openings in it that you could see the water
+through. The water was very rough, just
+like real sea, and not like a river at all. And
+the boy rowed; he wouldn't let us, although I
+can, quite well. The boat tumbled and tossed
+just like a sea-boat. When we were about
+half-way over, No&euml;l pulled Alice's sleeve and
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Do I look very green?"</p>
+
+<p>"You do rather, dear," she said kindly.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel much greener than I look," said
+No&euml;l. And later on he was not at all well.</p>
+
+<p>The boy laughed, but we pretended not to
+notice. I wish I could tell you half the things
+we saw as our boat was pulled along through
+the swishing, lumpy water that turned into
+great waves after every steamer that went by.
+Oswald was quite fit, but some of the others
+were very silent. Dicky says he saw everything
+that Oswald saw, but I am not sure.
+There were wharves and engines, and great
+rusty cranes swinging giant's handfuls of iron
+rails about in the air, and once we passed a
+ship that was being broken up. All the wood
+was gone, and they were taking away her
+plates, and the red rust was running from her
+and colouring the water all round; it looked
+as though she was bleeding to death. I
+suppose it was silly to feel sorry for her, but
+I did. I thought how beastly it was that she
+would never go to sea again, where the waves
+are clean and green, even if no rougher than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+the black waves now raging around our
+staunch little bark. I never knew before
+what lots of kinds of ships there can be,
+and I think I could have gone on and on for
+ever and ever looking at the shapes of things
+and the colours they were, and dreaming
+about being a pirate, and things like that,
+but we had come some way; and now Alice
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oswald, I think No&euml;l will die if we don't
+make land soon."</p>
+
+<p>And indeed he had been rather bad for
+some time, only I thought it was kinder to
+take no notice.</p>
+
+<p>So our ship was steered among other pirate
+craft, and moored at a landing-place where
+there were steps up.</p>
+
+<p>No&euml;l was now so ill that we felt we could
+not take him on a Chinese hunt, and H.O. had
+sneaked his boots off in the boat, and he said
+they hurt him too much to put them on again;
+so it was arranged that those two should sit
+on a dry corner of the steps and wait, and
+Dora said she would stay with them.</p>
+
+<p>"I think we ought to go home," she said.
+"I'm quite sure Father wouldn't like us being
+in these wild, savage places. The police ought
+to find Pincher."</p>
+
+<p>But the others weren't going to surrender
+like that, especially as Dora had actually had
+the sense to bring a bag of biscuits, which
+all, except No&euml;l, were now eating.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps they ought, but they <i>won't</i>," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+Dicky. "I'm boiling hot. I'll leave you my
+overcoat in case you're cold."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald had been just about to make the
+same manly proposal, though he was not
+extra warm. So they left their coats, and,
+with Alice, who would come though told not
+to, they climbed the steps, and went along a
+narrow passage and started boldly on the
+Chinese hunt. It was a strange sort of place
+over the river; all the streets were narrow,
+and the houses and the pavements and the
+people's clothes and the mud in the road all
+seemed the same sort of dull colour&mdash;a sort of
+brown-grey it was.</p>
+
+<p>All the house doors were open, and you
+could see that the insides of the houses were
+the same colour as the outsides. Some of the
+women had blue, or violet or red shawls, and
+they sat on the doorsteps and combed their
+children's hair, and shouted things to each
+other across the street. They seemed very
+much struck by the appearance of the three
+travellers, and some of the things they said
+were not pretty.</p>
+
+<p>That was the day when Oswald found out a
+thing that has often been of use to him in
+after-life. However rudely poor people stare
+at you they become all right instantly if you
+ask them something. I think they don't hate
+you so much when they've done something for
+you, if it's only to tell you the time or the
+way.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 344px;">
+<img src="images/gs10.png" width="344" height="400" alt="WE WENT ROUND A CORNER RATHER FAST, AND CAME SLAP INTO THE LARGEST WOMAN I HAVE EVER SEEN." title="WE WENT ROUND A CORNER RATHER FAST, AND CAME SLAP INTO THE LARGEST WOMAN I HAVE EVER SEEN." />
+<span class="caption">WE WENT ROUND A CORNER RATHER FAST, AND CAME SLAP INTO THE LARGEST WOMAN I HAVE EVER SEEN.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>So we got on very well, but it does not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+make me comfortable to see people so poor
+and we have such a jolly house. People in
+books feel this, and I know it is right to feel
+it, but I hate the feeling all the same. And it
+is worse when the people are nice to you.</p>
+
+<p>And we asked and asked and asked, but
+nobody had seen a dog or a Chinaman, and
+I began to think all was indeed lost, and you
+can't go on biscuits all day, when we went
+round a corner rather fast, and came slap
+into the largest woman I have ever seen. She
+must have been yards and yards round, and
+before she had time to be in the rage that
+we saw she was getting into, Alice said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I beg your pardon! I <i>am</i> so sorry, but
+we really didn't mean to! I <i>do</i> so hope we
+didn't hurt you!"</p>
+
+<p>We saw the growing rage fade away, and
+she said, as soon as she got her fat breath&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"No 'arm done, my little dear. An' w'ere
+are you off to in such a 'urry?"</p>
+
+<p>So we told her all about it. She was quite
+friendly, although so stout, and she said we
+oughtn't to be gallivanting about all on our
+own. We told her we were all right, though
+I own Oswald was glad that in the hurry of
+departing Alice hadn't had time to find anything
+smarter-looking to wear than her
+garden coat and grey Tam, which had been
+regretted by some earlier in the day.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the woman, "if you go along
+this 'ere turning as far as ever you can go,
+and then take the first to the right and bear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+round to the left, and take the second to the
+right again, and go down the alley between
+the stumps, you'll come to Rose Gardens.
+There's often Chinamen about there. And if
+you come along this way as you come back,
+keep your eye open for me, and I'll arks
+some young chaps as I know as is interested
+like in dogs, and perhaps I'll have news for
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you very much," Alice said, and the
+woman asked her to give her a kiss. Everybody
+is always wanting to kiss Alice. I can't
+think why. And we got her to tell us the
+way again, and we noticed the name of the
+street, and it was Nightingale Street, and
+the stairs where we had left the others was
+Bullamy's Causeway, because we have the
+true explorer's instincts, and when you can't
+blaze your way on trees with your axe, or lay
+crossed twigs like the gypsies do, it is best to
+remember the names of streets.</p>
+
+<p>So we said goodbye, and went on through
+the grey-brown streets with hardly any
+shops, and those only very small and common,
+and we got to the alley all right. It was a
+narrow place between high blank brown-grey
+walls. I think by the smell it was gasworks
+and tanneries. There was hardly any one
+there, but when we got into it we heard feet
+running ahead of us, and Oswald said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, suppose that's some one with
+Pincher, and they've recognized his long-lost
+masters and they're making a bolt for it?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And we all started running as hard as ever
+we could. There was a turn in the passage,
+and when we got round it we saw that the
+running was stopping. There were four or
+five boys in a little crowd round some one in
+blue&mdash;blue looked such a change after the
+muddy colour of everything in that dead
+Eastern domain&mdash;and when we got up, the
+person the blue was on was a very wrinkled
+old man, with a yellow wrinkled face and a
+soft felt hat and blue blouse-like coat, and I
+see that I ought not to conceal any longer
+from the discerning reader that it was exactly
+what we had been looking for. It was indeed
+a Celestial Chinaman in deep difficulties with
+these boys who were, as Alice said afterwards,
+truly fiends in mortal shape. They were
+laughing at the old Chinaman, and shouting
+to each other, and their language was of that
+kind that I was sorry we had got Alice with
+us. But she told Oswald afterwards that she
+was so angry she did not know what they
+were saying.</p>
+
+<p>"Pull his bloomin' pigtail," said one of these
+outcasts from decent conduct.</p>
+
+<p>The old man was trying to keep them off
+with both hands, but the hands were very
+wrinkled and trembly.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald is grateful to his good Father who
+taught him and Dicky the proper way to put
+their hands up. If it had not been for that,
+Oswald does not know what on earth would
+have happened, for the outcasts were five to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+our two, because no one could have expected
+Alice to do what she did.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 458px;">
+<img src="images/gs11.png" width="458" height="400" alt="IT WAS INDEED A CELESTIAL CHINAMAN IN DEEP DIFFICULTIES." title="IT WAS INDEED A CELESTIAL CHINAMAN IN DEEP DIFFICULTIES." />
+<span class="caption">IT WAS INDEED A CELESTIAL CHINAMAN IN DEEP DIFFICULTIES.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Before Oswald had even got his hands into
+the position required by the noble art of self-defence,
+she had slapped the largest boy on
+the face as hard as ever she could&mdash;and she
+can slap pretty hard, as Oswald knows but
+too well&mdash;and she had taken the second-sized
+boy and was shaking him before Dicky could
+get his left in on the eye of the slapped
+assailant of the aged denizen of the Flowery
+East. The other three went for Oswald, but
+three to one is nothing to one who has hopes
+of being a pirate in his spare time when he
+grows up.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant the five were on us. Dicky
+and I got in some good ones, and though
+Oswald cannot approve of my sister being in
+a street fight, he must own she was very
+quick and useful in pulling ears and twisting
+arms and slapping and pinching. But she
+had quite forgotten how to hit out from the
+shoulder like I have often shown her.</p>
+
+<p>The battle raged, and Alice often turned the
+tide of it by a well-timed shove or nip. The
+aged Eastern leaned against the wall, panting
+and holding his blue heart with his yellow
+hand. Oswald had got a boy down, and was
+kneeling on him, and Alice was trying to pull
+off two other boys who had fallen on top of
+the fray, while Dicky was letting the fifth
+have it, when there was a flash of blue and
+another Chinaman dashed into the tournament.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+Fortunately this one was not old, and
+with a few well-directed, if foreign looking,
+blows he finished the work so ably begun by
+the brave Bastables, and next moment the
+five loathsome and youthful aggressors were
+bolting down the passage. Oswald and Dicky
+were trying to get their breath and find out
+exactly where they were hurt and how much,
+and Alice had burst out crying and was howling
+as though she would never stop. That is
+the worst of girls&mdash;they never can keep anything
+up. Any brave act they may suddenly
+do, when for a moment they forget that they
+have not the honour to be boys, is almost
+instantly made into contemptibility by a
+sudden attack of crybabyishness. But I will
+say no more: for she did strike the first blow,
+after all, and it did turn out that the boys had
+scratched her wrist and kicked her shins.
+These things make girls cry.</p>
+
+<p>The venerable stranger from distant shores
+said a good deal to the other in what I
+suppose was the language used in China. It
+all sounded like "hung" and "li" and "chi,"
+and then the other turned to us and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Nicee lilly girlee, same piecee flowelee, you
+takee my head to walkee on. This is alle
+samee my father first chop ancestor. Dirty
+white devils makee him hurt. You come
+alongee fightee ploper. Me likee you welly
+muchee."</p>
+
+<p>Alice was crying too much to answer,
+especially as she could not find her handkerchief.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+I gave her mine, and then she was
+able to say that she did not want to walk
+on anybody's head, and she wanted to go
+home.</p>
+
+<p>"This not nicee place for lillee whitee
+girlee," said the young Chinaman. His pigtail
+was thicker than his father's and black
+right up to the top. The old man's was grey
+at the beginning, but lower down it was black,
+because that part of it was not hair at all, but
+black threads and ribbons and odds and ends
+of trimmings, and towards the end both pigtails
+were greenish.</p>
+
+<p>"Me lun backee takee him safee," the
+younger of the Eastern adventurers went on,
+pointing to his father. "Then me makee
+walkee all alonk you, takee you back same
+placee you comee from. Little white devils
+waitee for you on ce load. You comee with?
+Not? Lillee girlee not cly. John givee her
+one piecee pletty-pletty. Come makee talkee
+with the House Lady."</p>
+
+<p>I believe this is about what he said, and we
+understood that he wanted us to come and
+see his mother, and that he would give Alice
+something pretty, and then see us safe out of
+the horrible brown-grey country.</p>
+
+<p>So we agreed to go with them, for we knew
+those five boys would be waiting for us on the
+way back, most likely with strong reinforcements.
+Alice stopped crying the minute she
+could&mdash;I must say she is better than Dora in
+that way&mdash;and we followed the Chinamen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+who walked in single file like Indians, so
+we did the same, and talked to each other
+over our shoulders. Our grateful Oriental
+friends led us through a good many streets,
+and suddenly opened a door with a key,
+pulled us in, and shut the door. Dick thought
+of the kidnapping of Florence Dombey and
+good Mrs. Brown, but Oswald had no such
+unnoble thoughts.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 540px;">
+<img src="images/gs12.png" width="540" height="400" alt="ON THE SIDEBOARD WAS A BLUEY-WHITE CROCKERY IMAGE." title="ON THE SIDEBOARD WAS A BLUEY-WHITE CROCKERY IMAGE." />
+<span class="caption">ON THE SIDEBOARD WAS A BLUEY-WHITE CROCKERY IMAGE.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The room was small, and very, very odd.
+It was very dirty too, but perhaps it is not
+polite to say that. There was a sort of sideboard
+at one end of the room, with an
+embroidered dirty cloth on it, and on the
+cloth a bluey-white crockery image over a
+foot high. It was very fat and army and
+leggy, and I think it was an idol. The
+minute we got inside the young man
+lighted little brown sticks, and set them
+to burn in front of it. I suppose it was
+incense. There was a sort of long, wide,
+low sofa, without any arms or legs, and a
+table that was like a box, with another box
+in front of it for you to sit down on when
+you worked, and on the table were all sorts
+of tiny little tools&mdash;awls and brads they
+looked like&mdash;and pipe-stems and broken
+bowls of pipes and mouthpieces, for our
+rescued Chinaman was a pipe-mender by
+trade. There wasn't much else in the room
+except the smell, and that seemed to fill it
+choke-full. The smell seemed to have all
+sorts of things in it&mdash;glue and gunpowder,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+and white garden lilies and burnt fat, and it
+was not so easy to breathe as plain air.</p>
+
+<p>Then a Chinese lady came in. She had
+green-grey trousers, shiny like varnish, and
+a blue gown, and her hair was pulled back
+very tight, and twisted into a little knob at
+the back.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to go down on the floor before
+Alice, but we wouldn't let her. Then she said
+a great many things that we feel sure were
+very nice, only they were in Chinese, so we
+could not tell what they were.</p>
+
+<p>And the Chinaman said that his mother
+also wanted Alice to walk on her head&mdash;not
+Alice's own, of course, but the mother's.</p>
+
+<p>I wished we had stayed longer, and tried
+harder to understand what they said, because
+it was an adventure, take it how you
+like, that we're not likely to look upon the
+like of again. Only we were too flustered
+to see this.</p>
+
+<p>We said, "Don't mention it," and things
+like that; and when Dicky said, "I think we
+ought to be going," Oswald said so too.</p>
+
+<p>Then they all began talking Chinese like
+mad, and the Chinese lady came back and
+suddenly gave Alice a parrot.</p>
+
+<p>It was red and green, with a very long tail,
+and as tame as any pet fawn I ever read
+about. It walked up her arm and round
+her neck, and stroked her face with its
+beak. And it did not bite Oswald or Alice,
+or even Dicky, though they could not be sure
+at first that it was not going to.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We said all the polite things we could, and
+the old lady made thousands of hurried
+Chinese replies, and repeated many times,
+"All litey, John," which seemed to be all
+the English she knew.</p>
+
+<p>We never had so much fuss made over us
+in all our lives. I think it was that that
+upset our calmness, and seemed to put us
+into a sort of silly dream that made us not
+see what idiots we were to hurry off from
+scenes we should never again behold. So we
+went. And the youthful Celestial saw us
+safely to the top of Bullamy's Stairs, and
+left us there with the parrot and floods of
+words that seemed all to end in double "e."</p>
+
+<p>We wanted to show him to the others, but
+he would not come, so we rejoined our
+anxious relations without him.</p>
+
+<p>The scene of rejoinder was painful, at first
+because they were most frightfully sick at us
+having been such an age away; but when we
+let them look at the parrot, and told them
+about the fight, they agreed that it was not
+our fault, and we really had been unavoidably
+detained.</p>
+
+<p>But Dora said, "Well, you may say I'm
+always preaching, but I <i>don't</i> think Father
+would like Alice to be fighting street boys
+in Millwall."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose <i>you'd</i> have run away and let the
+old man be killed," said Dicky, and peace was
+not restored till we were nearly at Greenwich
+again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We took the tram to Greenwich Station,
+and then we took a cab home (and well worth
+the money, which was all we now had got,
+except fourpence-halfpenny), for we were all
+dog-tired.</p>
+
+<p>And dog-tired reminds me that we hadn't
+found Pincher, in spite of all our trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Blake, who is our housekeeper, was
+angrier than I have ever seen her. She had
+been so anxious that she had sent the police
+to look for us. But, of course, they had not
+found us. You ought to make allowances for
+what people do when they are anxious, so I
+forgive her everything, even what she said
+about Oswald being a disgrace to a respectable
+house. He owns we were rather muddy,
+owing to the fight.</p>
+
+<p>And when the jaw was over and we were
+having tea&mdash;and there was meat to it, because
+we were as near starving as I ever wish to
+be&mdash;we all ate lots. Even the thought of
+Pincher could not thwart our bold appetites,
+though we kept saying, "Poor old Pincher!"
+"I do wish we'd found him," and things like
+that. The parrot walked about among the
+tea-things as tame as tame. And just as
+Alice was saying how we'd go out again
+to-morrow and have another try for our
+faithful hound there was a scratching at the
+door, and we rushed&mdash;and there was Pincher,
+perfectly well and mad with joy to see us.</p>
+
+<p>H.O. turned an abrupt beetroot colour.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" he said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We said, "What? Out with it."</p>
+
+<p>And though he would much rather have
+kept it a secret buried in his breast, we made
+him own that he had shut Pincher up yesterday
+in the empty rabbit-hutch when he was
+playing Zoological Gardens and forgotten all
+about it in the pleasures of our cousin having
+left us.</p>
+
+<p>So we need not have gone over the water
+at all. But though Oswald pities all dumb
+animals, especially those helplessly shut in
+rabbit-hutches at the bottoms of gardens, he
+cannot be sorry that we had such a Celestial
+adventure and got hold of such a parrot.
+For Alice says that Oswald and Dicky and
+she shall have the parrot between them.</p>
+
+<p>She is tremendously straight. I often
+wonder why she was made a girl. She's a
+jolly sight more of a gentleman than half
+the boys at our school.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span></p>
+<h2><i>THE YOUNG ANTIQUARIES</i></h2>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">This</span> really happened before Christmas, but
+many authors go back to bygone years for
+whole chapters, and I don't see why I
+shouldn't.</div>
+
+<p>It was one Sunday&mdash;the Somethingth
+Sunday in Advent, I think&mdash;and Denny and
+Daisy and their father and Albert's uncle
+came to dinner, which is in the middle of the
+day on that day of rest and the same things
+to eat for grown-ups and us. It is nearly
+always roast beef and Yorkshire, but the
+puddings and vegetables are brightly variegated
+and never the same two Sundays running.</p>
+
+<p>At dinner some one said something about
+the coat-of-arms that is on the silver tankards
+which once, when we were poor and honest,
+used to stay at the shop having the dents
+slowly taken out of them for months and
+months. But now they are always at home
+and are put at the four corners of the table
+every day, and any grown-up who likes can
+drink beer out of them.</p>
+
+<p>After some talk of the sort you don't listen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+to, in which bends and lioncels and gules and
+things played a promising part, Albert's uncle
+said that Mr. Turnbull had told him something
+about that coat-of-arms being carved
+on a bridge somewhere in Cambridgeshire,
+and again the conversation wandered into
+things like Albert's uncle had talked about
+to the Maidstone Antiquarian Society the
+day they came over to see his old house in
+the country and we arranged the time-honoured
+Roman remains for them to dig
+up. So, hearing the words king-post and
+mullion and moulding and underpin, Oswald
+said might we go; and we went, and took
+our dessert with us and had it in our own
+common-room, where you can roast chestnuts
+with a free heart and never mind what your
+fingers get like.</p>
+
+<p>When first we knew Daisy we used to call
+her the White Mouse, and her brother had
+all the appearance of being one too, but you
+know how untruthful appearances are, or else
+it was that we taught him happier things, for
+he certainly turned out quite different in the
+end; and she was not a bad sort of kid,
+though we never could quite cure her of
+wanting to be "ladylike"&mdash;that is the beastliest
+word there is, I think, and Albert's uncle
+says so, too. He says if a girl can't be a lady
+it's not worth while to be only like one&mdash;she'd
+better let it alone and be a free and happy
+bounder.</p>
+
+<p>But all this is not what I was going to say,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+only the author does think of so many things
+besides the story, and sometimes he puts
+them in. This is the case with Thackeray
+and the Religious Tract Society and other
+authors, as well as Mrs. Humphrey Ward.
+Only I don't suppose you have ever heard of
+her, though she writes books that some
+people like very much. But perhaps they
+are her friends. I did not like the one I
+read about the Baronet. It was on a wet
+Sunday at the seaside, and nothing else in
+the house but Bradshaw and "Elsie; or like
+a&mdash;&mdash;" or I shouldn't have. But what really
+happened to us before Christmas is strictly
+the following narrative.</p>
+
+<p>"I say," remarked Denny, when he had
+burned his fingers with a chestnut that
+turned out a bad one after all&mdash;and such is
+life&mdash;and he had finished sucking his fingers
+and getting rid of the chestnut, "about these
+antiquaries?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what about them?" said Oswald.
+He always tries to be gentle and kind to
+Denny, because he knows he helped to make
+a man of the young Mouse.</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't think," said Denny, "that it
+was so very difficult to be one."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," said Dicky. "You have to
+read very dull books and an awful lot of them,
+and remember what you read, what's more."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think so," said Alice. "That girl
+who came with the antiquities&mdash;the one
+Albert's uncle said was upholstered in red<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+plush like furniture&mdash;<i>she</i> hadn't read anything,
+you bet."</p>
+
+<p>Dora said, "You ought not to bet, especially
+on Sunday," and Alice altered it to "You may
+be sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but what then?" Oswald asked
+Denny. "Out with it," for he saw that his
+youthful friend had got an idea and couldn't
+get it out. You should always listen patiently
+to the ideas of others, no matter how silly
+you expect them to be.</p>
+
+<p>"I do wish you wouldn't hurry me so," said
+Denny, snapping his fingers anxiously. And
+we tried to be patient.</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't we <i>be</i> them?" Denny said
+at last.</p>
+
+<p>"He means antiquaries," said Oswald to the
+bewildered others. "But there's nowhere to
+go and nothing to do when we get there."</p>
+
+<p>The Dentist (so-called for short, his real
+name being Denis) got red and white, and
+drew Oswald aside to the window for a secret
+discussion. Oswald listened as carefully as he
+could, but Denny always buzzes so when he
+whispers.</p>
+
+<p>"Right oh," he remarked, when the confidings
+of the Dentist had got so that you
+could understand what he was driving at.
+"Though you're being shy with us now, after
+all we went through together in the summer,
+is simply skittles."</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned to the polite and attentive
+others and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 270px;">
+<img src="images/gs13.png" width="270" height="425" alt="OSWALD LISTENED AS CAREFULLY AS HE COULD, BUT DENNY ALWAYS BUZZES SO WHEN HE WHISPERS." title="OSWALD LISTENED AS CAREFULLY AS HE COULD, BUT DENNY ALWAYS BUZZES SO WHEN HE WHISPERS." />
+<span class="caption">OSWALD LISTENED AS CAREFULLY AS HE COULD, BUT DENNY ALWAYS BUZZES SO WHEN HE WHISPERS.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You remember that day we went to
+Bexley Heath with Albert's uncle? Well,
+there was a house, and Albert's uncle said a
+clever writer lived there, and in more ancient
+years that chap in history&mdash;Sir Thomas What's
+his name; and Denny thinks he might let us
+be antiquaries there. It looks a ripping place
+from the railway."</p>
+
+<p>It really does. It's a fine big house, and
+splendid gardens, and a lawn with a sundial,
+and the tallest trees anywhere about here.</p>
+
+<p>"But what could we <i>do?</i>" said Dicky. "I
+don't suppose <i>he'd</i> give <i>us</i> tea," though such,
+indeed, had been our hospitable conduct to
+the antiquaries who came to see Albert's
+uncle.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know," said Alice. "We might
+dress up for it, and wear spectacles, and we
+could all read papers. It would be lovely&mdash;something
+to fill up the Christmas holidays&mdash;the
+part before the wedding, I mean. Do
+let's."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, I don't mind. I suppose it would
+be improving," said Dora. "We should have
+to read a lot of history. You can settle it.
+I'm going to show Daisy our bridesmaids'
+dresses."</p>
+
+<p>It was, alas! too true. Albert's uncle was
+to be married but shortly after, and it was
+partly our faults, though that does not come
+into this story.</p>
+
+<p>So the two D.'s went to look at the clothes&mdash;girls
+like this&mdash;but Alice, who wishes she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+had never consented to be born a girl, stayed
+with us, and we had a long and earnest
+council about it.</p>
+
+<p>"One thing," said Oswald, "it can't possibly
+be wrong&mdash;so perhaps it won't be amusing."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Oswald!" said Alice, and she spoke
+rather like Dora.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean what you mean," said Oswald
+in lofty scorn. "What I mean to say is that
+when a thing is quite sure to be right, it's not
+so&mdash;well&mdash;I mean to say there it is, don't you
+know; and if it might be wrong, and isn't, it's
+a score to you; and if it might be wrong, and
+is&mdash;as so often happens&mdash;well, you know yourself,
+adventures sometimes turn out wrong
+that you didn't think were going to, but
+seldom, or never, the uninteresting kind,
+and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Dicky told Oswald to dry up&mdash;which, of
+course, no one stands from a younger
+brother, but though Oswald explained this
+at the time, he felt in his heart that he
+has sometimes said what he meant with
+more clearness. When Oswald and Dicky
+had finished, we went on and arranged
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>Every one was to write a paper&mdash;and
+read it.</p>
+
+<p>"If the papers are too long to read while
+we're there," said No&euml;l, "we can read them in
+the long winter evenings when we are grouped
+along the household hearthrug. I shall do
+my paper in poetry&mdash;about Agincourt."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Some of us thought Agincourt wasn't fair,
+because no one could be sure about any knight
+who took part in that well-known conflict
+having lived in the Red House; but Alice got
+us to agree, because she said it would be
+precious dull if we all wrote about nothing
+but Sir Thomas Whatdoyoucallhim&mdash;whose
+real name in history Oswald said he would
+find out, and then write his paper on that
+world-renowned person, who is a household
+word in all families. Denny said he would
+write about Charles the First, because they
+were just doing that part at his school.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall write about what happened in
+1066," said H.O. "I know that."</p>
+
+<p>Alice said, "If I write a paper it will be
+about Mary Queen of Scots."</p>
+
+<p>Dora and Daisy came in just as she said
+this, and it transpired that this ill-fated but
+good-looking lady was the only one they
+either of them wanted to write about. So
+Alice gave it up to them and settled to do
+Magna Charta, and they could settle something
+between themselves for the one who
+would have to give up Mary Queen of Scots
+in the end. We all agreed that the story of
+that lamented wearer of pearls and black
+velvet would not make enough for two
+papers.</p>
+
+<p>Everything was beautifully arranged, when
+suddenly H.O. said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Supposing he doesn't let us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who doesn't let us what?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The Red House man&mdash;read papers at his
+Red House."</p>
+
+<p>This was, indeed, what nobody had thought
+of&mdash;and even now we did not think any one
+could be so lost to proper hospitableness as to
+say no. Yet none of us liked to write and
+ask. So we tossed up for it, only Dora had
+feelings about tossing up on Sunday, so we
+did it with a hymn-book instead of a penny.</p>
+
+<p>We all won except No&euml;l, who lost, so he
+said he would do it on Albert's uncle's typewriter,
+which was on a visit to us at the time,
+waiting for Mr. Remington to fetch it away to
+mend the "M." We think it was broken
+through Albert's uncle writing "Margaret"
+so often, because it is the name of the lady
+he was doomed to be married by.</p>
+
+<p>The girls had got the letter the Maidstone
+Antiquarian Society and Field Clubs Secretary
+had sent to Albert's uncle&mdash;H.O. said they
+kept it for a momentum of the day&mdash;and we
+altered the dates and names in blue chalk and
+put in a piece about might we skate on the
+moat, and gave it to No&euml;l, who had already
+begun to make up his poetry about Agincourt,
+and so had to be shaken before he would
+attend. And that evening, when Father and
+our Indian uncle and Albert's uncle were
+seeing the others on the way to Forest Hill,
+No&euml;l's poetry and pencil were taken away
+from him and he was shut up in Father's room
+with the Remington typewriter, which we
+had never been forbidden to touch. And I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+don't think he hurt it much, except quite at
+the beginning, when he jammed the "S" and
+the "J" and the thing that means per cent. so
+that they stuck&mdash;and Dicky soon put that
+right with a screwdriver.</p>
+
+<p>He did not get on very well, but kept on
+writing MOR7E HOAS5 or MORD6M HOVCE
+on new pieces of paper and then beginning
+again, till the floor was strewn with his
+remains; so we left him at it, and went and
+played Celebrated Painters&mdash;a game even
+Dora cannot say anything about on Sunday,
+considering the Bible kind of pictures most of
+them painted. And much later, the library
+door having banged once and the front door
+twice, No&euml;l came in and said he had posted it,
+and already he was deep in poetry again,
+and had to be roused when requisite for
+bed.</p>
+
+<p>It was not till next day that he owned that
+the typewriter had been a fiend in disguise,
+and that the letter had come out so odd that
+he could hardly read it himself.</p>
+
+<p>"The hateful engine of destruction wouldn't
+answer to the bit in the least," he said, "and
+I'd used nearly a wastepaper basket of Father's
+best paper, and I thought he might come in
+and say something, so I just finished it as well
+as I could, and I corrected it with the blue
+chalk&mdash;because you'd bagged that B.B. of
+mine&mdash;and I didn't notice what name I'd
+signed till after I'd licked the stamp."</p>
+
+<p>The hearts of his kind brothers and sisters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+sank low. But they kept them up as well as
+they could, and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 530px;">
+<img src="images/gs14.png" width="530" height="400" alt="IT WAS NOT TILL NEXT DAY THAT HE OWNED THAT THE TYPEWRITER HAD BEEN A FIEND IN DISGUISE." title="IT WAS NOT TILL NEXT DAY THAT HE OWNED THAT THE TYPEWRITER HAD BEEN A FIEND IN DISGUISE." />
+<span class="caption">IT WAS NOT TILL NEXT DAY THAT HE OWNED THAT THE TYPEWRITER HAD BEEN A FIEND IN DISGUISE.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"What name <i>did</i> you sign?"</p>
+
+<p>And No&euml;l said, "Why, Edward Turnbull,
+of course&mdash;like at the end of the real letter.
+You never crossed it out like you did his
+address."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Oswald witheringly. "You see,
+I did think, whatever else you didn't know,
+I did think you knew your own silly name."</p>
+
+<p>Then Alice said Oswald was unkind, though
+you see he was not, and she kissed No&euml;l and
+said she and he would take turns to watch
+for the postman, so as to get the answer
+(which of course would be subscribed on the
+envelope with the name of Turnbull instead
+of Bastable) before the servant could tell
+the postman that the name was a stranger
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>And next evening it came, and it was very
+polite and grown-up&mdash;and said we should be
+welcome, and that we might read our papers
+and skate on the moat. The Red House has
+a moat, like the Moat House in the country,
+but not so wild and dangerous. Only we
+never skated on it because the frost gave out
+the minute we had got leave to. Such is life,
+as the sparks fly upwards. (The last above is
+called a moral reflection.)</p>
+
+<p>So now, having got leave from Mr. Red House
+(I won't give his name because he is a writer
+of worldly fame and he might not like it), we
+set about writing our papers. It was not bad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+fun, only rather difficult because Dora said
+she never knew which Encyclo. volume she
+might be wanting, as she was using Edinburgh,
+Mary, Scotland, Bothwell, Holywell, and
+France, and many others, and Oswald never
+knew which he might want, owing to his not
+being able exactly to remember the distinguished
+and deathless other appellation of
+Sir Thomas Thingummy, who had lived in
+the Red House.</p>
+
+<p>No&euml;l was up to the ears in Agincourt, yet
+that made but little difference to our destiny.
+He is always plunged in poetry of one sort or
+another, and if it hadn't been that, it would
+have been something else. This, at least, we
+insisted on having kept a secret, so he could
+not read it to us.</p>
+
+<p>H.O. got very inky the first half-holiday,
+and then he got some sealing-wax and a big
+envelope from Father, and put something in
+and fastened it up, and said he had done his.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky would not tell us what his paper was
+going to be about, but he said it would not
+be like ours, and he let H.O. help him by
+looking on while he invented more patent
+screws for ships.</p>
+
+<p>The spectacles were difficult. We got three
+pairs of the uncle's, and one that had belonged
+to the housekeeper's grandfather, but nine
+pairs were needed, because Albert-next-door
+mouched in one half-holiday and wanted to
+join, and said if we'd let him he'd write a
+paper on the Constitutions of Clarendon, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+we thought he couldn't do it, so we let him.
+And then, after all, he did.</p>
+
+<p>So at last Alice went down to Bennett's in
+the village, that we are such good customers
+of, because when our watches stop we take
+them there, and he lent us a lot of empty
+frames on the instinctive understanding that
+we would pay for them if we broke them or
+let them get rusty.</p>
+
+<p>And so all was ready. And the fatal day
+approached; and it was the holidays. For
+us, that is, but not for Father, for his business
+never seems to rest by day and night, except
+at Christmas and times like that. So we did
+not need to ask him if we might go. Oswald
+thought it would be more amusing for Father
+if we told it all to him in the form of an
+entertaining anecdote, afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>Denny and Daisy and Albert came to spend
+the day.</p>
+
+<p>We told Mrs. Blake Mr. Red House had
+asked us, and she let the girls put on their
+second-best things, which are coats with capes
+and red Tam-o'shanters. These capacious
+coats are very good for playing highwaymen
+in.</p>
+
+<p>We made ourselves quite clean and tidy.
+At the very last we found that H.O. had
+been making marks on his face with burnt
+matches, to imitate wrinkles, but really it
+only imitated dirt, so we made him wash it
+off. Then he wanted to paint himself red
+like a clown, but we had decided that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+spectacles were to be our only disguise, and
+even those were not to be assumed till Oswald
+gave the word.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 434px;">
+<img src="images/gs15.png" width="434" height="400" alt="THE STATIONMASTER AND PORTER LOOKED RESPECTFULLY AT US." title="THE STATIONMASTER AND PORTER LOOKED RESPECTFULLY AT US." />
+<span class="caption">THE STATIONMASTER AND PORTER LOOKED RESPECTFULLY AT US.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>No casuist observer could have thought
+that the nine apparently light-headed and
+careless party who now wended their way to
+Blackheath Station, looking as if they were
+not up to anything in particular, were really
+an Antiquarian Society of the deepest dye.
+We got an empty carriage to ourselves, and
+halfway between Blackheath and the other
+station Oswald gave the word, and we all put
+on the spectacles. We had our antiquarian
+papers of lore and researched history in
+exercise-books, rolled up and tied with
+string.</p>
+
+<p>The stationmaster and porter, of each of
+which the station boasted but one specimen,
+looked respectfully at us as we got out of the
+train, and we went straight out of the station,
+under the railway arch, and down to the
+green gate of the Red House. It has a lodge,
+but there is no one in it. We peeped in at
+the window, and there was nothing in the
+room but an old beehive and a broken leather
+strap.</p>
+
+<p>We waited in the front for a bit, so that
+Mr. Red House could come out and welcome
+us like Albert's uncle did the other antiquaries,
+but no one came, so we went round
+the garden. It was very brown and wet, but
+full of things you didn't see every day. Furze
+summer-houses, for instance, and a red wall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+all round it, with holes in it that you might
+have walled heretics up in in the olden times.
+Some of the holes were quite big enough to
+have taken a very small heretic. There was
+a broken swing, and a fish-pond&mdash;but we were
+on business, and Oswald insisted on reading
+the papers.</p>
+
+<p>He said, "Let's go to the sundial. It looks
+dryer there, my feet are like ice-houses."</p>
+
+<p>It was dryer because there was a soaking
+wet green lawn round it, and round that a
+sloping path made of little squares of red and
+white marble. This was quite waterless, and
+the sun shone on it, so that it was warm to
+the hands, though not to the feet, because of
+boots. Oswald called on Albert to read first.
+Albert is not a clever boy. He is not one of
+us, and Oswald wanted to get over the Constitutions.
+For Albert is hardly ever amusing,
+even in fun, and when he tries to show off it
+is sometimes hard to bear. He read&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='center'>"<span class="smcap">The Constitutions of Clarendon.</span></div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"Clarendon (sometimes called Clarence) had
+only one constitution. It must have been a
+very bad one, because he was killed by a butt
+of Malmsey. If he had had more constitutions
+or better ones he would have lived to be
+very old. This is a warning to everybody."</p></div>
+
+<p>To this day none of us know how he could,
+and whether his uncle helped him.</p>
+
+<p>We clapped, of course, but not with our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+hearts, which were hissing inside us, and then
+Oswald began to read his paper. He had not
+had a chance to ask Albert's uncle what the
+other name of the world-famous Sir Thomas
+was, so he had to put him in as Sir Thomas
+Blank, and make it up by being very strong
+on scenes that could be better imagined than
+described, and, as we knew that the garden
+was five hundred years old, of course he could
+bring in any eventful things since the year
+1400.</p>
+
+<p>He was just reading the part about the
+sundial, which he had noticed from the train
+when we went to Bexley Heath. It was
+rather a nice piece, I think.</p>
+
+<p>"Most likely this sundial told the time
+when Charles the First was beheaded, and
+recorded the death-devouring progress of the
+Great Plague and the Fire of London. There
+is no doubt that the sun often shone even in
+these devastating occasions, so that we may
+picture Sir Thomas Blank telling the time
+here and remarking&mdash;O crikey!"</p>
+
+<p>These last words are what Oswald himself
+remarked. Of course a person in history
+would never have said them.</p>
+
+<p>The reader of the paper had suddenly heard
+a fierce, woodeny sound, like giant singlesticks,
+terrifyingly close behind him, and
+looking hastily round, he saw a most angry
+lady, in a bright blue dress with fur on it, like
+a picture, and very large wooden shoes, which
+had made the singlestick noise. Her eyes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+were very fierce, and her mouth tight shut.
+She did not look hideous, but more like an
+avenging sprite or angel, though of course we
+knew she was only mortal, so we took off our
+caps. A gentleman also bounded towards us
+over some vegetables, and acted as reserve
+support to the lady.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 470px;">
+<img src="images/gs16.png" width="470" height="400" alt="HER VOICE WHEN SHE TOLD US WE WERE TRESPASSING WAS NOT SO FURIOUS." title="HER VOICE WHEN SHE TOLD US WE WERE TRESPASSING WAS NOT SO FURIOUS." />
+<span class="caption">HER VOICE WHEN SHE TOLD US WE WERE TRESPASSING WAS NOT SO FURIOUS.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Her voice when she told us we were trespassing
+and it was a private garden was not
+so furious as Oswald had expected from her
+face, but it <i>was</i> angry. H.O. at once said it
+wasn't her garden, was it? But, of course,
+we could see it <i>was</i>, because of her not having
+any hat or jacket or gloves, and wearing
+those wooden shoes to keep her feet dry,
+which no one would do in the street.</p>
+
+<p>So then Oswald said we had leave, and
+showed her Mr. Red House's letter.</p>
+
+<p>"But that was written to Mr. Turnbull,"
+said she, "and how did <i>you</i> get it?"</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Red House wearily begged us to
+explain, so Oswald did, in that clear, straightforward
+way some people think he has, and
+that no one can suspect for an instant. And
+he ended by saying how far from comfortable
+it would be to have Mr. Turnbull coming with
+his thin mouth and his tight legs, and that
+we were Bastables, and much nicer than the
+tight-legged one, whatever she might think.</p>
+
+<p>And she listened, and then she quite suddenly
+gave a most jolly grin and asked us to go on
+reading our papers.</p>
+
+<p>It was plain that all disagreeableness was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+at an end, and, to show this even to the
+stupidest, she instantly asked us to lunch.
+Before we could politely accept H.O. shoved
+his oar in as usual and said <i>he</i> would stop
+no matter how little there was for lunch
+because he liked her very much.</p>
+
+<p>So she laughed, and Mr. Red House laughed,
+and she said they wouldn't interfere with the
+papers, and they went away and left us.</p>
+
+<p>Of course Oswald and Dicky insisted on
+going on with the papers; though the girls
+wanted to talk about Mrs. Red House, and
+how nice she was, and the way her dress was
+made. Oswald finished his paper, but later
+he was sorry he had been in such a hurry,
+because after a bit Mrs. Red House came
+out, and said she wanted to play too. She
+pretended to be a very ancient antiquary, and
+was most jolly, so that the others read their
+papers to her, and Oswald knows she would
+have liked his paper best, because it <i>was</i> the
+best, though I say it.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky's turned out to be all about that
+patent screw, and how Nelson would not
+have been killed if his ship had been built
+with one.</p>
+
+<p>Daisy's paper was about Lady Jane Grey,
+and hers and Dora's were exactly alike, the
+dullest by far, because they had got theirs out
+of books.</p>
+
+<p>Alice had not written hers because she had
+been helping No&euml;l to copy his.</p>
+
+<p>Denny's was about King Charles, and he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+was very grown-up and fervent about this
+ill-fated monarch and white roses.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Red House took us into the summer-houses,
+where it was warmer, and such is the
+wonderful architecture of the Red House
+gardens that there was a fresh summer-house
+for each paper, except No&euml;l's and H.O.'s, which
+were read in the stable. There were no horses
+there.</p>
+
+<p>No&euml;l's was very long, and it began&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"This is the story of Agincourt.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">If you don't know it you jolly well ought.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">It was a famous battle fair,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And all your ancestors fought there</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That is if you come of a family old.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The Bastables do; they were always very bold.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">And at Agincourt</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">They fought</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">As they ought;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">So we have been taught."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>And so on and so on, till some of us
+wondered why poetry was ever invented.
+But Mrs. Red House said she liked it awfully,
+so No&euml;l said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You may have it to keep. I've got
+another one of it at home."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll put it next my heart, No&euml;l," she said.
+And she did, under the blue stuff and fur.</p>
+
+<p>H.O.'s was last, but when we let him read it
+he wouldn't, so Dora opened his envelope and
+it was thick inside with blotting-paper, and
+in the middle there was a page with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"<span class="smcap">1066 William the Conqueror</span>,"<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and nothing else.</div>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "I said I'd write all I knew
+about 1066, and that's it. I can't write more
+than I know, can I?" The girls said he
+couldn't, but Oswald thought he might
+have tried.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't worth blacking your face all
+over just for that," he said. But Mrs. Red
+House laughed very much and said it was
+a lovely paper, and told <i>her</i> all she wanted
+to know about 1066.</p>
+
+<p>Then we went into the garden again and
+ran races, and Mrs. Red House held all our
+spectacles for us and cheered us on. She
+said she was the Patent Automatic Cheering
+Winning-post. We do like her.</p>
+
+<p>Lunch was the glorious end of the Morden
+House Antiquarian Society and Field Club's
+Field Day. But after lunch was the beginning
+of a real adventure such as real antiquarians
+hardly ever get. This will be unrolled later.
+I will finish with some French out of a
+newspaper. Albert's uncle told it me, so I
+know it is right. Any of your own grown-ups
+will tell you what it means.</p>
+
+<p><i>Au prochain num&eacute;ro je vous promets des
+&eacute;motions.</i></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>PS.&mdash;In case your grown-ups can't be
+bothered, "<i>&eacute;motions</i>" mean sensation, I
+believe.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p>
+<h2><i>THE INTREPID EXPLORER AND<br />
+HIS LIEUTENANT</i></h2>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">We</span> had spectacles to play antiquaries in,
+and the rims were vaselined to prevent rust,
+and it came off on our faces with other kinds
+of dirt, and when the antiquary game was
+over, Mrs. Red House helped us to wash it off
+with all the thoroughness of aunts, and far
+more gentleness.</div>
+
+<p>Then, clean and with our hairs brushed, we
+were led from the bath-room to the banqueting
+hall or dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>It is a very beautiful house. The girls
+thought it was bare, but Oswald likes bareness
+because it leaves more room for games.
+All the furniture was of agreeable shapes
+and colours, and so were all the things on
+the table&mdash;glasses and dishes and everything.
+Oswald politely said how nice everything was.</p>
+
+<p>The lunch was a blissful dream of perfect
+A.1.-ness. Tongue, and nuts, and apples, and
+oranges, and candied fruits, and ginger-wine
+in tiny glasses that No&euml;l said were fairy
+goblets. Everybody drank everybody else's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+health&mdash;and No&euml;l told Mrs. Red House just
+how lovely she was, and he would have paper
+and pencil and write her a poem for her very
+own. I will not put it in here, because Mr.
+Red House is an author himself, and he might
+want to use it in some of his books. And the
+writer of these pages has been taught to think
+of others, and besides I expect you are jolly
+well sick of No&euml;l's poetry.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 553px;">
+<img src="images/gs17.png" width="553" height="400" alt="THE LUNCH WAS A BLISSFUL DREAM OF A.1.-NESS." title="THE LUNCH WAS A BLISSFUL DREAM OF A.1.-NESS." />
+<span class="caption">THE LUNCH WAS A BLISSFUL DREAM OF A.1.-NESS.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>There was no restrainingness about that
+lunch. As far as a married lady can possibly
+be a regular brick, Mrs. Red House is one.
+And Mr. Red House is not half bad, and
+knows how to talk about interesting things
+like sieges, and cricket, and foreign postage
+stamps.</p>
+
+<p>Even poets think of things sometimes, and
+it was No&euml;l who said directly he had finished
+his poetry,</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got a secret staircase? And
+have you explored your house properly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;we have," said that well-behaved
+and unusual lady&mdash;Mrs. Red House, "but
+<i>you</i> haven't. You may if you like. Go
+anywhere," she added with the unexpected
+magnificence of a really noble heart. "Look
+at everything&mdash;only don't make hay. Off
+with you!" or words to that effect.</p>
+
+<p>And the whole of us, with proper thanks,
+offed with us instantly, in case she should
+change her mind.</p>
+
+<p>I will not describe the Red House to you&mdash;because
+perhaps you do not care about a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+house having three staircases and more cupboards
+and odd corners than we'd ever seen
+before, and great attics with beams, and
+enormous drawers on rollers, let into the
+wall&mdash;and half the rooms not furnished,
+and those that were all with old-looking,
+interesting furniture. There was something
+about that furniture that even the present
+author can't describe&mdash;as though any of it
+might have secret drawers or panels&mdash;even
+the chairs. It was all beautiful, and mysterious
+in the deepest degree.</p>
+
+<p>When we had been all over the house
+several times, we thought about the cellars.
+There was only one servant in the kitchen (so
+we saw Mr. and Mrs. Red House must be poor
+but honest, like we used to be), and we said to
+her&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do? We've got leave to
+go wherever we like, and please where are
+the cellars, and may we go in?"</p>
+
+<p>She was quite nice, though she seemed to
+think there was an awful lot of us. People
+often think this. She said:</p>
+
+<p>"Lor, love a duck&mdash;yes, I suppose so," in not
+ungentle tones, and showed us.</p>
+
+<p>I don't think we should ever have found
+the way from the house into the cellar by
+ourselves. There was a wide shelf in the
+scullery with a row of gentlemanly boots on
+it that had been cleaned, and on the floor
+in front a piece of wood. The general servant&mdash;for
+such indeed she proved to be&mdash;lifted up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+the wood and opened a little door under the
+shelf. And there was the beginning of steps,
+and the entrance to them was half trap-door,
+and half the upright kind&mdash;a thing none of
+us had seen before.</p>
+
+<p>She gave us a candle-end, and we pressed
+forward to the dark unknown. The stair was
+of stone, arched overhead like churches&mdash;and
+it twisted most unlike other cellar stairs.
+And when we got down it was all arched
+like vaults, very cobwebby.</p>
+
+<p>"Just the place for crimes," said Dicky.
+There was a beer cellar, and a wine cellar
+with bins, and a keeping cellar with hooks
+in the ceiling and stone shelves&mdash;just right
+for venison pasties and haunches of the same
+swift animal.</p>
+
+<p>Then we opened a door and there was a
+cellar with a well in it.</p>
+
+<p>"To throw bodies down, no doubt," Oswald
+explained.</p>
+
+<p>They were cellars full of glory, and passages
+leading from one to the other like the Inquisition,
+and I wish ours at home were like them.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pile of beer barrels in the
+largest cellar, and it was H.O. who said,
+"Why not play 'King of the Castle?'"</p>
+
+<p>So we did. We had a most refreshing
+game. It was exactly like Denny to be the
+one who slipped down behind the barrels,
+and did not break a single one of all his legs
+or arms.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he cried, in answer to our anxious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+inquiries. "I'm not hurt a bit, but the wall
+here feels soft&mdash;at least not soft&mdash;but it
+doesn't scratch your nails like stone does,
+so perhaps it's the door of a secret dungeon
+or something like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Good old Dentist!" replied Oswald, who
+always likes Denny to have ideas of his own,
+because it was us who taught him the folly of
+white-mousishness.</p>
+
+<p>"It might be," he went on, "but these barrels
+are as heavy as lead, and much more awkward
+to collar hold of."</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't we get in some other way?" Alice
+said. "There ought to be a subterranean
+passage. I expect there is if we only knew."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald has an enormous geographical
+bump in his head. He said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Look here! That far cellar, where the
+wall doesn't go quite up to the roof&mdash;that
+space we made out was under the dining-room&mdash;I
+could creep under there. I believe
+it leads into behind this door."</p>
+
+<p>"Get me out! Oh do, do get me out, and
+let me come!" shouted the barrel-imprisoned
+Dentist from the unseen regions near the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>So we got him out by Oswald lying flat on
+his front on the top barrel, and the Dentist
+clawed himself up by Oswald's hands while
+the others kept hold of the boots of the representative
+of the house of Bastable, which,
+of course, Oswald is, whenever Father is not
+there.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come on," cried Oswald, when Denny
+was at last able to appear, very cobwebby
+and black. "Give us what's left of the
+matches!"</p>
+
+<p>The others agreed to stand by the barrels
+and answer our knocking on the door if we
+ever got there.</p>
+
+<p>"But I daresay we shall perish on the way,"
+said Oswald hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>So we started. The other cellar was easily
+found by the ingenious and geography-bump-headed
+Oswald. It opened straight on to the
+moat, and we think it was a boathouse in
+middle-aged times.</p>
+
+<p>Denny made a back for Oswald, who led
+the way, and then he turned round and
+hauled up his inexperienced, but rapidly
+improving, follower on to the top of the wall
+that did not go quite up to the roof.</p>
+
+<p>"It is like coal mines," he said, beginning to
+crawl on hands and knees over what felt like
+very prickly beach, "only we've no picks or
+shovels."</p>
+
+<p>"And no Sir Humphry Davy safety lamps,"
+said Denny in sadness.</p>
+
+<p>"They wouldn't be any good," said Oswald;
+"they're only to protect the hard-working
+mining men against fire-damp and choke-damp.
+And there's none of those kinds
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Denny, "the damp here is only
+just the common kind."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," said Oswald, and they crawled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+a bit further still on their furtive and unassuming
+stomachs.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a very glorious adventure. It is,
+isn't it?" inquired the Dentist in breathlessness,
+when the young stomachs of the young
+explorers had bitten the dust for some yards
+further.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Oswald, encouraging the boy,
+"and it's <i>your</i> find, too," he added, with
+admirable fairness and justice, unusual in
+one so young. "I only hope we shan't find
+a mouldering skeleton buried alive behind
+that door when we get to it. Come on.
+What are you stopping for now?" he added
+kindly.</p>
+
+<p>"It's&mdash;it's only cobwebs in my throat,"
+Denny remarked, and he came on, though
+slower than before.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald, with his customary intrepid caution,
+was leading the way, and he paused every now
+and then to strike a match because it was
+pitch dark, and at any moment the courageous
+leader might have tumbled into a well or a
+dungeon, or knocked his dauntless nose
+against something in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right for you," he said to Denny,
+when he had happened to kick his follower
+in the eye. "You've nothing to fear except
+my boots, and whatever they do is accidental,
+and so it doesn't count, but <i>I</i> may be going
+straight into some trap that has been yawning
+for me for countless ages."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't come on so fast, thank you," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+the Dentist. "I don't think you've kicked
+my eye out yet."</p>
+
+<p>So they went on and on, crampedly crawling
+on what I have mentioned before, and at last
+Oswald did not strike the next match carefully
+enough, and with the suddenness of a
+falling star his hands, which, with his knees,
+he was crawling on, went over the edge into
+infinite space, and his chest alone, catching
+sharply on the edge of the precipice, saved
+him from being hurled to the bottom of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Halt!" he cried, as soon as he had any
+breath again. But, alas! it was too late!
+The Dentist's nose had been too rapid, and
+had caught up the boot-heel of the daring
+leader. This was very annoying to Oswald,
+and was not in the least his fault.</p>
+
+<p>"Do keep your nose off my boots half a
+sec.," he remarked, but not crossly. "I'll
+strike a match."</p>
+
+<p>And he did, and by its weird and unscrutatious
+light looked down into the precipice.</p>
+
+<p>Its bottom transpired to be not much more
+than six feet below, so Oswald turned the
+other end of himself first, hung by his hands,
+and dropped with fearless promptness, uninjured,
+in another cellar. He then helped
+Denny down. The cornery thing Denny
+happened to fall on could not have hurt
+him so much as he said.</p>
+
+<p>The light of the torch, I mean match, now
+revealed to the two bold and youthful youths
+another cellar, with <i>things</i> in it&mdash;very dirty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+indeed, but of thrilling interest and unusual
+shapes, but the match went out before we
+could see exactly what the things were.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 541px;">
+<img src="images/gs18.png" width="541" height="300" alt="OSWALD DID NOT STRIKE THE NEXT MATCH CAREFULLY ENOUGH." title="OSWALD DID NOT STRIKE THE NEXT MATCH CAREFULLY ENOUGH." />
+<span class="caption">OSWALD DID NOT STRIKE THE NEXT MATCH CAREFULLY ENOUGH.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The next match was the last but one, but
+Oswald was undismayed, whatever Denny
+may have been. He lighted it and looked
+hastily round. There was a door.</p>
+
+<p>"Bang on that door&mdash;over there, silly!" he
+cried, in cheering accents, to his trusty
+lieutenant; "behind that thing that looks
+like a <i>chevaux de frize</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Denny had never been to Woolwich, and
+while Oswald was explaining what a <i>chevaux
+de frize</i> is, the match burnt his fingers almost
+to the bone, and he had to feel his way to the
+door and hammer on it yourself.</p>
+
+<p>The blows of the others from the other side
+were deafening.</p>
+
+<p>All was saved.</p>
+
+<p>It was the right door.</p>
+
+<p>"Go and ask for candles and matches,"
+shouted the brave Oswald. "Tell them there
+are all sorts of things in here&mdash;a <i>chevaux de
+frize</i> of chair-legs, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A shovel of <i>what?</i>" asked Dicky's voice
+hollowly from the other side of the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Freeze," shouted Denny. "I don't know
+what it means, but do get a candle and make
+them unbarricade the door. I don't want to
+go back the way we came." He said something
+about Oswald's boots that he was sorry
+for afterwards, so I will not repeat it, and I
+don't think the others heard, because of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+noise the barrels made while they were being
+climbed over.</p>
+
+<p>This noise, however, was like balmy zephyrs
+compared to the noise the barrels insisted on
+making when Dicky had collected some
+grown-ups and the barrels were being rolled
+away. During this thunder-like interval
+Denny and Oswald were all the time in the
+pitch dark. They had lighted their last match,
+and by its flickering gleam we saw a long,
+large mangle.</p>
+
+<p>"It's like a double coffin," said Oswald, as
+the match went out. "You can take my arm
+if you like, Dentist."</p>
+
+<p>The Dentist did&mdash;and then afterwards he
+said he only did it because he thought Oswald
+was frightened of the dark.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only for a little while," said Oswald in
+the pauses of the barrel-thunder, "and I once
+read about two brothers confined for life in a
+cage so constructed that the unfortunate
+prisoners could neither sit, lie, nor stand in
+comfort. We can do all those things."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Denny; "but I'd rather keep on
+standing if it's the same to you, Oswald. I
+don't like spiders&mdash;not much, that is."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right," said Oswald with affable
+gentleness; "and there might be toads perhaps
+in a vault like this&mdash;or serpents guarding the
+treasure like in the Cold Lairs. But of course
+they couldn't have cobras in England. They'd
+have to put up with vipers, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>Denny shivered, and Oswald could feel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+him stand first on one leg and then on the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could stand on neither of my legs
+for a bit," he said, but Oswald answered firmly
+that this could not be.</p>
+
+<p>And then the door opened with a crack-crash,
+and we saw lights and faces through it,
+and something fell from the top of the door that
+Oswald really did think for one awful instant
+was a hideous mass of writhing serpents put
+there to guard the entrance.</p>
+
+<p>"Like a sort of live booby-trap," he
+explained; "just the sort of thing a magician
+or a witch would have thought of doing."</p>
+
+<p>But it was only dust and cobwebs&mdash;a thick,
+damp mat of them.</p>
+
+<p>Then the others surged in, in light-hearted
+misunderstanding of the perils Oswald had
+led Denny into&mdash;I mean through, with Mr.
+Red House and another gentleman, and loud
+voices and candles that dripped all over everybody's
+hands, as well as their clothes, and the
+solitary confinement of the gallant Oswald
+was at an end. Denny's solitary confinement
+was at an end, too&mdash;and he was now able to
+stand on both legs and to let go the arm of
+his leader who was so full of fortitude.</p>
+
+<p>"This <i>is</i> a find," said the pleased voice of
+Mr. Red House. "Do you know, we've been
+in this house six whole months and a bit,
+and <i>we</i> never thought of there being a door
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you don't often play 'King of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+Castle,'" said Dora politely; "it <i>is</i> rather a
+rough game, I always think."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, curiously enough, we never have,"
+said Mr. Red House, beginning to lift out the
+chairs, in which avocation we all helped, of
+course.</p>
+
+<p>"Nansen is nothing to you! You ought to
+have a medal for daring explorations," said
+the other gentleman, but nobody gave us one,
+and, of course, we did not want any reward
+for doing our duty, however tight and cobwebby.</p>
+
+<p>The cellars proved to be well stocked with
+spiders and old furniture, but no toads or
+snakes, which few, if any, regretted. Snakes
+are outcasts from human affection. Oswald
+pities them, of course.</p>
+
+<p>There was a great lumpish thing in four
+parts that Mr. Red House said was a press,
+and a ripping settle&mdash;besides the chairs, and
+some carved wood that Mr. Red House and
+his friend made out to be part of an old four-post
+bed. There was also a wooden thing like
+a box with another box on it at one end, and
+H.O. said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You could make a ripping rabbit-hutch
+out of that."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald thought so himself. But Mr. Red
+House said he had other uses for it, and
+would bring it up later.</p>
+
+<p>It took us all that was left of the afternoon
+to get the things up the stairs into the kitchen.
+It was hard work, but we know all about the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+dignity of labour. The general hated the
+things we had so enterprisingly discovered.
+I suppose she knew who would have to clean
+them, but Mrs. Red House was awfully pleased
+and said we were dears.</p>
+
+<p>We were not very clean dears by the time
+our work was done, and when the other
+gentleman said, "Won't you all take a dish
+of tea under my humble roof?" the words
+"Like this?" were formed by more than one
+youthful voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you would be happier in a
+partially cleansed state?" said Mr. Red House.
+And Mrs. Red House, who is my idea of a
+feudal lady in a castle, said, "Oh, come along,
+let's go and partially clean ourselves. I'm
+dirtier than anybody, though I haven't
+explored a bit. I've often noticed that the
+more you admire things the more they come
+off on you!"</p>
+
+<p>So we all washed as much as we cared to,
+and went to tea at the gentleman's house,
+which was only a cottage, but very beautiful.
+He had been a war correspondent, and he
+knew a great many things, besides having
+books and books of pictures.</p>
+
+<p>It was a splendid party.</p>
+
+<p>We thanked Mrs. R.H. and everybody when
+it was time to go, and she kissed the girls and
+the little boys, and then she put her head on
+one side and looked at Oswald and said, "I
+suppose you're too old?"</p>
+
+<p>Oswald did not like to say he was not. If<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+kissed at all he would prefer it being for some
+other reason than his being not too old for it.
+So he did not know what to say. But No&euml;l
+chipped in with&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You'll</i> never be too old for it," to Mrs. Red
+House&mdash;which seemed to Oswald most silly
+and unmeaning, because she was already much
+too old to be kissed by people unless she chose
+to begin it. But every one seemed to think
+No&euml;l had said something clever. And Oswald
+felt like a young ass. But Mrs. R.H. looked
+at him so kindly and held out her hand so
+queenily that, before he knew he meant to, he
+had kissed it like you do the Queen's. Then,
+of course, Denny and Dicky went and did the
+same. Oswald wishes that the word "kiss"
+might never be spoken again in this world.
+Not that he minded kissing Mrs. Red House's
+hand in the least, especially as she seemed to
+think it was nice of him to&mdash;but the whole
+thing is such contemptible piffle.</p>
+
+<p>We were seen home by the gentleman who
+wasn't Mr. Red House, and he stood a glorious
+cab with a white horse who had a rolling eye,
+from Blackheath Station, and so ended one of
+the most adventuring times we ever got out
+of a play-beginning.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>time</i> ended as the author has pointed
+out, but not its resultingness. Thus we ever
+find it in life&mdash;the most unharmful things,
+thoroughly approved even by grown-ups, but
+too often lead to something quite different,
+and that no one can possibly approve of, not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+even yourself when you come to think it over
+afterwards, like No&euml;l and H.O. had to.</p>
+
+<p>It was but natural that the hearts of the
+young explorers should have dwelt fondly on
+everything underground, even drains, which
+was what made us read a book by Mr. Hugo,
+all the next day. It is called "The Miserables,"
+in French, and the man in it, who is a splendid
+hero, though a convict and a robber and
+various other professions, escapes into a drain
+with great rats in it, and is miraculously
+restored to the light of day, unharmed by the
+kindly rodents. (N.B.&mdash;Rodents mean rats.)</p>
+
+<p>When we had finished all the part about
+drains it was nearly dinner-time, and No&euml;l
+said quite suddenly in the middle of a bite
+of mutton&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The Red House isn't nearly so red as ours
+is outside. Why should the cellars be so much
+cellarier? Shut up H.O.!" For H.O. was trying
+to speak.</p>
+
+<p>Dora explained to him how we don't all
+have exactly the same blessings, but he didn't
+seem to see it.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't seem like the way things happen
+in books," he said, "In Walter Scott it
+wouldn't be like that, nor yet in Anthony
+Hope. I should think the rule would be the
+redder the cellarier. If I was putting it into
+poetry I should make our cellars have something
+much wonderfuller in them than just
+wooden things. H.O., if you don't shut up I'll
+never let you be in anything again."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There's that door you go down steps to,"
+said Dicky; "we've never been in there. If
+Dora and I weren't going with Miss Blake to
+be fitted for boots we might try that."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I was coming to. (Stow
+it, H.O.!) I felt just like cellars to-day, while
+you other chaps were washing your hands for
+din.&mdash;and it was very cold; but I made H.O.
+feel the same, and we went down, and&mdash;that
+door <i>isn't shut now</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The intelligible reader may easily guess that
+we finished our dinner as quickly as we could,
+and we put on our outers, sympathising with
+Dicky and Dora, who, owing to boots, were
+out of it, and we went into the garden. There
+are five steps down to that door. They were
+red brick when they began, but now they are
+green with age and mysteriousness and not
+being walked on. And at the bottom of them
+the door was, as No&euml;l said, not fastened. We
+went in.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't beery, winey cellars at all," Alice
+said; "it's more like a robber's store-house.
+Look there."</p>
+
+<p>We had got to the inner cellar, and there
+were heaps of carrots and other vegetables.</p>
+
+<p>"Halt, my men!" cried Oswald, "advance
+not an inch further! The bandits may lurk
+not a yard from you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose they jump out on us?" said H.O.</p>
+
+<p>"They will not rashly leap into the light,"
+said the discerning Oswald. And he went to
+fetch a new dark-lantern of his that he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+not had any chance of really using before.
+But some one had taken Oswald's secret
+matches, and then the beastly lantern wouldn't
+light for ever so long. But he thought it
+didn't matter his being rather a long time
+gone, because the others could pass the time
+in wondering whether anything would jump
+out on them, and if so, what and when.</p>
+
+<p>So when he got back to the red steps and
+the open door and flashed his glorious bull's-eye
+round it was rather an annoying thing
+for there not to be a single other eye for it
+to flash into. Every one had vanished.</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo!" cried Oswald, and if his gallant
+voice trembled he is not ashamed of it, because
+he knows about wells in cellars, and, for an
+instant, even he did not know what had
+happened.</p>
+
+<p>But an answering hullo came from beyond,
+and he hastened after the others.</p>
+
+<p>"Look out," said Alice; "don't tumble over
+that heap of bones."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald did look out&mdash;of course, he would
+not wish to walk on any one's bones. But he
+did not jump back with a scream, whatever
+No&euml;l may say when he is in a temper.</p>
+
+<p>The heap really did look very like bones,
+partly covered with earth. Oswald was glad
+to learn that they were only parsnips.</p>
+
+<p>"We waited as long as we could," said
+Alice, "but we thought perhaps you'd been
+collared for some little thing you'd forgotten
+all about doing, and wouldn't be able to come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+back, but we found No&euml;l had, fortunately, got
+your matches. I'm so glad you weren't collared,
+Oswald dear."</p>
+
+<p>Some boys would have let No&euml;l know about
+the matches, but Oswald didn't. The heaps
+of carrots and turnips and parsnips and things
+were not very interesting when you knew
+that they were not bleeding warriors' or
+pilgrims' bones, and it was too cold to pretend
+for long with any comfort to the young
+Pretenders. So Oswald said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go out on the Heath and play something
+warm. You can't warm yourself with
+matches, even if they're not your own."</p>
+
+<p>That was all he said. A great hero would
+not stoop to argue about matches.</p>
+
+<p>And Alice said, "All right," and she and
+Oswald went out and played pretending golf
+with some walking-sticks of Father's. But
+No&euml;l and H.O. preferred to sit stuffily over the
+common-room fire. So that Oswald and Alice,
+as well as Dora and Dicky, who were being
+measured for boots, were entirely out of the
+rest of what happened, and the author can
+only imagine the events that now occurred.</p>
+
+<p>When No&euml;l and H.O. had roasted their
+legs by the fire till they were so hot that their
+stockings quite hurt them, one of them must
+have said to the other&mdash;I never knew which:</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go and have another look at that
+cellar."</p>
+
+<p>The other&mdash;whoever it was&mdash;foolishly consented.
+So they went, and they took Oswald's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+dark-lantern in his absence and without his
+leave.</p>
+
+<p>They found a hitherto unnoticed door behind
+the other one, and No&euml;l says he said, "We'd
+better not go in." H.O. says he said so too.
+But any way, they <i>did</i> go in.</p>
+
+<p>They found themselves in a small vaulted
+place that we found out afterwards had been
+used for mushrooms. But it was long since
+any fair bud of a mushroom had blossomed in
+that dark retreat. The place had been cleaned
+and new shelves put up, and when No&euml;l and
+H.O. saw what was on these shelves the
+author is sure they turned pale, though they
+say not.</p>
+
+<p>For what they saw was coils, and pots, and
+wires; and one of them said, in a voice that
+must have trembled&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is dynamite, I am certain of it; what
+shall we do?"</p>
+
+<p>I am certain the other said, "This is to
+blow up Father because he took part in the
+Lewisham Election, and his side won."</p>
+
+<p>The reply no doubt was, "There is no time
+for delay; we must act. We must cut the
+fuse&mdash;all the fuses; there are dozens."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald thinks it was not half bad business,
+those two kids&mdash;for No&euml;l is little more than
+one, owing to his poetry and his bronchitis&mdash;standing
+in the abode of dynamite and not
+screeching, or running off to tell Miss Blake,
+or the servants, or any one&mdash;but just doing
+<i>the right thing</i> without any fuss.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 276px;">
+<img src="images/gs19.png" width="276" height="500" alt="WITH SCISSORS AND GAS PLIERS THEY CUT EVERY FUSE." title="WITH SCISSORS AND GAS PLIERS THEY CUT EVERY FUSE." />
+<span class="caption">WITH SCISSORS AND GAS PLIERS THEY CUT EVERY FUSE.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I need hardly say it did not prove to be the
+right thing&mdash;but they thought it was. And
+Oswald cannot think that you are really doing
+wrong if you really think you are doing right.
+I hope you will understand this.</p>
+
+<p>I believe the kids tried cutting the fuses
+with Dick's pocket-knife that was in the
+pocket of his other clothes. But the fuses
+would not&mdash;no matter how little you trembled
+when you touched them.</p>
+
+<p>But at last, with scissors and the gas pliers,
+they cut every fuse. The fuses were long,
+twisty, wire things covered with green wool,
+like blind-cords.</p>
+
+<p>Then No&euml;l and H.O. (and Oswald for one
+thinks it showed a goodish bit of pluck, and
+policemen have been made heroes for less) got
+cans and cans of water from the tap by the
+greenhouse and poured sluicing showers of
+the icy fluid in among the internal machinery
+of the dynamite arrangement&mdash;for so they
+believed it to be.</p>
+
+<p>Then, very wet, but feeling that they had
+saved their Father and the house, they went
+and changed their clothes. I think they were
+a little stuck-up about it, believing it to be an
+act unrivalled in devotedness, and they were
+most tiresome all the afternoon, talking about
+their secret, and not letting us know what
+it was.</p>
+
+<p>But when Father came home, early, as it
+happened, those swollen-headed, but, in
+Oswald's opinion, quite-to-be-excused, kiddies
+learned the terrible truth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of course Oswald and Dicky would have
+known at once; if No&euml;l and H.O. hadn't been
+so cocky about not telling us, we could have
+exposed the truth to them in all its uninteresting
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>I hope the reader will now prepare himself
+for a shock. In a wild whirl of darkness, and
+the gas being cut off, and not being able to get
+any light, and Father saying all sorts of things,
+it all came out.</p>
+
+<p>Those coils and jars and wires in that cellar
+were not an infernal machine at all. It was&mdash;I
+know you will be very much surprised&mdash;it
+was the electric lights and bells that Father
+had had put in while we were at the Red
+House the day before.</p>
+
+<p>H.O. and No&euml;l caught it very fully; and
+Oswald thinks this was one of the few occasions
+when my Father was not as just as he
+meant to be. My uncle was not just either,
+but then it is much longer since he was a boy,
+so we must make excuses for him.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>We sent Mrs. Red House a Christmas card
+each. In spite of the trouble that her cellars
+had lured him into, No&euml;l sent her a homemade
+one with an endless piece of his everlasting
+poetry on it, and next May she wrote
+and asked us to come and see her. <i>We</i> try to
+be just, and we saw that it was not really her
+fault that No&euml;l and H.O. had cut those electric
+wires, so we all went; but we did not take
+Albert Morrison, because he was fortunately<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+away with an aged god-parent of his mother's
+who writes tracts at Tunbridge Wells.</p>
+
+<p>The garden was all flowery and green, and
+Mr. and Mrs. Red House were nice and jolly,
+and we had a distinguished and first-class
+time.</p>
+
+<p>But would you believe it?&mdash;that boxish thing
+in the cellar, that H.O. wanted them to make
+a rabbit-hutch of&mdash;well, Mr. Red House had
+cleaned it and mended it, and Mrs. Red House
+took us up to the room where it was, to let us
+look at it again. And, unbelievable to relate,
+it turned out to have rockers, and some one in
+dark, bygone ages seems, for reasons unknown
+to the present writer, to have wasted no end
+of carpentry and carving on it, just to make
+it into a <i>Cradle</i>. And what is more, since we
+were there last Mr. and Mrs. Red House had
+succeeded in obtaining a small but quite alive
+baby to put in it.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose they thought it was wilful waste
+to have a cradle and no baby to use it. But it
+could so easily have been used for something
+else. It would have made a ripping rabbit-hutch,
+and babies are far more trouble than
+rabbits to keep, and not nearly so profitable, I
+believe.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p>
+<h2><i>THE TURK IN CHAINS; OR,<br />
+RICHARD'S REVENGE</i></h2>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">The</span> morning dawned in cloudless splendour.
+The sky was a pale cobalt colour, as in
+pictures of Swiss scenery. The sun shone
+brightly, and all the green things in the
+garden sparkled in the bewitching rays of the
+monarch of the skies.</div>
+
+<p>The author of this does not like to read
+much about the weather in books, but he is
+obliged to put this piece in because it is true;
+and it is a thing that does not very often
+happen in the middle of January. In fact, I
+never remember the weather being at all like
+that in the winter except on that one day.</p>
+
+<p>Of course we all went into the garden
+directly after brekker. (PS.&mdash;I have said
+green things: perhaps you think that is a
+<i>lapsus lazuli</i>, or slip of the tongue, and that
+there are not any green things in the winter.
+But there are. And not just evergreens
+either. Wallflowers and pansies and snapdragons
+and primroses, and lots of things,
+keep green all the year unless it's too frosty.
+Live and learn.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And it was so warm we were able to sit in
+the summer-house. The birds were singing
+like mad. Perhaps they thought it was
+springtime. Or perhaps they <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'alway'">always</ins> sing
+when they see the sun, without paying attention
+to dates.</p>
+
+<p>And now, when all his brothers and sisters
+were sitting on the rustic seats in the summer-house,
+the far-sighted Oswald suddenly saw
+that now was the moment for him to hold
+that council he had been wanting to hold for
+some time.</p>
+
+<p>So he stood in the door of the summer-house,
+in case any of the others should
+suddenly remember that they wanted to be in
+some other place. And he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I say. About that council I want to hold."</p>
+
+<p>And Dicky replied: "Well, what about it?"</p>
+
+<p>So then Oswald explained all over again
+that we had been Treasure Seekers, and we
+had been Would-be-Goods, and he thought it
+was time we were something else.</p>
+
+<p>"Being something else makes you think of
+things," he said at the end of all the other
+things he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said H.O., yawning, without putting
+up his hand, which is not manners, and we
+told him so. "But <i>I</i> can think of things without
+being other things. Look how I thought
+about being a clown, and going to Rome."</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't think you would want us to
+remember <i>that</i>," said Dora. And indeed
+Father had not been pleased with H.O. about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+that affair. But Oswald never encourages
+Dora to nag, so he said patiently&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you think of things you'd much better
+not have thought of. Now my idea is let's
+each say what sort of a society we shall make
+ourselves into&mdash;like we did when we were
+Treasure Seekers&mdash;about the different ways
+to look for it, I mean. Let's hold our tongues
+(no, not with your dirty fingers, H.O., old chap;
+hold it with your teeth if you must hold it
+with something)&mdash;let's hold our tongues for a
+bit, and then all say what we've thought of&mdash;in
+ages," the thoughtful boy added hastily, so
+that every one should not speak at once when
+we had done holding our tongues.</p>
+
+<p>So we were all silent, and the birds sang
+industriously among the leafless trees of our
+large sunny garden in beautiful Blackheath.
+(The author is sorry to see he is getting
+poetical. It shall not happen again, and it
+<i>was</i> an extra fine day, really, and the birds
+did sing, a fair treat.)</p>
+
+<p>When three long minutes had elapsed
+themselves by the hands of Oswald's watch,
+which always keeps perfect time for three or
+four days after he has had it mended, he
+closed the watch and observed&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Time! Go ahead, Dora."</p>
+
+<p>Dora went ahead in the following remarks:</p>
+
+<p>"I've thought as hard as I can, and nothing
+will come into my head except&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.'<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span></div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>Don't you think we might try to find some
+new ways to be good in?"</div>
+
+<p>"No, you don't!" "I bar that!" came at
+once from the mouths of Dicky and Oswald.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't come that over us twice," Dicky
+added. And Oswald eloquently said, "No
+more Would-be-Goods, thank you, Dora."</p>
+
+<p>Dora said, well, she couldn't think of anything
+else. And she didn't expect Oswald had
+thought of anything better.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have," replied her brother. "What
+I think is that we don't <i>know</i> half enough."</p>
+
+<p>"If you mean extra swat," said Alice;
+"I've more homers than I care for already,
+thank you."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not mean swat," rejoined the experienced
+Oswald. "I want to know all
+about real things, not booky things. If you
+kids had known about electric bells you
+wouldn't have&mdash;&mdash;" Oswald stopped, and
+then said, "I won't say any more, because
+Father says a gentleman does not support his
+arguments with personal illusions to other
+people's faults and follies."</p>
+
+<p>"Faults and follies yourself," said H.O. The
+girls restored peace, and Oswald went on&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Let us seek to grow wiser, and to teach
+each other."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> bar that," said H.O. "I don't want
+Oswald and Dicky always on to me and call
+it teaching."</p>
+
+<p>"We might call the society the Would-be-Wisers,"
+said Oswald hastily.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's not so dusty," said Dicky; "let's go on
+to the others before we decide."</p>
+
+<p>"You're next yourself," said Alice.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, so I am," remarked Dicky, trying to
+look surprised. "Well, my idea is let's be
+a sort of Industrious Society of Beavers, and
+make a solemn vow and covenant to make
+something every day. We might call it the
+Would-be-Clevers."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be the Too-clever-by-half's before
+we'd done with it," said Oswald.</p>
+
+<p>And Alice said, "We couldn't always make
+things that would be any good, and then we
+should have to do something that wasn't any
+good, and that would be rot. Yes, I know
+it's my turn&mdash;H.O., you'll kick the table to
+pieces if you go on like that. Do, for goodness'
+sake, keep your feet still. The only thing
+I can think of is a society called the Would-be-Boys."</p>
+
+<p>"With you and Dora for members."</p>
+
+<p>"And No&euml;l&mdash;poets aren't boys exactly," said
+H.O.</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't shut up you shan't be in it
+at all," said Alice, putting her arm round No&euml;l.
+"No; I meant us all to be in it&mdash;only you
+boys are not to keep saying we're only girls,
+and let us do everything the same as you
+boys do."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to be a boy, thank you," said
+Dora, "not when I see how they behave.
+H.O., <i>do</i> stop sniffing and use your handkerchief.
+Well, take mine, then."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was now No&euml;l's turn to disclose his idea,
+which proved most awful.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's be Would-be-Poets," he said, "and
+solemnly vow and convenient to write one
+piece of poetry a day as long as we live."</p>
+
+<p>Most of us were dumb at the dreadful
+thought. But Alice said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"That would never do, No&euml;l dear, because
+you're the only one of us who's clever enough
+to do it."</p>
+
+<p>So No&euml;l's detestable and degrading idea was
+shelved without Oswald having to say anything
+that would have made the youthful
+poet weep.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you don't mean me to say what
+I thought of," said H.O., "but I shall. I
+think you ought all to be in a Would-be-Kind
+Society, and vow solemn convents and things
+not to be down on your younger brother."</p>
+
+<p>We explained to him at once that <i>he</i>
+couldn't be in that, because he hadn't got a
+younger brother.</p>
+
+<p>"And you may think yourself lucky you
+haven't," Dicky added.</p>
+
+<p>The ingenious and felicitous Oswald was
+just going to begin about the council all over
+again, when the portable form of our Indian
+uncle came stoutly stumping down the garden
+path under the cedars.</p>
+
+<p>"Hi, brigands!" he cried in his cheerful
+unclish manner. "Who's on for the Hippodrome
+this bright day?"</p>
+
+<p>And instantly we all were. Even Oswald&mdash;because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+after all you can have a council any
+day, but Hippodromes are not like that.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 363px;">
+<img src="images/gs20.png" width="363" height="500" alt="&quot;HI, BRIGANDS!&quot; HE CRIED." title="&quot;HI, BRIGANDS!&quot; HE CRIED." />
+<span class="caption">&quot;HI, BRIGANDS!&quot; HE CRIED.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We got ready like the whirlwind of the
+desert for quickness, and started off with our
+kind uncle, who has lived so long in India
+that he is much more warm-hearted than you
+would think to look at him.</p>
+
+<p>Half-way to the station Dicky remembered
+his patent screw for working ships with. He
+had been messing with it in the bath while he
+was waiting for Oswald to have done plunging
+cleanly in the basin. And in the desert-whirlwinding
+he had forgotten to take it out.
+So now he ran back, because he knew how its
+cardboardiness would turn to pulp if it was
+left.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll catch you up," he cried.</p>
+
+<p>The uncle took the tickets and the train
+came in and still Dicky had not caught
+us up.</p>
+
+<p>"Tiresome boy!" said the uncle; "you don't
+want to miss the beginning&mdash;eh, what? Ah,
+here he comes!" The uncle got in, and so did
+we, but Dicky did not see the uncle's newspaper
+which Oswald waved, and he went
+running up and down the train looking for us
+instead of just getting in anywhere sensibly,
+as Oswald would have done. When the train
+began to move he did try to open a carriage
+door but it stuck, and the train went faster,
+and just as he got it open a large heavy
+porter caught him by the collar and pulled
+him off the train, saying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Now, young shaver, no susansides on this
+ere line, if <i>you</i> please."</p>
+
+<p>Dicky hit the porter, but his fury was vain.
+Next moment the train had passed away, and
+us in it. Dicky had no money, and the uncle
+had all the tickets in the pocket of his fur
+coat.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I am not going to tell you anything about
+the Hippodrome because the author feels that
+it was a trifle beastly of us to have enjoyed it
+as much as we did considering Dicky. We
+tried not to talk about it before him when we
+got home, but it was very difficult&mdash;especially
+the elephants.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I suppose he spent an afternoon of bitter
+thoughts after he had told that porter what
+he thought of him, which took some time, and
+the station-master interfered in the end.</p>
+
+<p>When we got home he was all right with
+us. He had had time to see it was not our
+faults, whatever he thought at the time.</p>
+
+<p>He refused to talk about it. Only he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to take it out of that porter.
+You leave me alone. I shall think of something
+presently."</p>
+
+<p>"Revenge is very wrong," said Dora; but
+even Alice asked her kindly to dry up. We
+all felt that it was simply piffle to talk
+copy-book to one so disappointed as our
+unfortunate brother.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> wrong, though," said Dora.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Wrong be blowed!" said Dicky, snorting;
+"who began it I should like to know! The
+station's a beastly awkward place to take it
+out of any one in. I wish I knew where he
+lived."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> know <i>that</i>," said No&euml;l. "I've known it
+a long time&mdash;before Christmas, when we were
+going to the Moat House."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what is it, then?" asked Dicky
+savagely.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't bite his head off," remarked Alice.
+"Tell us about it, No&euml;l. How do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was when you were weighing yourselves
+on the weighing machine. I didn't because
+my weight isn't worth being weighed for.
+And there was a heap of hampers and turkeys
+and hares and things, and there was a label
+on a turkey and brown-paper parcel; and
+that porter that you hate so said to the other
+porter&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, hurry up, do!" said Dicky.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't tell you at all if you bully me,"
+said No&euml;l, and Alice had to coax him before he
+would go on.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he looked at the label and said,
+'Little mistake here, Bill&mdash;wrong address;
+ought to be 3, Abel Place, eh?'</p>
+
+<p>"And the other one looked, and he said,
+'Yes; it's got your name right enough. Fine
+turkey, too, and his chains in the parcel.
+Pity they ain't more careful about addressing
+things, eh?' So when they had done laughing
+about it I looked at the label and it said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+'James Johnson, 8, Granville Park.' So I
+knew it was 3, Abel Place, he lived at, and
+his name was James Johnson."</p>
+
+<p>"Good old Sherlock Holmes!" said Oswald.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't really <i>hurt</i> him," said No&euml;l,
+"will you? Not Corsican revenge with knives,
+or poisoned bowls? I wouldn't do more than
+a good booby-trap, if I was you."</p>
+
+<p>When No&euml;l said the word "booby-trap,"
+we all saw a strange, happy look come over
+Dicky's face. It is called a far-away look, I
+believe, and you can see it in the picture of a
+woman cuddling a photograph-album with
+her hair down, that is in all the shops, and
+they call it "The Soul's Awakening."</p>
+
+<p>Directly Dicky's soul had finished waking
+up he shut his teeth together with a click.
+Then he said, "I've got it."</p>
+
+<p>Of course we all knew that.</p>
+
+<p>"Any one who thinks revenge is wrong is
+asked to leave <i>now</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Dora said he was very unkind, and did he
+really want to turn her out?</p>
+
+<p>"There's a jolly good fire in Father's study,"
+he said. "No, I'm not waxy with you, but
+I'm going to have my revenge, and I don't
+want you to do anything you thought wrong.
+You'd only make no end of a fuss afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it <i>is</i> wrong, so I'll go," said Dora.
+"Don't say I didn't warn you, that's all!"</p>
+
+<p>And she went.</p>
+
+<p>Then Dicky said, "Now, any more conscious
+objectors?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And when no one replied he went on: "It
+was you saying 'Booby-trap' gave me the idea.
+His name's James Johnson, is it? And he
+said the things were addressed wrong, did he?
+Well, <i>I'll</i> send him a Turkey-and-chains."</p>
+
+<p>"A Turk in chains," said No&euml;l, growing
+owley-eyed at the thought&mdash;"a <i>live</i> Turk&mdash;or&mdash;no,
+not a dead one, Dicky?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Turk I'm going to send won't be a live
+one nor yet a dead one."</p>
+
+<p>"How horrible! <i>Half</i> dead. That's worse
+than anything," and No&euml;l became so green in
+the face that Alice told Dicky to stop playing
+the goat, and tell us what his idea really was.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you see <i>yet?</i>" he cried; "<i>I</i> saw it
+directly."</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay," said Oswald; "it's easy to see
+your own idea. Drive ahead."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm going to get a hamper and pack
+it full of parcels and put a list of them on
+the top&mdash;beginning Turk-and-chains, and send
+it to Mister James Johnson, and when he
+opens the parcels there'll be nothing inside."</p>
+
+<p>"There must be something, you know," said
+H.O., "or the parcels won't be any shape
+except flatness."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there'll be <i>something</i> right enough,"
+was the bitter reply of the one who had not
+been to the Hippodrome, "but it won't be the
+sort of something he'll expect it to be. Let's
+do it now. I'll get a hamper."</p>
+
+
+<p>He got a big one out of the cellar and four
+empty bottles with their straw cases. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+filled the bottles with black ink and water,
+and red ink and water, and soapy water, and
+water plain. And we put them down on the
+list&mdash;</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 421px;">
+<img src="images/gs21.png" width="421" height="400" alt="IT WAS RATHER DIFFICULT TO GET ANYTHING THE SHAPE OF A TURKEY." title="IT WAS RATHER DIFFICULT TO GET ANYTHING THE SHAPE OF A TURKEY." />
+<span class="caption">IT WAS RATHER DIFFICULT TO GET ANYTHING THE SHAPE OF A TURKEY.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+1 bottle of port wine.<br />
+1 bottle of sherry wine.<br />
+1 bottle of sparkling champagne.<br />
+1 bottle of rum.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The rest of the things we put on the list
+were&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+1 turkey-and-chains.<br />
+2 pounds of chains.<br />
+1 plum-pudding.<br />
+4 pounds of mince-pies.<br />
+2 pounds of almonds and raisins.<br />
+1 box of figs.<br />
+1 bottle of French plums.<br />
+1 large cake.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>And we made up parcels to look outside
+as if their inside was full of the delicious
+attributes described in the list. It was rather
+difficult to get anything the shape of a turkey
+but with coals and crushed newspapers and
+firewood we did it, and when it was done
+up with lots of string and the paper artfully
+squeezed tight to the firewood to look like
+the Turk's legs it really was almost lifelike
+in its deceivingness. The chains, or sausages,
+we did with dusters&mdash;and not clean ones&mdash;rolled
+tight, and the paper moulded gently to
+their forms. The plum-pudding was a newspaper
+ball. The mince-pies were newspapers
+too, and so were the almonds and raisins. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+box of figs was a real fig-box with cinders and
+ashes in it damped to keep them from rattling
+about. The French-plum bottle was real too.
+It had newspaper soaked in ink in it, and
+the cake was half a muff-box of Dora's done
+up very carefully and put at the bottom of
+the hamper. Inside the muff-box we put a
+paper with&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Revenge is not wrong when the other
+people begin. It was you began, and now you
+are jolly well served out."</p>
+
+<p>We packed all the bottles and parcels into
+the hamper, and put the list on the very top,
+pinned to the paper that covered the false
+breast of the imitation Turk.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky wanted to write&mdash;"From an unknown
+friend," but we did not think that was fair,
+considering how Dicky felt.</p>
+
+<p>So at last we put&mdash;"From one who does not
+wish to sign his name."</p>
+
+<p>And that was true, at any rate.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky and Oswald lugged the hamper down
+to the shop that has Carter Paterson's board
+outside.</p>
+
+<p>"I vote we don't pay the carriage," said
+Dicky, but that was perhaps because he was
+still so very angry about being pulled off the
+train. Oswald had not had it done to him,
+so he said that we ought to pay the carriage.
+And he was jolly glad afterwards that this
+honourable feeling had arisen in his young
+bosom, and that he had jolly well made Dicky
+let it rise in his.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We paid the carriage. It was one-and-five-pence,
+but Dicky said it was cheap for a high-class
+revenge like this, and after all it was his
+money the carriage was paid with.</p>
+
+<p>So then we went home and had another go
+in of grub&mdash;because tea had been rather upset
+by Dicky's revenge.</p>
+
+<p>The people where we left the hamper told
+us that it would be delivered next day. So
+next morning we gloated over the thought
+of the sell that porter was in for, and Dicky
+was more deeply gloating than any one.</p>
+
+<p>"I expect it's got there by now," he said
+at dinner-time; "it's a first class booby-trap;
+what a sell for him! He'll read the list and
+then he'll take out one parcel after another
+till he comes to the cake. It <i>was</i> a ripping
+idea! I'm glad I thought of it!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not," said No&euml;l suddenly. "I wish
+you hadn't&mdash;I wish we hadn't. I know just
+exactly what he feels like now. He feels
+as if he'd like to <i>kill</i> you for it, and I daresay
+he would if you hadn't been a craven,
+white-feathered skulker and not signed your
+name."</p>
+
+<p>It was a thunderbolt in our midst No&euml;l
+behaving like this. It made Oswald feel a
+sick inside feeling that perhaps Dora had
+been right. She sometimes is&mdash;and Oswald
+hates this feeling.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky was so surprised at the unheard-of
+cheek of his young brother that for a moment
+he was speechless, and before he got over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+his speechlessness No&euml;l was crying and
+wouldn't have any more dinner. Alice spoke
+in the eloquent language of the human eye
+and begged Dicky to look over it this once.
+And he replied by means of the same useful
+organ that he didn't care what a silly kid
+thought. So no more was said. When No&euml;l
+had done crying he began to write a piece
+of poetry and kept at it all the afternoon.
+Oswald only saw just the beginning. It was
+called</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"THE DISAPPOINTED PORTER'S FURY<br />
+<br />
+<i>Supposed to be by the Porter himself</i>,"<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and it began:&mdash;</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"When first I opened the hamper fair<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And saw the parcel inside there</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">My heart rejoiced like dry gardens when</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">It rains&mdash;but soon I changed and then</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I seized my trusty knife and bowl</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Of poison, and said 'Upon the whole</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I will have the life of the man</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Or woman who thought of this wicked plan</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To deceive a trusting porter so.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">No noble heart would have thought of it. No.'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>There were pages and pages of it. Of
+course it was all nonsense&mdash;the poetry, I
+mean. And yet .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. (I have seen
+that put in books when the author does
+not want to let out all he thought at the
+time.)</p>
+
+<p>That evening at tea-time Jane came and
+said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Master Dicky, there's an old aged man
+at the door inquiring if you live here."</p>
+
+<p>So Dicky thought it was the bootmaker
+perhaps; so he went out, and Oswald went
+with him, because he wanted to ask for a
+bit of cobbler's wax.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not the shoemaker. It was an
+old man, pale in the face and white in the
+hair, and he was so old that we asked him
+into Father's study by the fire, as soon as
+we had found out it was really Dicky he
+wanted to see.</p>
+
+<p>When we got him there he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Might I trouble you to shut the door?"</p>
+
+<p>This is the way a burglar or a murderer
+might behave, but we did not think he was
+one. He looked too old for these professions.</p>
+
+<p>When the door was shut, he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't got much to say, young gemmen.
+It's only to ask was it you sent this?"</p>
+
+<p>He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket,
+and it was our list. Oswald and Dicky looked
+at each other.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you send it?" said the old man
+again.</p>
+
+<p>So then Dicky shrugged his shoulders and
+said, "Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald said, "How did you know and who
+are you?"</p>
+
+<p>The old man got whiter than ever. He
+pulled out a piece of paper&mdash;it was the
+greenish-grey piece we'd wrapped the Turk
+and chains in. And it had a label on it that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+we hadn't noticed, with Dicky's name and
+address on it. The new bat he got at
+Christmas had come in it.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/gs22.png" width="350" height="425" alt="WHEN THE DOOR WAS SHUT HE SAID, &quot;I AIN&#39;T GOT MUCH TO SAY, YOUNG GEMMEN.&quot;" title="WHEN THE DOOR WAS SHUT HE SAID, &quot;I AIN&#39;T GOT MUCH TO SAY, YOUNG GEMMEN.&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">WHEN THE DOOR WAS SHUT HE SAID, &quot;I AIN&#39;T GOT MUCH TO SAY, YOUNG GEMMEN.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"That's how I know," said the old man.
+"Ah, be sure your sin will find you out."</p>
+
+<p>"But who are you, anyway!" asked Oswald
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <i>I</i> ain't nobody in particular," he said.
+"I'm only the father of the pore gell as you
+took in with your cruel, deceitful, lying tricks.
+Oh, you may look uppish, young sir, but I'm
+here to speak my mind, and I'll speak it if
+I die for it. So now!"</p>
+
+<p>"But we didn't send it to a girl," said
+Dicky. "We wouldn't do such a thing.
+We sent it for a&mdash;for a&mdash;&mdash;" I think he
+tried to say for a joke, but he couldn't
+with the fiery way the old man looked at
+him&mdash;"for a sell, to pay a porter out for
+stopping me getting into a train when it was
+just starting, and I missed going to the
+Circus with the others." Oswald was glad
+Dicky was not too proud to explain to the
+old man. He was rather afraid he might
+be.</p>
+
+<p>"I never sent it to a girl," he said again.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho," said the aged one. "An' who told
+you that there porter was a single man?
+It was his wife&mdash;my pore gell&mdash;as opened
+your low parcel, and she sees your lying
+list written out so plain on top, and, sez she
+to me, 'Father,' says she, 'ere's a friend in
+need! All these good things for us, and no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+name signed, so that we can't even say thank
+you. I suppose it's some one knows how
+short we are just now, and hardly enough to
+eat with coals the price they are,' says she
+to me. 'I do call that kind and Christian,'
+says she, 'and I won't open not one of them
+lovely parcels till Jim comes 'ome,' she says,
+'and we'll enjoy the pleasures of it together,
+all three of us,' says she. And when he came
+home&mdash;we opened of them lovely parcels.
+She's a cryin' her eyes out at home now, and
+Jim, he only swore once, and I don't blame
+him for that one&mdash;though never an evil
+speaker myself&mdash;and then he set himself
+down on a chair and puts his elbows on it
+to hide his face like&mdash;and 'Emmie,' says he,
+'so help me. I didn't know I'd got an enemy
+in the world. I always thought we'd got
+nothing but good friends,' says he. An' I
+says nothing, but I picks up the paper, and
+comes here to your fine house to tell you
+what I think of you. It's a mean, low-down,
+dirty, nasty trick, and no gentleman wouldn't
+a-done it. So that's all&mdash;and it's off my chest,
+and good-night to you gentlemen both!"</p>
+
+<p>He turned to go out. I shall not tell you
+what Oswald felt, except that he did hope
+Dicky felt the same, and would behave
+accordingly. And Dicky did, and Oswald was
+both pleased and surprised.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I say, stop a minute. I didn't think
+of your poor girl."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And her youngest but a bare three weeks
+old," said the old man angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't, on my honour I didn't think of
+anything but paying the porter out."</p>
+
+<p>"He was only a doing of his duty," the old
+man said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I beg your pardon and his," said
+Dicky; "it was ungentlemanly, and I'm very
+sorry. And I'll try to make it up somehow.
+Please make it up. I can't do more than own
+I'm sorry. I wish I hadn't&mdash;there!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the old man slowly, "we'll
+leave it at that. Next time p'r'aps you'll
+think a bit who it's going to be as'll get the
+benefit of your payings out."</p>
+
+<p>Dicky made him shake hands, and Oswald
+did the same.</p>
+
+<p>Then we had to go back to the others and
+tell them. It was hard. But it was ginger-ale
+and seed-cake compared to having to tell
+Father, which was what it came to in the
+end. For we all saw, though No&euml;l happened
+to be the one to say it first, that the only
+way we could really make it up to James
+Johnson and his poor girl and his poor girl's
+father, and the baby that was only three
+weeks old, was to send them a hamper with
+all the things in it&mdash;<i>real</i> things, that we had
+put on the list in the revengeful hamper.
+And as we had only six-and-sevenpence
+among us we had to tell Father. Besides,
+you feel better inside when you have. He
+talked to us about it a bit, but he is a good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+Father and does not jaw unduly. He advanced
+our pocket-money to buy a real large
+Turk-and-chains. And he gave us six bottles
+of port wine, because he thought that would
+be better for the poor girl who had the baby
+than rum or sherry or even sparkling champagne.</p>
+
+<p>We were afraid to send the hamper by
+Carter Pat. for fear they should think
+it was another Avenging Take-in. And that
+was one reason why we took it ourselves in
+a cab. The other reason was that we wanted
+to see them open the hamper, and another
+was that we wanted&mdash;at least Dicky wanted&mdash;to
+have it out man to man with the porter
+and his wife, and tell them himself how sorry
+he was.</p>
+
+<p>So we got our gardener to find out secretly
+when that porter was off duty, and when we
+knew the times we went to his house at one
+of them.</p>
+
+<p>Then Dicky got out of the cab and went
+in and said what he had to say. And then
+we took in the hamper.</p>
+
+<p>And the old man and his daughter and the
+porter were most awfully decent to us, and
+the porter's wife said, "Lor! let bygones be
+bygones is what <i>I</i> say! Why, we wouldn't
+never have had this handsome present but
+for the other. Say no more about it, sir,
+and thank you kindly, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>And we have been friends with them ever
+since.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We were short of pocket-money for some
+time, but Oswald does not complain, though
+the Turk was Dicky's idea entirely. Yet
+Oswald is just, and he owns that he helped as
+much as he could in packing the Hamper of
+the Avenger. Dora paid her share, too,
+though she wasn't in it. The author does not
+shrink from owning that this was very decent
+of Dora.</p>
+
+<p>This is all the story of&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+THE TURK IN CHAINS; or,<br />
+RICHARD'S REVENGE.<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>(His name is really Richard, the same as
+Father's. We only call him Dicky for short.)</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span></p>
+<h2><i>THE GOLDEN GONDOLA</i></h2>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Albert's</span> uncle is tremendously clever, and
+he writes books. I have told how he fled to
+Southern shores with a lady who is rather
+nice. His having to marry her was partly
+our fault, but we did not mean to do it, and
+we were very sorry for what we had done.
+But afterwards we thought perhaps it was
+all for the best, because if left alone he might
+have married widows, or old German governesses,
+or Murdstone aunts, like Daisy and
+Denny have, instead of the fortunate lady
+that we were the cause of his being married
+by.</div>
+
+<p>The wedding was just before Christmas,
+and we were all there. And then they went
+to Rome for a period of time that is spoken
+of in books as the honeymoon. You know
+that H.O., my youngest brother, tried to go
+too, disguised as the contents of a dress-basket&mdash;but
+was betrayed and brought back.</p>
+
+<p>Conversation often takes place about the
+things you like, and we often spoke of Albert's
+uncle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One day we had a ripping game of hide-and-seek-all-over-the-house-and-all-the-lights-out,
+sometimes called devil-in-the-dark, and
+never to be played except when your father
+and uncle are out, because of the screams
+which the strongest cannot suppress when
+caught by "he" in unexpectedness and total
+darkness. The girls do not like this game so
+much as we do. But it is only fair for them
+to play it. We have more than once played
+doll's tea-parties to please them.</p>
+
+<p>Well, when the game was over we were
+panting like dogs on the hearthrug in front of
+the common-room fire, and H.O. said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I wish Albert's uncle had been here; he
+does enjoy it so."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald has sometimes thought Albert's
+uncle only played to please us. But H.O. may
+be right.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if they often play it in Rome,"
+H.O. went on. "That post-card he sent us
+with the Colly-whats-its-name-on&mdash;you know,
+the round place with the arches. They could
+have ripping games there&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's not much fun with only two," said
+Dicky.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," Dora said, "when people are
+first married they always sit in balconies
+and look at the moon, or else at each other's
+eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"They ought to know what their eyes look
+like by this time," said Dicky.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe they sit and write poetry about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+their eyes all day, and only look at each other
+when they can't think of the rhymes," said
+No&euml;l.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe she knows how, but I'm
+certain they read aloud to each other out of
+the poetry books we gave them for wedding
+presents," Alice said.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be beastly ungrateful if they
+didn't, especially with their backs all covered
+with gold like they are," said H.O.</p>
+
+<p>"About those books," said Oswald slowly,
+now for the first time joining in what was
+being said; "of course it was jolly decent of
+Father to get such ripping presents for us to
+give them. But I've sometimes wished we'd
+given Albert's uncle a really truly present
+that we'd chosen ourselves and bought with
+our own chink."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish we could have <i>done</i> something for
+him," No&euml;l said; "I'd have killed a dragon for
+him as soon as look at it, and Mrs. Albert's
+uncle could have been the Princess, and
+I would have let him have her."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Dicky; "and we just gave rotten
+books. But it's no use grizzling over it now.
+It's all over, and he won't get married again
+while she's alive."</p>
+
+<p>This was true, for we live in England which
+is a morganatic empire where more than one
+wife at a time is not allowed. In the glorious
+East he might have married again and again
+and we could have made it all right about the
+wedding present.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I wish he was a Turk for some things,"
+said Oswald, and explained why.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think <i>she</i> would like it," said
+Dora.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald explained that if he was a Turk, she
+would be a Turquoise (I think that is the
+feminine Turk), and so would be used to lots
+of wives and be lonely without them.</p>
+
+<p>And just then .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. You know what they
+say about talking of angels, and hearing their
+wings? (There is another way of saying this,
+but it is not polite, as the present author
+knows.)</p>
+
+<p>Well, just then the postman came, and of
+course we rushed out, and among Father's
+dull letters we found one addressed to "The
+Bastables Junior." It had an Italian stamp&mdash;not
+at all a rare one, and it was a poor
+specimen too, and the post-mark was <i>Roma</i>.</p>
+
+<p>That is what the Italians have got into the
+habit of calling Rome. I have been told that
+they put the "a" instead of the "e" because
+they like to open their mouths as much as
+possible in that sunny and agreeable climate.</p>
+
+<p>The letter was jolly&mdash;it was just like hearing
+him talk (I mean reading, not hearing, of
+course, but reading him talk is not grammar,
+and if you can't be both sensible and grammarical,
+it is better to be senseless).</p>
+
+<p>"Well, kiddies," it began, and it went on
+to tell us about things he had seen, not dull
+pictures and beastly old buildings, but
+amusing incidents of comic nature. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+Italians must be extreme Jugginses for the
+kind of things he described to be of such
+everyday occurring. Indeed, Oswald could
+hardly believe about the soda-water label
+that the Italian translated for the English
+traveller so that it said, "To distrust of the
+Mineral Waters too fountain-like foaming.
+They spread the shape."</p>
+
+<p>Near the end of the letter came this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You remember the chapter of 'The
+Golden Gondola' that I wrote for the
+<i>People's Pageant</i> just before I had the
+honour to lead to the altar, &amp;c. I mean the
+one that ends in the subterranean passage,
+with Geraldine's hair down, and her last hope
+gone, and the three villains stealing upon
+her with Venetian subtlety in their hearts
+and Toledo daggers (specially imported) in
+their garters? I didn't care much for it myself,
+you remember. I think I must have been
+thinking of other things when I wrote it.
+But you, I recollect, consoled me by refusing
+to regard it as other than 'ripping.' 'Clinking'
+was, as I recall it, Oswald's consolatory
+epithet. You'll weep with me, I feel confident,
+when you hear that my Editor does
+not share your sentiments. He writes me
+that it is not up to my usual form. He fears
+that the public, &amp;c., and he trusts that in the
+next chapter, &amp;c. Let us hope that the
+public will, in this matter, take your views,
+and not his. Oh! for a really discerning
+public, just like you&mdash;you amiable critics!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+Albert's new aunt is leaning over my shoulder.
+I can't break her of the distracting habit.
+How on earth am I ever to write another
+line? Greetings to all from</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+"<span class="smcap">Albert's Uncle and Aunt</span>.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"PS.&mdash;She insists on having her name put
+to this, but of course she didn't write it. I
+am trying to teach her to spell."</p>
+
+<p>"PSS.&mdash;Italian spelling, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"And now," cried Oswald, "I see it all!"</p>
+
+<p>The others didn't. They often don't when
+Oswald does.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, don't you see!" he patiently explained,
+for he knows that it is vain to be
+angry with people because they are not so
+clever as&mdash;as other people. "It's the direct
+aspiration of Fate. He wants it, does he?
+Well, he shall have it!"</p>
+
+<p>"What?" said everybody.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll be it."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>What?</i>" was the not very polite remark
+now repeated by all.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, his discerning public."</p>
+
+<p>And still they all remained quite blind to
+what was so clear to Oswald, the astute and
+discernful.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be much more useful than killing
+dragons," Oswald went on, "especially as
+there aren't any; and it will be a really truly
+wedding present&mdash;just what we were wishing
+we'd given him."</p>
+
+<p>The five others now fell on Oswald and
+rolled him under the table and sat on his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+head so that he had to speak loudly and
+plainly.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/gs23.png" width="600" height="311" alt="THE FIVE OTHERS" title="THE FIVE OTHERS" />
+<span class="caption">THE FIVE OTHERS</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"All right! I'll tell you&mdash;in words of one
+syllable if you like. Let go, I say!" And
+when he had rolled out with the others and
+the tablecloth that caught on H.O.'s boots and
+the books and Dora's workbox, and the glass
+of paint-water that came down with it, he
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We will <i>be</i> the public. We will all write
+to the editor of the <i>People's Pageant</i> and
+tell him what we think about the Geraldine
+chapter. Do mop up that water, Dora; it's
+running all under where I'm sitting."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think," said Dora, devoting her
+handkerchief and Alice's in the obedient way
+she does not always use, "that six letters, all
+signed 'Bastable,' and all coming from the
+same house, would be rather&mdash;rather&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A bit too thick? Yes," said Alice; "but
+of course we'd have all different names and
+addresses."</p>
+
+<p>"We might as well do it thoroughly," said
+Dicky, "and send three or four different letters
+each."</p>
+
+<p>"And have them posted in different parts
+of London. Right oh!" remarked Oswald.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> shall write a piece of poetry for mine,"
+said No&euml;l.</p>
+
+<p>"They ought all to be on different kinds of
+paper," said Oswald. "Let's go out and get
+the paper directly after tea."</p>
+
+<p>We did, but we could only get fifteen different<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+kinds of paper and envelopes, though we
+went to every shop in the village.</p>
+
+<p>At the first shop, when we said, "Please we
+want a penn'orth of paper and envelopes of
+each of all the different kinds you keep," the
+lady of the shop looked at us thinly over blue-rimmed
+spectacles and said, "What for?"</p>
+
+<p>And H.O. said, "To write unonymous
+letters."</p>
+
+<p>"Anonymous letters are very wrong," the
+lady said, and she wouldn't sell us any paper
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>But at the other places we did not say what
+it was for, and they sold it us. There were
+bluey and yellowy and grey and white kinds,
+and some was violetish with violets on it, and
+some pink, with roses. The girls took the
+florivorous ones, which Oswald thinks are
+unmanly for any but girls, but you excuse
+their using it. It seems natural to them to
+mess about like that.</p>
+
+<p>We wrote the fifteen letters, disguising our
+handwritings as much as we could. It was
+not easy. Oswald tried to write one of them
+with his left hand, but the consequences were
+almost totally unreadable. Besides, if any
+one could have read it, they would only have
+thought it was written in an asylum for the
+insane, the writing was so delirious. So he
+chucked it.</p>
+
+<p>No&euml;l was only allowed to write one poem.
+It began<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Oh, Geraldine! Oh, Geraldine!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">You are the loveliest heroine!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I never read about one before</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That made me want to write more</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Poetry. And your Venetian eyes,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">They must have been an awful size;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And black and blue, and like your hair,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And your nose and chin were a perfect pair."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and so on for ages.</div>
+
+<p>The other letters were all saying what a
+beautiful chapter "Beneath the Doge's Home"
+was, and how we liked it better than the
+other chapters before, and how we hoped the
+next would be like it. We found out when all
+too late that H.O. had called it the "Dog's
+Home." But we hoped this would pass unnoticed
+among all the others. We read the
+reviews of books in the old <i>Spectators</i> and
+<i>Athen&aelig;ums</i>, and put in the words they say
+there about other people's books. We said we
+thought that chapter about Geraldine and
+the garters was "subtle" and "masterly"
+and "inevitable"&mdash;that it had an "old-world
+charm," and was "redolent of the soil." We
+said, too, that we had "read it with breathless
+interest from cover to cover," and that it had
+"poignant pathos and a convincing realism,"
+and the "fine flower of delicate sentiment,"
+besides much other rot that the author can't
+remember.</p>
+
+<p>When all the letters were done we addressed
+them and stamped them and licked
+them down, and then we got different people<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+to post them. Our under-gardener, who lives
+in Greenwich, and the other under-gardener,
+who lives in Lewisham, and the servants on
+their evenings out, which they spend in
+distant spots like Plaistow and Grove Park&mdash;each
+had a letter to post. The piano-tuner
+was a great catch&mdash;he lived in Highgate; and
+the electric-bell man was Lambeth. So we
+got rid of all the letters, and watched the post
+for a reply. We watched for a week, but no
+answer came.</p>
+
+<p>You think, perhaps, that we were duffers to
+watch for a reply when we had signed all the
+letters with fancy names like Daisy Dolman,
+Everard St. Maur, and Sir Cholmondely Marjoribanks,
+and put fancy addresses on them,
+like Chatsworth House, Loampit Vale, and
+The Bungalow, Eaton Square. But we were
+not such idiots as you think, dear reader, and
+you are not so extra clever as you think,
+either. We had written <i>one</i> letter (it had
+the grandest <i>Spectator</i> words in it) on our
+own letter-paper, with the address on the
+top and the uncle's coat-of-arms outside the
+envelope. Oswald's real own name was signed
+to this letter, and this was the one we looked
+for the answer to. See?</p>
+
+<p>But that answer did not come. And when
+three long days had passed away we all felt
+most awfully stale about it. Knowing the
+great good we had done for Albert's uncle
+made our interior feelings very little better,
+if at all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And on the fourth day Oswald spoke up
+and said what was in everybody's inside
+heart. He said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"This is futile rot. I vote we write and ask
+that editor why he doesn't answer letters."</p>
+
+<p>"He wouldn't answer that one any more
+than he did the other," said No&euml;l. "Why
+should he? He knows you can't do anything
+to him for not."</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't we go and ask him?" H.O.
+said. "He couldn't not answer us if we was
+all there, staring him in the face."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose he'd see you," said Dora;
+"and it's 'were,' not 'was.'"</p>
+
+<p>"The other editor did when I got the guinea
+for my beautiful poems," No&euml;l reminded us.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the thoughtful Oswald; "but
+then it doesn't matter how young you are
+when you're just a poetry-seller. But we're
+the discerning public now, and he'd think we
+ought to be grown up. I say, Dora, suppose
+you rigged yourself up in old Blakie's things.
+You'd look quite twenty or thirty."</p>
+
+<p>Dora looked frightened, and said she
+thought we'd better not.</p>
+
+<p>But Alice said, "Well, I will, then. I don't
+care. I'm as tall as Dora. But I won't go
+alone. Oswald, you'll have to dress up old
+and come too. <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Its'">It's</ins> not much to do for
+Albert's uncle's sake."</p>
+
+<p>"You know you'll enjoy it," said Dora, and
+she may have wished that she did not so often
+think that we had better not. However, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+dye was now cast, and the remainder of this
+adventure was doomed to be coloured by the
+dye we now prepared. (This is an allegory.
+It means we had burned our boats. And that
+is another.)</p>
+
+<p>We decided to do the deed next day, and
+during the evening Dicky and Oswald went
+out and bought a grey beard and moustache,
+which was the only thing we could think of
+to disguise the manly and youthful form of
+the bold Oswald into the mature shape of a
+grown-up and discerning public character.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the girls made tiptoe and
+brigand-like excursions into Miss Blake's
+room (she is the housekeeper) and got
+several things. Among others, a sort of
+undecided thing like part of a wig, which
+Miss Blake wears on Sundays. Jane, our
+housemaid, says it is called a "transformation,"
+and that duchesses wear them.</p>
+
+<p>We had to be very secret about the dressing-up
+that night, and to put Blakie's things all
+back when they had been tried on.</p>
+
+<p>Dora did Alice's hair. She twisted up what
+little hair Alice has got by natural means,
+and tied on a long tail of hair that was Miss
+Blake's too. Then she twisted that up, bun-like,
+with many hairpins. Then the wiglet,
+or transformation, was plastered over the
+front part, and Miss Blake's Sunday hat,
+which is of a very brisk character, with half
+a blue bird in it, was placed on top of
+everything. There were several petticoats<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+used, and a brown dress and some stockings
+and hankies to stuff it out where it was too
+big. A black jacket and crimson tie completed
+the picture. We thought Alice would
+do.</p>
+
+<p>Then Oswald went out of the room and
+secretly assumed his dark disguise. But
+when he came in with the beard on, and a hat
+of Father's, the others were not struck with
+admiration and respect, like he meant them
+to be. They rolled about, roaring with
+laughter, and when he crept into Miss
+Blake's room and turned up the gas a bit,
+and looked in her long glass, he owned that
+they were right and that it was no go. He
+is tall for his age, but that beard made him
+look like some horrible dwarf; and his hair
+being so short added to everything. Any
+idiot could have seen that the beard had not
+originally flourished where it now was, but
+had been transplanted from some other place
+of growth.</p>
+
+<p>And when he laughed, which now became
+necessary, he really did look most awful. He
+has read of beards wagging, but he never saw
+it before.</p>
+
+<p>While he was looking at himself the girls
+had thought of a new idea.</p>
+
+<p>But Oswald had an inside presentiment
+that made it some time before he could even
+consent to listen to it. But at last, when the
+others reminded him that it was a noble act,
+and for the good of Albert's uncle, he let<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+them explain the horrid scheme in all its
+lurid parts.</p>
+
+<p>It was this: That Oswald should consent to
+be disguised in women's raiments and go
+with Alice to see the Editor.</p>
+
+<p>No man ever wants to be a woman, and it
+was a bitter thing for Oswald's pride, but at
+last he consented. He is glad he is not a girl.
+You have no idea what it is like to wear
+petticoats, especially long ones. I wonder
+that ladies continue to endure their miserable
+existences. The top parts of the clothes, too,
+seemed to be too tight and too loose in
+the wrong places. Oswald's head, also, was
+terribly in the way. He had no wandering
+hairs to fasten transformations on to, even if
+Miss Blake had had another one, which was
+not the case. But the girls remembered a
+governess they had once witnessed whose
+hair was brief as any boy's, so they put a
+large hat, with a very tight elastic behind, on
+to Oswald's head, just as it was, and then
+with a tickly, pussyish, featherish thing round
+his neck, hanging wobblily down in long ends,
+he looked more young-lady-like than he will
+ever feel.</p>
+
+<p>Some courage was needed for the start next
+day. Things look so different in the daylight.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember Lord Nithsdale coming out of
+the Tower," said Alice. "Think of the great
+cause and be brave," and she tied his neck up.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm brave all right," said Oswald, "only
+I do feel such an ass."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I feel rather an ape myself," Alice owned,
+"but I've got three-penn'orth of peppermints
+to inspire us with bravery. It is called Dutch
+courage, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>Owing to our telling Jane we managed to
+get out unseen by Blakie.</p>
+
+<p>All the others would come, too, in their
+natural appearance, except that we made
+them wash their hands and faces. We happened
+to be flush of chink, so we let them
+come.</p>
+
+<p>"But if you do," Oswald said, "you must
+surround us in a hollow square of four."</p>
+
+<p>So they did. And we got down to the
+station all right. But in the train there were
+two ladies who stared, and porters and people
+like that came round the window far more
+than there could be any need for. Oswald's
+boots must have shown as he got in. He had
+forgotten to borrow a pair of Jane's, as he
+had meant to, and the ones he had on were
+his largest. His ears got hotter and hotter,
+and it got more and more difficult to manage
+his feet and hands. He failed to suck any
+courage, of any nation, from the peppermints.</p>
+
+
+<p>Owing to the state Oswald's ears were now
+in, we agreed to take a cab at Cannon Street.
+We all crammed in somehow, but Oswald saw
+the driver wink as he put his boot on the step,
+and the porter who was opening the cab door
+winked back, and I am sorry to say Oswald
+forgot that he was a high-born lady, and he
+told the porter that he had better jolly well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+stow his cheek. Then several bystanders
+began to try and be funny, and Oswald knew
+exactly what particular sort of fool he was
+being.</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 481px;">
+<img src="images/gs24.png" width="481" height="400" alt="OSWALD SAW THE DRIVER WINK AS HE PUT HIS BOOT ON THE STEP, AND THE PORTER WHO WAS OPENING THE CAB DOOR WINKED BACK." title="OSWALD SAW THE DRIVER WINK AS HE PUT HIS BOOT ON THE STEP, AND THE PORTER WHO WAS OPENING THE CAB DOOR WINKED BACK." />
+<span class="caption">OSWALD SAW THE DRIVER WINK AS HE PUT HIS BOOT ON THE STEP, AND THE PORTER WHO WAS OPENING THE CAB DOOR WINKED BACK.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But he bravely silenced the fierce warnings
+of his ears, and when we got to the Editor's
+address we sent Dick up with a large card
+that we had written on,</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"<span class="smcap">Miss Daisy Dolman</span><br />
+and<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Right Honourable Miss<br />
+Etheltruda Bustler</span>.<br />
+On urgent business."<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>and Oswald kept himself and Alice concealed
+in the cab till the return of the messenger.</p>
+
+<p>"All right; you're to go up," Dicky came
+back and said; "but the boy grinned who told
+me so. You'd better be jolly careful."</p>
+
+<p>We bolted like rabbits across the pavement
+and up the Editor's stairs.</p>
+
+<p>He was very polite. He asked us to sit
+down, and Oswald did. But first he tumbled
+over the front of his dress because it would
+get under his boots, and he was afraid to hold
+it up, not having practised doing this.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I have had letters from you?" said
+the Editor.</p>
+
+
+<p>Alice, who looked terrible with the transformation
+leaning right-ear-ward, said yes,
+and that we had come to say what a fine, bold<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+conception we thought the Doge's chapter
+was. This was what we had settled to say,
+but she needn't have burst out with it like
+that. I suppose she forgot herself. Oswald,
+in the agitation of his clothes, could say
+nothing. The elastic of the hat seemed to be
+very slowly slipping up the back of his head,
+and he knew that, if it once passed the bump
+that backs of heads are made with, the hat
+would spring from his head like an arrow
+from a bow. And all would be frustrated.</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 543px;">
+<img src="images/gs25.png" width="543" height="400" alt="HE LOOKED AT OSWALD&#39;S BOOTS." title="HE LOOKED AT OSWALD&#39;S BOOTS." />
+<span class="caption">HE LOOKED AT OSWALD&#39;S BOOTS.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the Editor; "that chapter seems
+to have had a great success&mdash;a wonderful
+success. I had no fewer than sixteen letters
+about it, all praising it in unmeasured terms."
+He looked at Oswald's boots, which Oswald
+had neglected to cover over with his petticoats.
+He now did this.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> a nice story, you know," said Alice
+timidly.</p>
+
+<p>"So it seems," the gentleman went on.
+"Fourteen of the sixteen letters bear the
+Blackheath postmark. The enthusiasm for
+the chapter would seem to be mainly local."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald would not look at Alice. He could
+not trust himself, with her looking like she
+did. He knew at once that only the piano-tuner
+and the electric bell man had been
+faithful to their trust. The others had all
+posted their letters in the pillar-box just outside
+our gate. They wanted to get rid of
+them as quickly as they could, I suppose.
+Selfishness is a vile quality.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The author cannot deny that Oswald now
+wished he hadn't. The elastic was certainly
+moving, slowly, but too surely. Oswald tried
+to check its career by swelling out the bump
+on the back of his head, but he could not
+think of the right way to do this.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very pleased to see you," the Editor
+went on slowly, and there was something
+about the way he spoke that made Oswald
+think of a cat playing with a mouse. "Perhaps
+you can tell me. Are there many
+spiritualists in Blackheath? Many clairvoyants?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?" said Alice, forgetting that that is
+not the way to behave.</p>
+
+<p>"People who foretell the future?" he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think so," said Alice. "Why?"</p>
+
+<p>His eye twinkled. Oswald saw he had
+wanted her to ask this.</p>
+
+<p>"Because," said the Editor, more slowly
+than ever, "I think there must be. How
+otherwise can we account for that chapter
+about the 'Doge's Home' being read and
+admired by sixteen different people before it
+is even printed. That chapter has not been
+printed, it has not been published; it will not
+be published till the May number of the
+<i>People's Pageant</i>. Yet in Blackheath sixteen
+people already appreciate its subtlety and its
+realism and all the rest of it. How do you
+account for this, Miss Daisy Dolman?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am the Right Honourable Etheltruda,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+said Alice. "At least&mdash;oh, it's no use going
+on. We are not what we seem."</p>
+
+<p>"Oddly enough, I inferred that at the very
+beginning of our interview," said the Editor.</p>
+
+<p>Then the elastic finished slipping up Oswald's
+head at the back, and the hat leapt from his
+head exactly as he had known it would. He
+fielded it deftly, however, and it did not touch
+the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Concealment," said Oswald, "is at an
+end."</p>
+
+<p>"So it appears," said the Editor. "Well,
+I hope next time the author of the 'Golden
+Gondola' will choose his instruments more
+carefully."</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't! We aren't!" cried Alice, and
+she instantly told the Editor everything.</p>
+
+<p>Concealment being at an end, Oswald was
+able to get at his trousers pocket&mdash;it did not
+matter now how many boots he showed&mdash;and
+to get out Albert's uncle's letter.</p>
+
+<p>Alice was quite eloquent, especially when
+the Editor had made her take off the hat
+with the blue bird, and the transformation
+and the tail, so that he could see what she
+really looked like. He was quite decent
+when he really understood how Albert's
+uncle's threatened marriage must have upset
+his brain while he was writing that
+chapter, and pondering on the dark future.</p>
+
+<p>He began to laugh then, and kept it up till
+the hour of parting.</p>
+
+<p>He advised Alice not to put on the transformation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+and the tail again to go home in,
+and she didn't.</p>
+
+<p>Then he said to me: "Are you in a finished
+state under Miss Daisy Dolman?" and when
+Oswald said, "Yes," the Editor helped him to
+take off all the womanly accoutrements, and
+to do them up in brown paper. And he lent
+him a cap to go home in.</p>
+
+<p>I never saw a man laugh more. He is an
+excellent sort.</p>
+
+<p>But no slow passage of years, however
+many, can ever weaken Oswald's memory
+of what those petticoats were like to walk
+in, and how ripping it was to get out of them,
+and have your own natural legs again.</p>
+
+<p>We parted from that Editor without a
+strain on anybody's character.</p>
+
+<p>He must have written to Albert's uncle,
+and told him all, for we got a letter next
+week. It said&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">My dear Kiddies</span>,&mdash;Art cannot be forced.
+Nor can Fame. May I beg you for the
+future to confine your exertions to blowing
+my trumpet&mdash;or Fame's&mdash;with your natural
+voices? Editors may be led, but they won't
+be druv. The Right Honourable Miss Etheltruda
+Bustler seems to have aroused a deep
+pity for me in my Editor's heart. Let that
+suffice. And for the future permit me, as
+firmly as affectionately, to reiterate the
+assurance and the advice which I have so
+often breathed in your long young ears, '<i>I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+am not ungrateful; but I do wish you would
+mind your own business.</i>'"</p></div>
+
+<p>"That's just because we were found out,"
+said Alice. "If we'd succeeded he'd have
+been sitting on the top of the pinnacle of
+Fame, and he would have owed it all to us.
+That would have been making him something
+like a wedding present."</p>
+
+<p>What we had really done was to make
+something very like&mdash;&mdash;but the author is
+sure he has said enough.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p>
+<h2><i>THE FLYING LODGER</i></h2>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Father</span> knows a man called Eustace Sandal.
+I do not know how to express his inside soul,
+but I have heard Father say he means well.
+He is a vegetarian and a Primitive Social
+Something, and an all-wooler, and things like
+that, and he is really as good as he can stick,
+only most awfully dull. I believe he eats
+bread and milk from choice. Well, he has
+great magnificent dreams about all the things
+you can do for other people, and he wants to
+distill cultivatedness into the sort of people
+who live in Model Workmen's Dwellings, and
+teach them to live up to better things. This
+is what he says. So he gives concerts in
+Camberwell, and places like that, and curates
+come from far and near, to sing about Bold
+Bandaleros and the Song of the Bow, and
+people who have escaped being curates give
+comic recitings, and he is sure that it does
+every one good, and "gives them glimpses of
+the Life Beautiful." He said that. Oswald
+heard him with his own trustworthy ears.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+Anyway the people enjoy the concerts no
+end, and that's the great thing.</div>
+
+<p>Well, he came one night, with a lot of
+tickets he wanted to sell, and Father bought
+some for the servants, and Dora happened to
+go in to get the gum for a kite we were
+making, and Mr. Sandal said, "Well, my little
+maiden, would you not like to come on Thursday
+evening, and share in the task of raising
+our poor brothers and sisters to the higher
+levels of culture?" So of course Dora said
+she would, very much. Then he explained
+about the concert, calling her "My little one,"
+and "dear child," which Alice never would
+have borne, but Dora is not of a sensitive
+nature, and hardly minds what she is called,
+so long as it is not names, which she does not
+deem "dear child" and cetera to be, though
+Oswald would.</p>
+
+<p>Dora was quite excited about it, and the
+stranger so worked upon her feelings that she
+accepted the deep responsibility of selling
+tickets, and for a week there was no bearing
+her. I believe she did sell nine, to people in
+Lewisham and New Cross who knew no
+better. And Father bought tickets for all of
+us, and when the eventful evening dawned we
+went to Camberwell by train and tram <i>vi&acirc;</i>
+Miss Blake (that means we shouldn't have
+been allowed to go without her).</p>
+
+<p>The tram ride was rather jolly, but when
+we got out and walked we felt like "Alone in
+London," or "Jessica's First Prayer," because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+Camberwell is a devastating region that makes
+you think of rickety attics with the wind
+whistling through them, or miserable cellars
+where forsaken children do wonders by pawning
+their relations' clothes and looking after
+the baby. It was a dampish night, and we
+walked on greasy mud. And as we walked
+along Alice kicked against something on the
+pavement, and it chinked, and when she
+picked it up it was five bob rolled up in newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>"I expect it's somebody's little all," said
+Alice, "and the cup was dashed from their
+lips just when they were going to joyfully
+spend it. We ought to give it to the police."</p>
+
+<p>But Miss Blake said no, and that we were
+late already, so we went on, and Alice held
+the packet in her muff throughout the concert
+which ensued. I will not tell you anything
+about the concert except that it was quite
+fairly jolly&mdash;you must have been to these Self-Raising
+Concerts in the course of your young
+lives.</p>
+
+<p>When it was over we reasoned with Miss
+Blake, and she let us go through the light
+blue paper door beside the stage and find Mr.
+Sandal. We thought he might happen to
+hear who had lost the five bob, and return it
+to its sorrowing family. He was in a great
+hurry, but he took the chink and said he'd let
+us know if anything happened. Then we
+went home very cheerful, singing bits of the
+comic songs a bishop's son had done in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+concert, and little thinking what we were
+taking home with us.</p>
+
+<p>It was only a few days after this, or perhaps
+a week, that we all began to be rather
+cross. Alice, usually as near a brick as a girl
+can go, was the worst of the lot, and if you
+said what you thought of her she instantly
+began to snivel. And we all had awful colds,
+and our handkerchiefs gave out, and then our
+heads ached. Oswald's head was particularly
+hot, I remember, and he wanted to rest it on
+the backs of chairs or on tables&mdash;or anything
+steady.</p>
+
+<p>But why prolong the painful narrative?
+What we had brought home from Camberwell
+was the measles, and as soon as the grown-ups
+recognised the Grim Intruder for the fell
+disease it is we all went to bed, and there was
+an end of active adventure for some time.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, when you begin to get better
+there are grapes and other luxuries not of
+everyday occurrences, but while you're sniffling
+and fevering in bed, as red as a lobster
+and blazing hot, you are inclined to think it is
+a heavy price to pay for any concert, however
+raising.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sandal came to see Father the very day
+we all marched Bedward. He had found the
+owner of the five shillings. It was a doctor's
+fee, about to be paid by the parent of a
+thoroughly measly family. And if we had
+taken it to the police at once Alice would not
+have held it in her hand all through the concert&mdash;but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+I will not blame Blakie. She was a
+jolly good nurse, and read aloud to us with
+unfatiguable industry while we were getting
+better.</p>
+
+<p>Our having fallen victims to this disgusting
+complaint ended in our being sent to the seaside.
+Father could not take us himself, so we
+went to stay with a sister of Mr. Sandal's.
+She was like him, only more so in every way.</p>
+
+<p>The journey was very joyous. Father saw
+us off at Cannon Street, and we had a carriage
+to ourselves all the way, and we passed the
+station where Oswald would not like to be a
+porter. Rude boys at this station put their
+heads out of the window and shout, "Who's
+a duffer?" and things like that, and the porters
+<i>have</i> to shout "I am!" because Higham is the
+name of the station, and porters have seldom
+any H's with which to protect themselves
+from this cruel joke.</p>
+
+<p>It was a glorious moment when the train
+swooped out of a tunnel and we looked over
+the downs and saw the grey-blue line that
+was the sea. We had not seen the sea since
+before Mother died. I believe we older ones
+all thought of that, and it made us quieter
+than the younger ones were. I do not want
+to forget anything, but it makes you feel
+empty and stupid when you remember some
+things.</p>
+
+<p>There was a good drive in a waggonette
+after we got to our station. There were
+primroses under some of the hedges, and lots<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+of dog-violets. And at last we got to Miss
+Sandal's house. It is before you come to the
+village, and it is a little square white house.
+There is a big old windmill at the back of it.
+It is not used any more for grinding corn, but
+fishermen keep their nets in it.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sandal came out of the green gate to
+meet us. She had a soft, drab dress and a
+long thin neck, and her hair was drab too,
+and it was screwed up tight.</p>
+
+<p>She said, "Welcome, one and all!" in a
+kind voice, but it was too much like Mr.
+Sandal's for me. And we went in. She
+showed us the sitting-rooms, and the rooms
+where we were to sleep, and then she left us
+to wash our hands and faces. When we were
+alone we burst open the doors of our rooms
+with one consent, and met on the landing with
+a rush like the great rivers of America.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Well!</i>" said Oswald, and the others said
+the same.</p>
+
+<p>"Of all the rummy cribs!" remarked Dicky.</p>
+
+<p>"It's like a workhouse or a hospital," said
+Dora. "I think I like it."</p>
+
+<p>"It makes me think of bald-headed gentlemen,"
+said H.O., "it is so bare."</p>
+
+<p>It was. All the walls were white plaster,
+the furniture was white deal&mdash;what there was
+of it, which was precious little. There were
+no carpets&mdash;only white matting. And there
+was not a single ornament in a single room!
+There was a clock on the dining-room mantel-piece,
+but that could not be counted as an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+ornament because of the useful side of its
+character. There were only about six pictures&mdash;all
+of a brownish colour. One was the blind
+girl sitting on an orange with a broken fiddle.
+It is called Hope.</p>
+
+<p>When we were clean Miss Sandal gave us
+tea. As we sat down she said, "The motto
+of our little household is 'Plain living and
+high thinking.'"</p>
+
+<p>And some of us feared for an instant that
+this might mean not enough to eat. But
+fortunately this was not the case. There was
+plenty, but all of a milky, bunny, fruity,
+vegetable sort. We soon got used to it, and
+liked it all right.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sandal was very kind. She offered to
+read aloud to us after tea, and, exchanging
+glances of despair, some of us said that we
+should like it very much.</p>
+
+<p>It was Oswald who found the manly courage
+to say very politely&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Would it be all the same to you if we
+went and looked at the sea first? Because&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And she said, "Not at all," adding something
+about "Nature, the dear old nurse, taking
+somebody on her knee," and let us go.</p>
+
+<p>We asked her which way, and we tore up
+the road and through the village and on to
+the sea-wall, and then with six joyous bounds
+we leaped down on to the sand.</p>
+
+<p>The author will not bother you with a
+description of the mighty billows of ocean,
+which you must have read about, if not seen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'But'">but</ins> he will just say what perhaps you are not
+aware of&mdash;that seagulls eat clams and mussels
+and cockles, and crack the shells with their
+beaks. The author has seen this done.</p>
+
+<p>You also know, I suppose, that you can dig
+in the sand (if you have a spade) and make
+sand castles, and stay in them till the tide
+washes you out.</p>
+
+<p>I will say no more, except that when we
+gazed upon the sea and the sand we felt we
+did not care tuppence how highly Miss Sandal
+might think of us or how plainly she might
+make us live, so long as we had got the briny
+deep to go down to.</p>
+
+<p>It was too early in the year and too late in
+the day to bathe, but we paddled, which
+comes to much the same thing, and you
+almost always have to change everything
+afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>When it got dark we had to go back to the
+White House, and there was supper, and then
+we found that Miss Sandal did not keep a
+servant, so of course we offered to help wash
+up. H.O. only broke two plates.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing worth telling about happened till
+we had been there over a week, and had got
+to know the coastguards and a lot of the
+village people quite well. I do like coastguards.
+They seem to know everything you want
+to hear about. Miss Sandal used to read
+to us out of poetry books, and about a chap
+called Thoreau, who could tickle fish, and they
+liked it, and let him. She was kind, but rather<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+like her house&mdash;there was something bare and
+bald about her inside mind, I believe. She
+was very, very calm, and said that people who
+lost their tempers were not living the higher
+life. But one day a telegram came, and then
+she was not calm at all. She got quite like
+other people, and quite shoved H.O. for
+getting in her way when she was looking
+for her purse to pay for the answer to the
+telegram.</p>
+
+<p>Then she said to Dora&mdash;and she was pale
+and her eyes red, just like people who live the
+lower or ordinary life&mdash;"My dears, it's dreadful!
+My poor brother! He's had a fall. I must go
+to him at <i>once</i>." And she sent Oswald to order
+the fly from the Old Ship Hotel, and the girls
+to see if Mrs. Beale would come and take care
+of us while she was away. Then she kissed
+us all and went off very unhappy. We heard
+afterwards that poor, worthy Mr. Sandal had
+climbed a scaffolding to give a workman a
+tract about drink, and he didn't know the
+proper part of the scaffolding to stand on (the
+workman did, of course) so he fetched down
+half a dozen planks and the workman, and if
+a dust-cart hadn't happened to be passing just
+under so that they fell into it their lives
+would not have been spared. As it was Mr.
+Sandal broke his arm and his head. The
+workman escaped unscathed but furious.
+The workman was a teetotaler.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Beale came, and the first thing she did
+was to buy a leg of mutton and cook it. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+was the first meat we had had since arriving
+at Lymchurch.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 380px;">
+<img src="images/gs26.png" width="380" height="500" alt="HE FETCHED DOWN HALF A DOZEN PLANKS AND THE WORKMAN." title="HE FETCHED DOWN HALF A DOZEN PLANKS AND THE WORKMAN." />
+<span class="caption">HE FETCHED DOWN HALF A DOZEN PLANKS AND THE WORKMAN.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"I 'spect she can't afford good butcher's
+meat," said Mrs. Beale; "but your pa, I expect
+he pays for you, and I lay he'd like you to
+have your fill of something as'll lay acrost
+your chesties." So she made a Yorkshire
+pudding as well. It was good.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner we sat on the sea-wall, feeling
+more like after dinner than we had felt for
+days, and Dora said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Miss Sandal! I never thought about
+her being hard-up, somehow. I wish we could
+do something to help her."</p>
+
+<p>"We might go out street-singing," No&euml;l said.
+But that was no good, because there is only
+one street in the village, and the people there
+are much too poor for one to be able to ask
+them for anything. And all round it is fields
+with only sheep, who have nothing to give
+except their wool, and when it comes to
+taking that, they are never asked.</p>
+
+<p>Dora thought we might get Father to give
+her money, but Oswald knew this would never
+do.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly a thought struck some one&mdash;I
+will not say who&mdash;and that some one
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"She ought to let lodgings, like all the other
+people do in Lymchurch."</p>
+
+<p>That was the beginning of it. The end&mdash;for
+that day&mdash;was our getting the top of a
+cardboard box and printing on it the following<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+lines in as many different coloured chalks as
+we happened to have with us.</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+LODGINGS TO LET.<br />
+<br />
+ENQUIRE INSIDE.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>We ruled spaces for the letters to go in, and
+did it very neatly. When we went to bed we
+stuck it in our bedroom window with stamp-paper.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning when Oswald drew up his
+blind there was quite a crowd of kids looking
+at the card. Mrs. Beale came out and shoo-ed
+them away as if they were hens. And we did
+not have to explain the card to her at all.
+She never said anything about it. I never
+knew such a woman as Mrs. Beale for minding
+her own business. She said afterwards she
+supposed Miss Sandal had told us to put up
+the card.</p>
+
+<p>Well, two or three days went by, and
+nothing happened, only we had a letter
+from Miss Sandal, telling us how the poor
+sufferer was groaning, and one from Father
+telling us to be good children, and not get
+into scrapes. And people who drove by used
+to look at the card and laugh.</p>
+
+<p>And then one day a carriage came driving
+up with a gentleman in it, and he saw the
+rainbow beauty of our chalked card, and he
+got out and came up the path. He had a
+pale face, and white hair and very bright eyes
+that moved about quickly like a <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'birds'">bird's</ins>, and he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+was dressed in a quite new tweed suit that
+did not fit him very well.</p>
+
+<p>Dora and Alice answered the door before
+any one had time to knock, and the author
+has reason to believe their hearts were beating
+wildly.</p>
+
+<p>"How much?" said the gentleman shortly.</p>
+
+<p>Alice and Dora were so surprised by his
+suddenness that they could only reply&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Er&mdash;er&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Just so," said the gentleman briskly as
+Oswald stepped modestly forward and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you come inside?"</p>
+
+<p>"The very thing," said he, and came in.</p>
+
+<p>We showed him into the dining-room and
+asked him to excuse us a minute, and then
+held a breathless council outside the door.</p>
+
+<p>"It depends how many rooms he wants,"
+said Dora.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's say so much a room," said Dicky,
+"and extra if he wants Mrs. Beale to wait on
+him."</p>
+
+<p>So we decided to do this. We thought a
+pound a room seemed fair.</p>
+
+<p>And we went back.</p>
+
+<p>"How many rooms do you want?" Oswald
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"All the room there is," said the gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>"They are a pound each," said Oswald, "and
+extra for Mrs. Beale."</p>
+
+<p>"How much altogether?"</p>
+
+<p>Oswald thought a minute and then said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+"Nine rooms is nine pounds, and two pounds
+a week for Mrs. Beale, because she is a widow."</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 305px;">
+<img src="images/gs27.png" width="305" height="400" alt="&quot;HOW MUCH?&quot; SAID THE GENTLEMAN SHORTLY." title="&quot;HOW MUCH?&quot; SAID THE GENTLEMAN SHORTLY." />
+<span class="caption">&quot;HOW MUCH?&quot; SAID THE GENTLEMAN SHORTLY.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Done!" said the gentleman. "I'll go and
+fetch my portmanteaus."</p>
+
+<p>He bounced up and out and got into his
+carriage and drove away. It was not till he
+was finally gone quite beyond recall that Alice
+suddenly said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But if he has all the rooms where are <i>we</i>
+to sleep?"</p>
+
+<p>"He must be awfully rich," said H.O.,
+"wanting all those rooms."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he can't sleep in more than one at
+once," said Dicky, "however rich he is. We
+might wait till he was bedded down and then
+sleep in the rooms he didn't want."</p>
+
+<p>But Oswald was firm. He knew that if the
+man paid for the rooms he must have them to
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"He won't sleep in the kitchen," said Dora;
+"couldn't we sleep there?"</p>
+
+<p>But we all said we couldn't and wouldn't.</p>
+
+<p>Then Alice suddenly said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I know! The Mill. There are heaps and
+heaps of fishing-nets there, and we could each
+take a blanket like Indians and creep over
+under cover of the night after the Beale has
+gone, and get back before she comes in the
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>It seemed a sporting thing to do, and we
+agreed. Only Dora said she thought it would
+be draughty.</p>
+
+<p>Of course we went over to the Mill at once<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+to lay our plans and prepare for the silent
+watches of the night.</p>
+
+<p>There are three stories to a windmill,
+besides the ground-floor. The first floor is
+pretty empty; the next is nearly full of millstones
+and machinery, and the one above is
+where the corn runs down from on to the
+millstones.</p>
+
+<p>We settled to let the girls have the first
+floor, which was covered with heaps of nets,
+and we would pig in with the millstones on
+the floor above.</p>
+
+<p>We had just secretly got out the last of the
+six blankets from the house and got it into
+the Mill disguised in a clothes-basket, when
+we heard wheels, and there was the gentleman
+back again. He had only got one portmanteau
+after all, and that was a very little one.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Beale was bobbing at him in the doorway
+when we got up. Of course we had told
+her he had rented rooms, but we had not said
+how many, for fear she should ask where we
+were going to sleep, and we had a feeling that
+but few grown-ups would like our sleeping in
+a mill, however much we were living the
+higher life by sacrificing ourselves to get
+money for Miss Sandal.</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman ordered sheep's-head and
+trotters for dinner, and when he found he
+could not have that he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Gammon and spinach!"</p>
+
+<p>But there was not any spinach in the village,
+so he had to fall back on eggs and bacon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+Mrs. Beale cooked it, and when he had fallen
+back on it she washed up and went home.
+And we were left. We could hear the gentleman
+singing to himself, something about woulding
+he was a bird that he might fly to thee.</p>
+
+<p>Then we got the lanterns that you take
+when you go "up street" on a dark night,
+and we crept over to the Mill. It was much
+darker than we expected.</p>
+
+<p>We decided to keep our clothes on, partly
+for warmness and partly in case of any sudden
+alarm or the fishermen wanting their nets in
+the middle of the night, which sometimes
+happens if the tide is favourable.</p>
+
+<p>We let the girls keep the lantern, and we
+went up with a bit of candle Dicky had saved,
+and tried to get comfortable among the millstones
+and machinery, but it was not easy,
+and Oswald, for one, was not sorry when he
+heard the voice of Dora calling in trembling
+tones from the floor below.</p>
+
+<p>"Oswald! Dicky!" said the voice, "I wish
+one of you would come down a sec."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald flew to the assistance of his distressed
+sister.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only that we're a little bit uncomfortable,"
+she whispered. "I didn't want to yell
+it out because of No&euml;l and H.O. I don't want
+to frighten them, but I can't help feeling that
+if anything popped out of the dark at us I
+should die. Can't you all come down here?
+The nets are quite comfortable, and I do wish
+you would."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Alice said she was not frightened, but
+suppose there were rats, which are said to
+infest old buildings, especially mills?</p>
+
+<p>So we consented to come down, and we told
+No&euml;l and H.O. to come down because it was
+more comfy, and it is easier to settle yourself
+for the night among fishing-nets than among
+machinery. There <i>was</i> a rustling now and
+then among the heap of broken chairs and
+jack-planes and baskets and spades and hoes
+and bits of the spars of ships at the far end
+of our sleeping apartment, but Dicky and
+Oswald resolutely said it was the wind or
+else jackdaws making their nests, though,
+of course, they knew this is not done at night.</p>
+
+<p>Sleeping in a mill was not nearly the fun
+we had thought it would be&mdash;somehow. For
+one thing, it was horrid not having a pillow,
+and the fishing-nets were so stiff you could
+not bunch them up properly to make one.
+And unless you have been born and bred a
+Red Indian you do not know how to manage
+your blanket so as to make it keep out the
+draughts. And when we had put out the
+light Oswald more than once felt as though
+earwigs and spiders were walking on his face
+in the dark, but when we struck a match
+there was nothing there.</p>
+
+<p>And empty mills do creak and rustle and
+move about in a very odd way. Oswald was
+not afraid, but he did think we might as well
+have slept in the kitchen, because the gentleman
+could not have wanted to use that when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+he was asleep. You see, we thought then
+that he would sleep all night like other
+people.</p>
+
+<p>We got to sleep at last, and in the night
+the girls edged up to their bold brothers, so
+that when the morning sun "shone in bars of
+dusty gold through the chinks of the aged
+edifice" and woke us up we were all lying in
+a snuggly heap like a litter of puppies.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I <i>am</i> so stiff!" said Alice, stretching.
+"I never slept in my clothes before. It makes
+me feel as if I had been starched and ironed
+like a boy's collar."</p>
+
+<p>We all felt pretty much the same. And our
+faces were tired too, and stiff, which was
+rum, and the author cannot account for it,
+unless it really was spiders that walked on us.
+I believe the ancient Greeks considered them
+to be venomous, and perhaps that's how their
+venom influences their victims.</p>
+
+<p>"I think mills are merely beastly," remarked
+H.O. when we had woke him up. "You can't
+wash yourself or brush your hair or anything."</p>
+
+<p>"You aren't always so jolly particular about
+your hair," said Dicky.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be so disagreeable," said Dora.</p>
+
+<p>And Dicky rejoined, "Disagreeable yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>There is certainly something about sleeping
+in your clothes that makes you feel not so
+kind and polite as usual. I expect this is why
+tramps are so fierce and knock people down
+in lonely roads and kick them. Oswald knows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>
+he felt just like kicking any one if they had
+happened to cheek him the least little bit.
+But by a fortunate accident nobody did.</p>
+
+<p>The author believes there is a picture called
+"Hopeless Dawn." We felt exactly like that.
+Nothing seemed the least bit of good.</p>
+
+<p>It was a pitiful band with hands and faces
+dirtier than any one would believe who had
+not slept in a mill or witnessed others who
+had done so, that crossed the wet, green grass
+between the Mill and the white house.</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't ever put morning dew into my
+poetry again," No&euml;l said; "it is not nearly so
+poetical as people make out, and it is as cold
+as ice, right through your boots."</p>
+
+<p>We felt rather better when we had had a
+good splash in the brick-paved back kitchen
+that Miss Sandal calls the bath-room. And
+Alice made a fire and boiled a kettle and we
+had some tea and eggs. Then we looked at
+the clock and it was half-past five. So we
+hastened to get into another part of the
+house before Mrs. Beale came.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish we'd tried to live the higher life
+some less beastly way," said Dicky as we went
+along the passage.</p>
+
+<p>"Living the higher life always hurts at the
+beginning," Alice said. "I expect it's like new
+boots, only when you've got used to it you're
+glad you bore it at first. Let's listen at the
+doors till we find out where he isn't sleeping."</p>
+
+<p>So we listened at all the bedroom doors, but
+not a snore was heard.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he was a burglar," said H.O.,
+"and only pretended to want lodgings so as
+to get in and bone all the valuables."</p>
+
+<p>"There aren't any valuables," said No&euml;l, and
+this was quite true, for Miss Sandal had no
+silver or jewellery except a brooch of pewter,
+and the very teaspoons were of wood&mdash;very
+hard to keep clean and having to be scraped.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he sleeps without snoring," said
+Oswald, "some people do."</p>
+
+<p>"Not old gentlemen," said No&euml;l; "think of
+our Indian uncle&mdash;H.O. used to think it was
+bears at first."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he rises with the lark," said Alice,
+"and is wondering why brekker isn't ready."</p>
+
+<p>So then we listened at the sitting-room
+doors, and through the keyhole of the parlour
+we heard a noise of some one moving, and
+then in a soft whistle the tune of the "Would
+I were a bird" song.</p>
+
+<p>So then we went into the dining-room to
+sit down. But when we opened the door we
+almost fell in a heap on the matting, and no
+one had breath for a word&mdash;not even for
+"Krikey," which was what we all thought.</p>
+
+<p>I have read of people who could not believe
+their eyes; and I have always thought it such
+rot of them, but now, as the author gazed on
+the scene, he really could not be quite sure
+that he was not in a dream, and that the
+gentleman and the night in the Mill weren't
+dreams too.</p>
+
+<p>"Pull back the curtains," Alice said, and we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+did. I wish I could make the reader feel as
+astonished as we did.</p>
+
+<p>The last time we had seen the room the
+walls had been bare and white. Now they
+were covered with the most splendid drawings
+you can think of, all done in coloured chalk&mdash;I
+don't mean mixed up, like we do with our
+chalks&mdash;but one picture was done in green,
+and another in brown, and another in red, and
+so on. And the chalk must have been of
+some fat radiant kind quite unknown to us,
+for some of the lines were over an inch thick.</p>
+
+<p>"How perfectly <i>lovely!</i>" Alice said; "he
+must have sat up all night to do it. He <i>is</i>
+good. I expect he's trying to live the higher
+life, too&mdash;just going about doing secretly, and
+spending his time making other people's
+houses pretty."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what he'd have done if the room
+had had a large pattern of brown roses on it,
+like Mrs. Beale's," said No&euml;l. "I say, <i>look</i> at
+that angel! Isn't it poetical? It makes me
+feel I must write something about it."</p>
+
+<p>It <i>was</i> a good angel&mdash;all drawn in grey, that
+was&mdash;with very wide wings going right across
+the room, and a whole bundle of lilies in his
+arms. Then there were seagulls and ravens,
+and butterflies, and ballet girls with butterflies'
+wings, and a man with artificial wings being
+fastened on, and you could see he was just going
+to jump off a rock. And there were fairies,
+and bats, and flying-foxes, and flying-fish.
+And one glorious winged horse done in red<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+chalk&mdash;and his wings went from one side of
+the room to the other, and crossed the angel's.
+There were dozens and dozens of birds&mdash;all
+done in just a few lines&mdash;but exactly right.
+You couldn't make any mistake about what
+anything was meant for.</p>
+
+<p>And all the things, whatever they were,
+had wings to them. How Oswald wishes that
+those pictures had been done in his house!</p>
+
+<p>While we stood gazing, the door of the
+other room opened, and the gentleman stood
+before us, more covered with different-coloured
+chalks than I should have thought
+he could have got, even with all those drawings,
+and he had a thing made of wire and
+paper in his hand, and he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't you like to fly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said every one.</p>
+
+<p>"Well then," he said, "I've got a nice little
+flying-machine here. I'll fit it on to one of
+you, and then you jump out of the attic
+window. You don't know what it's like to
+fly."</p>
+
+<p>We said we would rather not.</p>
+
+<p>"But I insist," said the gentleman. "I have
+your real interest at heart, my children&mdash;I
+can't allow you in your ignorance to reject
+the chance of a lifetime."</p>
+
+<p>We still said "No, thank you," and we began
+to feel very uncomfy, for the gentleman's
+eyes were now rolling wildly.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll <i>make</i> you!" he said, catching
+hold of Oswald.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You jolly well won't," cried Dicky, catching
+hold of the arm of the gentleman.</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 503px;">
+<img src="images/gs28.png" width="503" height="400" alt="&quot;THEN I&#39;LL MAKE YOU!&quot; HE SAID, CATCHING HOLD OF OSWALD." title="&quot;THEN I&#39;LL MAKE YOU!&quot; HE SAID, CATCHING HOLD OF OSWALD." />
+<span class="caption">&quot;THEN I&#39;LL MAKE YOU!&quot; HE SAID, CATCHING HOLD OF OSWALD.</span>
+</div>
+<p>Then Dora said very primly and speaking
+rather slowly, and she was very pale&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I think it would be lovely to fly. Will
+you just show me how the flying-machine
+looks when it is unfolded?"</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman dropped Oswald, and Dora
+made "Go! go" with her lips without speaking,
+while he began to unfold the flying-machine.
+We others went, Oswald lingering last, and
+then in an instant Dora had nipped out of
+the room and banged the door and locked it.</p>
+
+<p>"To the Mill!" she cried, and we ran like
+mad, and got in and barred the big door, and
+went up to the first floor, and looked out of
+the big window to warn off Mrs. Beale.</p>
+
+<p>And we thumped Dora on the back, and
+Dicky called her a Sherlock Holmes, and
+No&euml;l said she was a heroine.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't anything," Dora said, just before
+she began to cry, "only I remember reading
+that you must pretend to humour them, and
+then get away, for of course I saw at once
+he was a lunatic. Oh, how awful it might
+have been! He could have made us all jump
+out of the attic window, and there would have
+been no one left to tell Father. Oh! oh!"
+and then the crying began.</p>
+
+<p>But we were proud of Dora, and I am sorry
+we make fun of her sometimes, but it is
+difficult not to.</p>
+
+<p>We decided to signal the first person that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+passed, and we got Alice to take off her red
+flannel petticoat for a signal.</p>
+
+<p>The first people who came were two men in a
+dog-cart. We waved the signalising petticoat
+and they pulled up, and one got out and came
+up to the Mill.</p>
+
+<p>We explained about the lunatic and the
+wanting us to jump out of the windows.</p>
+
+<p>"Right oh!" cried the man to the one still
+in the cart; "got him." And the other hitched
+the horse to the gate and came over, and the
+other went to the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along down, young ladies and gentlemen,"
+said the second man when he had been
+told. "He's as gentle as a lamb. He does not
+think it hurts to jump out of windows. He
+thinks it really is flying. He'll be like an
+angel when he sees the doctor."</p>
+
+<p>We asked if he had been mad before,
+because we had thought he might have suddenly
+gone so.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly he has!" replied the man; "he
+has never been, so to say, himself since tumbling
+out of a flying-machine he went up in
+with a friend. He was an artist previous to
+that&mdash;an excellent one, I believe. But now he
+only draws objects with wings&mdash;and now and
+then he wants to make people fly&mdash;perfect
+strangers sometimes, like yourselves. Yes,
+miss, I am his attendant, and his pictures
+often amuse me by the half-hours together,
+poor gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>"How did he get away?" Alice asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, miss, the poor gentleman's brother
+got hurt and Mr. Sidney&mdash;that's him inside&mdash;seemed
+wonderfully put out and hung over
+the body in a way pitiful to see. But
+really he was extracting the cash from the
+sufferer's pockets. Then, while all of us
+were occupied with Mr. Eustace, Mr. Sidney
+just packs his portmanteau and out he goes
+by the back door. When we missed him
+we sent for Dr. Baker, but by the time he
+came it was too late to get here. Dr. Baker
+said at once he'd revert to his boyhood's home.
+And the doctor has proved correct."</p>
+
+<p>We had all come out of the Mill, and with
+this polite person we went to the gate, and
+saw the lunatic get into the carriage, very
+gentle and gay.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Doctor," Oswald said, "he did say
+he'd give nine pounds a week for the rooms.
+Oughtn't he to pay?"</p>
+
+<p>"You might have known he was mad to say
+that," said the doctor. "No. Why should
+he, when it's his own sister's house? Gee
+up!"</p>
+
+<p>And he left us.</p>
+
+<p>It was sad to find the gentleman was not
+a Higher Life after all, but only mad. And I
+was more sorry than ever for poor Miss
+Sandal. As Oswald pointed out to the girls
+they are much more blessed in their brothers
+than Miss Sandal is, and they ought to be
+more grateful than they are.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span></p>
+<h2><i>THE SMUGGLER'S REVENGE</i></h2>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">The</span> days went on and Miss Sandal did not
+return. We went on being very sorry about
+Miss Sandal being so poor, and it was not
+our fault that when we tried to let the house
+in lodgings, the first lodger proved to be a
+lunatic of the deepest dye. Miss Sandal must
+have been a fairly decent sort, because she
+seems not to have written to Father about it.
+At any rate he didn't give it us in any of our
+letters, about our good intentions and their
+ending in a maniac.</div>
+
+<p>Oswald does not like giving up a thing just
+because it has once been muffed. The muffage
+of a plan is a thing that often happens at
+first to heroes&mdash;like Bruce and the spider, and
+other great characters. Beside, grown-ups
+always say&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"If at first you don't succeed,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Try, try, try again!"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>And if this is the rule for Euclid and rule-of-three
+and all the things you would rather not
+do, think how much more it must be the rule
+when what you are after is your own idea, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
+not just the rotten notion of that beast Euclid,
+or the unknown but equally unnecessary
+author who composed the multiplication table.
+So we often talked about what we could do
+to make Miss Sandal rich. It gave us something
+to jaw about when we happened to
+want to sit down for a bit, in between all the
+glorious wet sandy games that happen by the
+sea.</div>
+
+<p>Of course if we wanted real improving conversation
+we used to go up to the boat-house
+and talk to the coastguards. I do think
+coastguards are A1. They are just the same
+as sailors, having been so in their youth, and
+you can get at them to talk to, which is not
+the case with sailors who are at sea (or even
+in harbours) on ships. Even if you had the
+luck to get on to a man-of-war, you would
+very likely not be able to climb to the top-gallants
+to talk to the man there. Though in
+books the young hero always seems able to
+climb to the mast-head the moment he is told
+to. The coastguards told us tales of Southern
+ports, and of shipwrecks, and officers they
+had <i>not</i> cottoned to, and messmates that
+they <i>had</i>, but when we asked them about
+smuggling they said there wasn't any to speak
+of nowadays.</p>
+
+<p>"I expect they think they oughtn't to talk
+about such dark crimes before innocent kids
+like us," said Dicky afterwards, and he grinned
+as he said it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Alice; "they don't know how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+much we know about smugglers, and bandits,
+and highwaymen, and burglars, and coiners,"
+and she sighed, and we all felt sad to think
+that we had not now any chance to play at
+being these things.</p>
+
+<p>"We might play smugglers," said Oswald.</p>
+
+<p>But he did not speak hopefully. The worst
+of growing up is that you seem to want more
+and more to have a bit of the real thing in
+your games. Oswald could not now be content
+to play at bandits and just capture
+Albert next door, as once, in happier days, he
+was pleased and proud to do.</p>
+
+<p>It was not a coastguard that told us about
+the smugglers. It was a very old man that
+we met two or three miles along the beach.
+He was leaning against a boat that was wrong
+way up on the shingle, and smoking the
+strongest tobacco Oswald's young nose has
+ever met. I think it must have been Black
+Jack. We said, "How do you do?" and Alice
+said, "Do you mind if we sit down near
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not me," replied the aged seafarer. We
+could see directly that he was this by his
+jersey and his sea-boots.</p>
+
+<p>The girls sat down on the beach, but we
+boys leaned against the boat like the seafaring
+one. We hoped he would join in conversation,
+but at first he seemed too proud.
+And there was something dignified about him,
+bearded and like a Viking, that made it hard
+for us to begin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At last he took his pipe out of his mouth
+and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Here's a precious Quakers' meeting! You
+didn't set down here just for to look at me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you look very nice," Dora said.</p>
+
+<p>"Same to you, miss, I'm sure," was the
+polite reply.</p>
+
+<p>"We want to talk to you awfully," said
+Alice, "if you don't mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"Talk away," said he.</p>
+
+<p>And then, as so often happens, no one could
+think of anything to say.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly No&euml;l said, "<i>I</i> think you look nice
+too, but I think you look as though you had
+a secret history. Have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not me," replied the Viking-looking
+stranger. "I ain't got no history, nor jog-graphy
+neither. They didn't give us that
+much schooling when I was a lad."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" replied No&euml;l; "but what I really
+meant was, were you ever a pirate or anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never in all my born," replied the stranger,
+now thoroughly roused; "I'd scorn the haction.
+I was in the navy, I was, till I lost the sight
+of my eye, looking too close at gunpowder.
+Pirates is snakes, and they ought to be killed
+as such."</p>
+
+<p>We felt rather sorry, for though of course
+it is very wrong to be a pirate, it is very
+interesting too. Things are often like this.
+That is one of the reasons why it is so hard
+to be truly good.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dora was the only one who was pleased.
+She said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, pirates <i>are</i> very wrong. And so are
+highwaymen and smugglers."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about highwaymen," the old
+man replied; "they went out afore my time,
+worse luck; but my father's great-uncle by the
+mother's side, he see one hanged once. A fine
+upstanding fellow he was, and made a speech
+while they was a-fitting of the rope. All the
+women was snivelling and sniffing and throwing
+bokays at him."</p>
+
+<p>"Did any of the bouquets reach him?"
+asked the interested Alice.</p>
+
+<p>"Not likely," said the old man. "Women
+can't never shy straight. But I shouldn't
+wonder but what them posies heartened the
+chap up a bit. An afterwards they was all
+a-fightin' to get a bit of the rope he was
+hung with, for luck."</p>
+
+<p>"Do tell us some more about him," said all
+of us but Dora.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know no more about him. He was
+just hung&mdash;that's all. They was precious fond
+o' hangin' in them old far-away times."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever know a smuggler?" asked
+H.O.&mdash;"to speak to, I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that's tellings," said the old man, and
+he winked at us all.</p>
+
+<p>So then we instantly knew that the coastguards
+had been mistaken when they said there
+were no more smugglers now, and that this
+brave old man would not betray his comrades,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>
+even to friendly strangers like us. But of
+course he could not know exactly how friendly
+we were. So we told him.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We <i>love</i> smugglers. We wouldn't even
+tell a word about it if you would only tell us."</p>
+
+<p>"There used to be lots of smuggling on
+these here coasts when my father was a boy,"
+he said; "my own father's cousin, his father
+took to the smuggling, and he was a doin' so
+well at it, that what does he do, but goes and
+gets married, and the Preventives they goes
+and nabs him on his wedding-day, and walks
+him straight off from the church door, and
+claps him in Dover Jail."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, his poor wife," said Alice, "whatever
+did she do?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>She</i> didn't do nothing," said the old man.
+"It's a woman's place not to do nothing till she's
+told to. He'd done so well at the smuggling,
+he'd saved enough by his honest toil to take
+a little public. So she sets there awaitin' and
+attendin' to customers&mdash;for well she knowed
+him, as he wasn't the chap to let a bit of a
+jail stand in the way of his station in life.
+Well, it was three weeks to a day after the
+wedding, there comes a dusty chap to the
+'Peal of Bells' door. That was the sign over
+the public, you understand."</p>
+
+<p>We said we did, and breathlessly added,
+"Go on!"</p>
+
+<p>"A dusty chap he was; got a beard and a
+patch over one eye, and he come of a afternoon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+when there was no one about the place
+but her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hullo, missis,' says he; 'got a room for a
+quiet chap?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't take in no men-folks,' says she;
+'can't be bothered with 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You'll be bothered with <i>me</i>, if I'm not
+mistaken,' says he.</p>
+
+<p>"'Bothered if I will,' says she.</p>
+
+<p>"'Bothered if you won't,' says he, and with
+that he ups with his hand and off comes the
+black patch, and he pulls off the beard and
+gives her a kiss and a smack on the shoulder.
+She always said she nearly died when she see
+it was her new-made bridegroom under the
+beard.</p>
+
+<p>"So she took her own man in as a lodger,
+and he went to work up at Upton's Farm
+with his beard on, and of nights he kept up
+the smuggling business. And for a year or
+more no one knowd as it was him. But they
+got him at last."</p>
+
+<p>"What became of him?" We all asked it.</p>
+
+<p>"He's dead," said the old man. "But, Lord
+love you, so's everybody as lived in them far-off
+old ancient days&mdash;all dead&mdash;Preventives
+too&mdash;and smugglers and gentry: all gone
+under the daisies."</p>
+
+<p>We felt quite sad. Oswald hastily asked if
+there wasn't any smuggling now.</p>
+
+<p>"Not hereabouts," the old man answered,
+rather quickly for him. "Don't you go for
+to think it. But I did know a young chap&mdash;quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>
+young he is with blue eyes&mdash;up Sunderland
+way it was. He'd got a goodish bit o'
+baccy and stuff done up in a ole shirt. And
+as he was a-goin' up off of the beach a coastguard
+jumps out at him, and he says to himself,
+'All u. p. this time,' says he. But out
+loud he says, 'Hullo, Jack, that you? I
+thought you was a tramp,' says he.</p>
+
+<p>"'What you got in that bundle?' says the
+coastguard.</p>
+
+<p>"'My washing,' says he, 'and a couple pairs
+of old boots.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then the coastguard he says, 'Shall I give
+you a lift with it?' thinking in himself the
+other chap wouldn't part if it was anything it
+oughtn't to be. But that young chap was too
+sharp. He says to himself, 'If I don't he'll
+nail me, and if I do&mdash;well, there's just a
+chance.'</p>
+
+<p>"So he hands over the bundle, and the
+coastguard he thinks it must be all right, and
+he carries it all the way up to his mother's for
+him, feeling sorry for the mean suspicions
+he'd had about the poor old chap. But that
+didn't happen near here. No, no."</p>
+
+<p>I think Dora was going to say, "<i>Old</i> chap&mdash;but
+I thought he was young with blue eyes?"
+but just at that minute a coastguard came
+along and ordered us quite harshly not to
+lean on the boat. He was quite disagreeable
+about it&mdash;how different from our own coastguards!
+He was from a different station to
+theirs. The old man got off very slowly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+And all the time he was arranging his long
+legs so as to stand on them, the coastguard
+went on being disagreeable as hard as he
+could, in a loud voice.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/gs29.png" width="600" height="368" alt="A COASTGUARD ORDERED US QUITE HARSHLY NOT TO LEAN ON THE BOAT." title="A COASTGUARD ORDERED US QUITE HARSHLY NOT TO LEAN ON THE BOAT." />
+<span class="caption">A COASTGUARD ORDERED US QUITE HARSHLY NOT TO LEAN ON THE BOAT.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>When our old man had told the coastguard
+that no one ever lost anything by keeping a
+civil tongue in his head, we all went away
+feeling very angry.</p>
+
+<p>Alice took the old man's hand as we went
+back to the village, and asked him why the
+coastguard was so horrid.</p>
+
+<p>"They gets notions into their heads," replied
+the old man; "the most innocentest people
+they comes to think things about. It's along
+of there being no smuggling in these ere parts
+now. The coastguards ain't got nothing to
+do except think things about honest people."</p>
+
+<p>We parted from the old man very warmly,
+all shaking hands. He lives at a cottage not
+quite in the village, and keeps pigs. We
+did not say goodbye till we had seen all
+the pigs.</p>
+
+<p>I daresay we should not have gone on disliking
+that disagreeable coastguard so much if
+he had not come along one day when we were
+talking to our own coastguards, and asked
+why they allowed a pack of young shavers
+in the boat-house. We went away in silent
+dignity, but we did not forget, and when we
+were in bed that night Oswald said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think it would be a good thing
+if the coastguards had something to do?"</p>
+
+<p>Dicky yawned and said he didn't know.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I should like to be a smuggler," said
+Oswald. "Oh, yes, go to sleep if you like;
+but I've got an idea, and if you'd rather be
+out of it I'll have Alice instead."</p>
+
+<p>"Fire away!" said Dicky, now full of attention,
+and leaning on his elbow.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," said Oswald, "I think we
+<i>might</i> be smugglers."</p>
+
+<p>"We've played all those things so jolly
+often," said Dicky.</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't mean play," said Oswald. "I
+mean the real thing. Of course we should
+have to begin in quite a small way. But we
+should get on in time. And we might make
+quite a lot for poor Miss Sandal."</p>
+
+<p>"Things that you smuggle are expensive,"
+said Dicky.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we've got the chink the Indian uncle
+sent us on Saturday. I'm certain we could do
+it. We'd get some one to take us out at night
+in one of the fishing-boats&mdash;just tear across to
+France and buy a keg or a bale or something,
+and rush back."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and get nabbed and put in prison.
+Not me," said Dicky. "Besides, who'd take
+us?"</p>
+
+<p>"That old Viking man would," said Oswald;
+"but of course, if you funk it!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't funk anything," said Dicky, "bar
+making an ape of myself. Keep your hair on,
+Oswald. Look here. Suppose we get a keg
+with nothing in it&mdash;or just water. We should
+have all the fun, and if we <i>were</i> collared we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>
+should have the laugh of that coastguard
+brute."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald agreed, but he made it a condition
+that we should call it the keg of brandy,
+whatever was in it, and Dicky consented.</p>
+
+<p>Smuggling is a manly sport, and girls are
+not fitted for it by nature. At least Dora is
+not; and if we had told Alice she would have
+insisted on dressing as a boy and going too,
+and we knew Father would not like this.
+And we thought No&euml;l and H.O. were too young
+to be smugglers with any hope of success.
+So Dicky and I kept the idea to ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>We went to see the Viking man the next
+day. It took us some time to make him
+understand what we wanted, but when he
+did understand he slapped his leg many times,
+and very hard, and declared that we were
+chips of the old block.</p>
+
+<p>"But I can't go for to let you," he said; "if
+you was nailed it's the stone jug, bless your
+hearts."</p>
+
+<p>So then we explained about the keg really
+having only water in, and he slapped his leg
+again harder than ever, so that it would really
+have been painful to any but the hardened leg
+of an old sea-dog. But the water made his
+refusals weaker, and at last he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Well, see here, Benenden, him as owns
+the <i>Mary Sarah</i>, he's often took out a youngster
+or two for the night's fishing, when their
+pa's and ma's hadn't no objection. You write
+your pa, and ask if you mayn't go for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>
+night's fishing, or you get Mr. Charteris to
+write. He knows it's all right, and often
+done by visitors' kids, if boys. And if your
+pa says yes, I'll make it all right with
+Benenden. But mind, it's just a night's
+fishing. No need to name no kegs. That's
+just betwixt ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>So we did exactly as he said. Mr. Charteris
+is the clergyman. He was quite nice about
+it, and wrote for us, and Father said "Yes,
+but be very careful, and don't take the girls
+or the little ones."</p>
+
+<p>We showed the girls the letter, and that
+removed the trifling ill-feeling that had grown
+up through Dick and me having so much
+secret talk about kegs and not telling the
+others what was up.</p>
+
+<p>Of course we never breathed a word about
+kegs in public, and only to each other in bated
+breaths.</p>
+
+<p>What Father said about not taking the
+girls or the little ones of course settled any
+wild ideas Alice might have had of going as a
+cabin-girl.</p>
+
+<p>The old Viking man, now completely interested
+in our scheme, laid all the plans in the
+deepest-laid way you can think. He chose a
+very dark night&mdash;fortunately there was one
+just coming on. He chose the right time of
+the tide for starting, and just in the greyness
+of the evening when the sun is gone down,
+and the sea somehow looks wetter than at
+any other time, we put on our thick undershirts,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+and then our thickest suits and football
+jerseys over everything, because we had been
+told it would be very cold. Then we said
+goodbye to our sisters and the little ones,
+and it was exactly like a picture of the "Tar's
+Farewell," because we had bundles, with things
+to eat tied up in blue checked handkerchiefs,
+and we said goodbye to them at the gate, and
+they would kiss us.</p>
+
+<p>Dora said, "Goodbye, I <i>know</i> you'll be
+drowned. I hope you'll enjoy yourselves,
+I'm sure!"</p>
+
+<p>Alice said, "I do think it's perfectly beastly.
+You might just as well have asked for me to
+go with you; or you might let us come and
+see you start."</p>
+
+<p>"Men must work, and women must weep,"
+replied Oswald with grim sadness, "and the
+Viking said he wouldn't have us at all unless
+we could get on board in a concealed manner,
+like stowaways. He said a lot of others
+would want to go too if they saw us."</p>
+
+<p>We made our way to the beach, and we
+tried to conceal ourselves as much as possible,
+but several people did see us.</p>
+
+<p>When we got to the boat we found she was
+manned by our Viking and Benenden, and a
+boy with red hair, and they were running her
+down to the beach on rollers. Of course
+Dicky and I lent a hand, shoving at the
+stern of the boat when the men said, "Yo,
+ho! Heave ho, my merry boys all!" It
+wasn't exactly that that they said, but it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+meant the same thing, and we heaved like
+anything.</p>
+
+<p>It was a proud moment when her nose
+touched the water, and prouder still when
+only a small part of her stern remained on
+the beach and Mr. Benenden remarked&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"All aboard!"</p>
+
+<p>The red boy gave a "leg up" to Dicky and
+me and clambered up himself. Then the two
+men gave the last shoves to the boat, already
+cradled almost entirely on the bosom of the
+deep, and as the very end of the keel grated
+off the pebbles into the water, they leaped for
+the gunwale and hung on it with their high
+sea-boots waving in the evening air.</p>
+
+<p>By the time they had brought their legs on
+board and coiled a rope or two, we chanced to
+look back, and already the beach seemed quite
+a long way off.</p>
+
+<p>We were really afloat. Our smuggling
+expedition was no longer a dream, but a
+real realness. Oswald felt almost too excited
+at first to be able to enjoy himself. I
+hope you will understand this and not think
+the author is trying to express, by roundabout
+means, that the sea did not agree with Oswald.
+This is not the case. He was perfectly well
+the whole time. It was Dicky who was not.
+But he said it was the smell of the cabin, and
+not the sea, and I am sure he thought what
+he said was true.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, that cabin was a bit stiff altogether,
+and was almost the means of upsetting even
+Oswald.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was about six feet square, with bunks
+and an oil stove, and heaps of old coats and
+tarpaulins and sou'-westers and things, and it
+smelt of tar, and fish, and paraffin-smoke, and
+machinery oil, and of rooms where no one
+ever opens the window.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald just put his nose in, and that was
+all. He had to go down later, when some
+fish was cooked and eaten, but by that time
+he had got what they call your sea-legs; but
+Oswald felt more as if he had got a sea-waistcoat,
+rather as if he had got rid of a
+land-waistcoat that was too heavy and too
+tight.</p>
+
+<p>I will not weary the reader by telling about
+how the nets are paid out and dragged in, or
+about the tumbling, shining heaps of fish that
+come up all alive over the side of the boat, and
+it tips up with their weight till you think it is
+going over. It was a very good catch that
+night, and Oswald is glad he saw it, for it was
+very glorious. Dicky was asleep in the cabin
+at the time and missed it. It was deemed best
+not to rouse him to fresh sufferings.</p>
+
+<p>It was getting latish, and Oswald, though
+thrilled in every marrow, was getting rather
+sleepy, when old Benenden said, "There
+she is!"</p>
+
+<p>Oswald could see nothing at first, but
+presently he saw a dark form on the
+smooth sea. It turned out to be another
+boat.</p>
+
+<p>She crept quietly up till she was alongside<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+ours, and then a keg was hastily hoisted from
+her to us.</p>
+
+<p>A few words in low voices were exchanged.
+Oswald only heard&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Sure you ain't give us the wrong un?"</p>
+
+<p>And several people laughed hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>On first going on board Oswald and Dicky
+had mentioned kegs, and had been ordered to
+"Stow that!" so that Oswald had begun to
+fear that after all it <i>was</i> only a night's fishing,
+and that his glorious idea had been abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>But now he saw the keg his trembling
+heart was reassured.</p>
+
+<p>It got colder and colder. Dicky, in the
+cabin, was covered with several coats richly
+scented with fish, and Oswald was glad to
+accept an oilskin and sou'-wester, and to sit
+down on some spare nets.</p>
+
+<p>Until you are out on the sea at night you
+can never have any idea how big the world
+really is. The sky looks higher up, and the
+stars look further off, and even if you know it
+is only the English Channel, yet it is just as
+good for feeling small on as the most trackless
+Atlantic or Pacific. Even the fish help to show
+the largeness of the world, because you think
+of the deep deepness of the dark sea they
+come up out of in such rich profusion. The
+hold was full of fish after the second haul.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald sat leaning against the precious keg,
+and perhaps the bigness and quietness of
+everything had really rendered him unconscious.
+But he did not know he was asleep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>
+until the Viking man woke him up by kindly
+shaking him and saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Here, look alive! Was ye thinking to beach
+her with that there precious keg of yours all
+above board, and crying out to be broached?"</p>
+
+<p>So then Oswald roused himself, and the keg
+was rolled on to the fish where they lay filling
+the hold, and armfuls of fish thrown over it.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it <i>really</i> only water?" asked Oswald.
+"There's an awfully odd smell." And indeed,
+in spite of the many different smells that are
+natural to a fishing-boat, Oswald began to
+notice a strong scent of railway refreshment-rooms.</p>
+
+<p>"In course it's only water," said the Viking.
+"What else would it be likely to be?" and
+Oswald thinks he winked in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Oswald fell asleep again after this.
+It was either that or deep thought. Any
+way, he was aroused from it by a bump,
+and a soft grating sound, and he thought
+at first the boat was being wrecked on a
+coral reef or something.</p>
+
+<p>But almost directly he knew that the boat
+had merely come ashore in the proper
+manner, so he jumped up.</p>
+
+<p>You cannot push a boat out of the water
+like you push it in. It has to be hauled up
+by a capstan. If you don't know what that is
+the author is unable to explain, but there is
+a picture of one.</p>
+
+<p>When the boat was hauled up we got out,
+and it was very odd to stretch your legs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>
+on land again. It felt shakier than being
+on sea. The red-haired boy went off to get
+a cart to take the shining fish to market, and
+Oswald decided to face the mixed-up smells of
+that cabin and wake Dicky.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky was not grateful to Oswald for his
+thoughtful kindness in letting him sleep
+through the perils of the deep and his own
+uncomfortableness.</p>
+
+<p>He said, "I do think you might have waked
+a chap. I've simply been out of everything."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald did not answer back. His is a
+proud and self-restraining nature. He just
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Well, hurry up, now, and see them cart
+the fish away."</p>
+
+<p>So we hurried up, and as Oswald came out
+of the cabin he heard strange voices, and his
+heart leaped up like the persons who "behold
+a rainbow in the sky," for one of the voices
+was the voice of that inferior and unsailorlike
+coastguard from Longbeach, who had gone
+out of his way to be disagreeable to Oswald
+and his brothers and sisters on at least two
+occasions. And now Oswald felt almost sure
+that his disagreeablenesses, though not exactly
+curses, were coming home to roost just as
+though they had been.</p>
+
+<p>"You're missing your beauty sleep, Stokes,"
+we heard our Viking remark.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not missing anything else, though,"
+replied the coastguard.</p>
+
+<p>"Like half a dozen mackerel for your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+breakfast?" inquired Mr. Benenden in kindly
+accents.</p>
+
+<p>"I've no stomach for fish, thank you all the
+same," replied Mr. Stokes coldly.</p>
+
+<p>He walked up and down on the beach,
+clapping his arms to keep himself warm.</p>
+
+<p>"Going to see us unload her?" asked Mr.
+Benenden.</p>
+
+<p>"If it's all the same to you," answered the
+disagreeable coastguard.</p>
+
+<p>He had to wait a long time, for the cart did
+not come, and did not come, and kept on not
+coming for ages and ages. When it did the
+men unloaded the boat, carrying the fish by
+basketfuls to the cart.</p>
+
+<p>Every one played up jolly well. They took
+the fish from the side of the hold where the
+keg wasn't till there was quite a deep hole
+there, and the other side, where the keg
+really was, looked like a mountain in comparison.</p>
+
+<p>This could be plainly seen by the detested
+coastguard, and by three of his companions
+who had now joined him.</p>
+
+<p>It was beginning to be light, not daylight,
+but a sort of ghost-light that you could hardly
+believe was the beginning of sunshine, and the
+sky being blue again instead of black.</p>
+
+<p>The hated coastguard got impatient. He
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You'd best own up. It'll be the better for
+you. It's bound to come out, along of the fish.
+I know it's there. We've had private information<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>
+up at the station. The game's up this
+time, so don't you make no mistake."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Benenden and the Viking and the boy
+looked at each other.</p>
+
+<p>"An' what might your precious private
+information have been about?" asked Mr.
+Benenden.</p>
+
+<p>"Brandy," replied the coastguard Stokes,
+and he went and got on to the gunwale.
+"And what's more, I can smell it from
+here."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald and Dicky drew near, and the
+refreshment-room smell was stronger than
+ever. And a brown corner of the keg was
+peeping out.</p>
+
+<p>"There you are!" cried the Loathed One.
+"Let's have that gentleman out, if you please,
+and then you'll all just come alonger me."</p>
+
+<p>Remarking, with a shrug of the shoulders,
+that he supposed it was all up, our Viking
+scattered the fish that hid the barrel, and
+hoisted it out from its scaly bed.</p>
+
+<p>"That's about the size of it," said the
+coastguard we did not like. "Where's the
+rest?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's all," said Mr. Benenden. "We're
+poor men, and we has to act according to
+our means."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll see the boat clear to her last timber,
+if you've no objections," said the Detestable
+One.</p>
+
+<p>I could see that our gallant crew were prepared
+to go through with the business. More<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>
+and more of the coastguards were collecting,
+and I understood that what the crew wanted
+was to go up to the coastguard station with
+that keg of pretending brandy, and involve
+the whole of the coastguards of Longbeach
+in one complete and perfect sell.</p>
+
+<p>But Dicky was sick of the entire business.
+He really has not the proper soul for adventures,
+and what soul he has had been damped
+by what he had gone through.</p>
+
+<p>So he said, "Look here, there's nothing in
+that keg but water."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald could have kicked him, though he is
+his brother.</p>
+
+<p>"Huh!" replied the Unloved One, "d'you
+think I haven't got a nose? Why, it's oozing
+out of the bunghole now as strong as Samson."</p>
+
+<p>"Open it and see," said Dicky, disregarding
+Oswald's whispered instructions to him to
+shut up. "It <i>is</i> water."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you suppose I suppose you want
+to get water from the other side for, you
+young duffer!" replied the brutal official.
+"There's plenty water and to spare this side."</p>
+
+<p>"It's&mdash;it's <i>French</i> water," replied Dicky
+madly; "it's ours, my brother's and mine.
+We asked these sailors to get it for us."</p>
+
+<p>"Sailors, indeed!" said the hateful coastguard.
+"You come along with me."</p>
+
+<p>And our Viking said he was something or
+othered. But Benenden whispered to him in
+a low voice that it was all right&mdash;time was up.
+No one heard this but me and the Viking.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I want to go home," said Dicky. "I don't
+want to come along with you."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you want water for?" was
+asked. "To try it?"</p>
+
+<p>"To stand you a drink next time you
+ordered us off your beastly boat," said Dicky.
+And Oswald rejoiced to hear the roar of
+laughter that responded to this fortunate
+piece of cheek.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose Dicky's face was so angel-like,
+innocent-looking, like stowaways in books,
+that they <i>had</i> to believe him. Oswald told
+him so afterwards, and Dicky hit out.</p>
+
+<p>Any way, the keg was broached, and sure
+enough it was water, and sea-water at that,
+as the Unamiable One said when he had
+tasted it out of a tin cup, for nothing else
+would convince him. "But I smell brandy
+still," he said, wiping his mouth after the
+sea-water.</p>
+
+<p>Our Viking slowly drew a good-sized flat
+labelled bottle out of the front of his jersey.</p>
+
+<p>"From the 'Old Ship,'" he said gently.
+"I may have spilt a drop or two here or
+there over the keg, my hand not being very
+steady, as is well known, owing to spells of
+marsh fever as comes over me every six weeks
+to the day."</p>
+
+<p>The coastguard that we never could bear
+said, "Marsh fever be something or othered,"
+and his comrades said the same. But they all
+blamed <i>him</i>, and we were glad.</p>
+
+<p>We went home sleepy, but rejoicing. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>
+whole thing was as complete a sell as ever
+I wish to see.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 487px;">
+<img src="images/gs30.png" width="487" height="400" alt="SURE ENOUGH IT WAS SEA-WATER, AS THE UNAMIABLE ONE SAID WHEN HE HAD TASTED IT." title="SURE ENOUGH IT WAS SEA-WATER, AS THE UNAMIABLE ONE SAID WHEN HE HAD TASTED IT." />
+<span class="caption">SURE ENOUGH IT WAS SEA-WATER, AS THE UNAMIABLE ONE SAID WHEN HE HAD TASTED IT.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Of course we told our own dear and respected
+Lymchurch coastguards, and I think
+they may be trusted not to let it down on
+the Longbeach coastguards for many a good
+day. If their memories get bad I think there
+will always be plenty of people along that
+coast to remind them!</p>
+
+<p>So <i>that's</i> all right.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>When we had told the girls all, and borne
+their reproaches for not telling them before,
+we decided to give the Viking five bob for the
+game way he had played up.</p>
+
+<p>So we did. He would not take it at first,
+but when we said, "Do&mdash;you might buy a pig
+with it, and call it Stokes after that coastguard,"
+he could no longer resist, and accepted
+our friendly gift.</p>
+
+<p>We talked with him for a bit, and when
+we were going we thanked him for being so
+jolly, and helping us to plant out the repulsive
+coastguard so thoroughly.</p>
+
+<p>Then he said, "Don't mention it. Did you
+tell your little gells what you was up to?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Oswald, "not till afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you <i>can</i> hold your tongues. Well,
+since you've acted so handsome about that
+there pig, what's to be named for Stokes, I
+don't mind if I tells you something. Only
+mum's the word."</p>
+
+<p>We said we were quite sure it was.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," said he, leaning over the pig-stye
+wall, and rubbing the spotted pig's back
+with his stick. "It's an ill wind that blows
+no good to nobody. You see, that night
+there was a little bird went an' whispered to
+'em up at Longbeach about our little bit of a
+keg. So when we landed they was there."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Oswald.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if they was there they couldn't be
+somewheres else, could they?"</p>
+
+<p>We owned they could not.</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't wonder," he went on, "but
+what a bit of a cargo was run that night
+further up the beach: something as <i>wasn't</i>
+sea-water. I don't say it was so, mind&mdash;and
+mind you don't go for to say it."</p>
+
+<p>Then we understood that there is a little
+smuggling done still, and that we had helped
+in it, though quite without knowing.</p>
+
+<p>We were jolly glad. Afterwards, when we
+had had that talk with Father, when he told
+us that the laws are made by the English
+people, and it is dishonourable for an Englishman
+not to stick to them, we saw that
+smuggling must be wrong.</p>
+
+<p>But we have never been able to feel really
+sorry. I do not know why this is.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span></p>
+<h2><i>ZA&Iuml;DA, THE MYSTERIOUS PROPHETESS<br />
+OF THE GOLDEN<br />
+ORIENT</i></h2>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">This</span> is the story of how we were gipsies and
+wandering minstrels. And, like everything
+else we did about that time, it was done to
+make money for Miss Sandal, whose poorness
+kept on, making our kind hearts ache.</div>
+
+<p>It is rather difficult to get up any good game
+in a house like Miss Sandal's, where there is
+nothing lying about, except your own things,
+and where everything is so neat and necessary.
+Your own clothes are seldom interesting, and
+even if you change hats with your sisters it
+is not a complete disguise.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of being gipsies was due to Alice.
+She had not at all liked being entirely out of
+the smuggling affray, though Oswald explained
+to her that it was her own fault for
+having been born a girl. And, of course,
+after the event, Dicky and I had some things
+to talk about that the girls hadn't, and we
+had a couple of wet days.</p>
+
+<p>You have no idea how dull you can be in
+a house like that, unless you happen to know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>
+the sort of house I mean. A house that is
+meant for plain living and high thinking, like
+Miss Sandal told us, may be very nice for the
+high thinkers, but if you are not accustomed
+to thinking high there is only the plain living
+left, and it is like boiled rice for every meal
+to any young mind, however much beef and
+Yorkshire there may be for the young insides.
+Mrs. Beale saw to our having plenty of nice
+things to eat, but, alas! it is not always dinner-time,
+and in between meals the cold rice-pudding
+feeling is very chilling. Of course we
+had the splendid drawings of winged things
+made by our Flying Lodger, but you cannot
+look at pictures all day long, however many
+coloured chalks they are drawn with, and
+however fond you may be of them.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sandal's was the kind of house that
+makes you wander all round it and say,
+"What shall we do next?" And when it
+rains the little ones get cross.</p>
+
+<p>It was the second wet day when we were
+wandering round the house to the sad music
+of our boots on the clean, bare boards that
+Alice said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Beale has got a book at her house
+called 'Napoleon's book of Fate.' You might
+ask her to let you go and get it, Oswald. She
+likes you best."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald is as modest as any one I know, but
+the truth is the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"We could tell our fortunes, and read the
+dark future," Alice went on. "It would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+better than high thinking without anything
+particular to think about."</p>
+
+<p>So Oswald went down to Mrs. Beale and
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I say, Bealie dear, you've got a book up at
+your place. I wish you'd lend it to us to
+read."</p>
+
+<p>"If it's the Holy Book you mean, sir," replied
+Mrs. Beale, going on with peeling the
+potatoes that were to be a radiant vision
+later on, all brown and crisp in company with
+a leg of mutton&mdash;"if it's the Holy Book you
+want there's one up on Miss Sandal's chest of
+drawerses."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," said Oswald. He knew every
+book in the house. The backs of them were
+beautiful&mdash;leather and gold&mdash;but inside they
+were like whited sepulchres, full of poetry
+and improving reading. "No&mdash;we didn't want
+that book just now. It is a book called
+'Napoleon's book of Fate.' Would you mind
+if I ran up to your place and got it?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's no one at home," said Mrs. Beale;
+"wait a bit till I go along to the bakus with
+the meat, and I'll fetch it along."</p>
+
+<p>"You might let me go," said Oswald, whose
+high spirit is always ill-attuned to waiting a
+bit. "I wouldn't touch anything else, and I
+know where you keep the key."</p>
+
+<p>"There's precious little as ye don't know, it
+seems to me," said Mrs. Beale. "There, run
+along do. It's on top of the mantelshelf
+alongside the picture tea-tin. It's a red book.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+Don't go taking the 'Wesleyan Conference
+Reports' by mistake, the two is both together
+on the mantel."</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 474px;">
+<img src="images/gs31.png" width="474" height="400" alt="&quot;I SAY, BEALIE DEAR, YOU&#39;VE GOT A BOOK UP AT YOUR PLACE.&quot;" title="&quot;I SAY, BEALIE DEAR, YOU&#39;VE GOT A BOOK UP AT YOUR PLACE.&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;I SAY, BEALIE DEAR, YOU&#39;VE GOT A BOOK UP AT YOUR PLACE.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Oswald in his macker splashed through the
+mud to Mrs. Beale's, found the key under the
+loose tile behind the water-butt, and got the
+book without adventure. He had promised
+not to touch anything else, so he could not
+make even the gentlest booby-trap as a
+little surprise for Mrs. Beale when she got
+back.</p>
+
+<p>And most of that day we were telling our
+fortunes by the ingenious means invented by
+the great Emperor, or by cards, which it is
+hard to remember the rules for, or by our
+dreams. The only blights were that the
+others all wanted to have the book all the
+time, and that No&euml;l's dreams were so long and
+mixed that we got tired of hearing about
+them before he did. But he said he was quite
+sure he had dreamed every single bit of every
+one of them. And the author hopes this was
+the truth.</p>
+
+<p>We all went to bed hoping we should dream
+something that we could look up in the
+dream book, but none of us did.</p>
+
+<p>And in the morning it was still raining and
+Alice said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, if it ever clears up again let's
+dress up and be gipsies. We can go about in
+the distant villages telling people's fortunes.
+If you'll let me have the book all to-day I can
+learn up quite enough to tell them mysteriously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+and darkly. And gipsies always get
+their hands crossed with silver."</p>
+
+<p>Dicky said that was one way of keeping the
+book to herself, but Oswald said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Let her try. She shall have it for an
+hour, and then we'll have an exam. to see
+how much she knows."</p>
+
+<p>This was done, but while she was swatting
+the thing up with her fingers in her ears we
+began to talk about how gipsies should be
+dressed.</p>
+
+<p>And when we all went out of the room to
+see if we could find anything in that tidy
+house to dress up in, she came after us to see
+what was up. So there was no exam.</p>
+
+<p>We peeped into the cupboards and drawers
+in Miss Sandal's room, but everything was
+grey or brown, not at all the sort of thing to
+dress up for children of the Sunny South in.
+The plain living was shown in all her clothes;
+and besides, grey shows every little spot you
+may happen to get on it.</p>
+
+<p>We were almost in despair. We looked in
+all the drawers in all the rooms, but found
+only sheets and tablecloths and more grey
+and brown clothing.</p>
+
+<p>We tried the attic, with fainting hearts.
+Servants' clothes are always good for dressing-up
+with; they have so many different colours.
+But Miss Sandal had no servant. Still, she
+might have had one once, and the servant
+might have left something behind her. Dora
+suggested this and added<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't find anything in the attic
+you'll know it's Fate, and you're not to do it.
+Besides, I'm almost sure you can be put in
+prison for telling fortunes."</p>
+
+<p>"Not if you're a gipsy you can't," said No&euml;l;
+"they have licences to tell fortunes, I believe,
+and judges can't do anything to them."</p>
+
+<p>So we went up to the attic. And it was as
+bare and tidy as the rest of the house. But
+there were some boxes and we looked in them.
+The smallest was full of old letters, so we shut
+it again at once. Another had books in it,
+and the last had a clean towel spread over
+what was inside. So we took off the towel,
+and then every one said "Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>In right on the top was a scarlet thing,
+embroidered heavily with gold. It proved, on
+unfolding, to be a sort of coat, like a Chinaman's.
+We lifted it out and laid it on the
+towel on the floor. And then the full glories
+of that box were revealed. There were cloaks
+and dresses and skirts and scarves, of all the
+colours of a well-chosen rainbow, and all
+made of the most beautiful silks and stuffs,
+with things worked on them with silk, as well
+as chains of beads and many lovely ornaments.
+We think Miss Sandal must have been very
+fond of pretty things when she was young, or
+when she was better off.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there won't be any gipsies near by to
+come up to <i>us</i>," said Oswald joyously.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think we ought to take them,
+without asking?" said Dora.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Of course not," said Oswald witheringly;
+"we ought to write to her and say, 'Please,
+Miss Sandal, we know how poor you are, and
+may we borrow your things to be gipsies in
+so as we get money for you&mdash;&mdash; All right!
+You go and write the letter, Dora."</p>
+
+<p>"I only just asked," said Dora.</p>
+
+<p>We tried the things on. Some of them
+were so ladylike that they were no good&mdash;evening
+dresses, and things like that. But
+there were enough useful things to go round.
+Oswald, in white shirt and flannel knee-breeches,
+tied a brick-coloured silk scarf
+round his middle part, and a green one round
+his head for a turban. The turban was
+fastened with a sparkling brooch with pink
+stones in it. He looked like a Moorish
+toreador. Dicky had the scarlet and gold
+coat, which was the right length when Dora
+had run a tuck in it.</p>
+
+<p>Alice had a blue skirt with embroidery of
+peacock's feathers on it, and a gold and black
+jacket very short with no sleeves, and a
+yellow silk handkerchief on her head like
+Italian peasants, and another handkie round
+her neck. Dora's skirt was green and her
+handkerchiefs purple and pink.</p>
+
+<p>No&euml;l insisted on having his two scarves,
+one green and one yellow, twisted on his legs
+like putties, and a red scarf wound round
+his middle-part, and he stuck a long ostrich
+feather in his own bicycle cap and said he
+was a troubadour bard.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>H.O. was able to wear a lady's blouse
+of mouse-coloured silk, embroidered with
+poppies. It came down to his knees and a
+jewelled belt kept it in place.</p>
+
+<p>We made up our costumes into bundles,
+and Alice thoughtfully bought a pennyworth
+of pins. Of course it was idle to suppose that
+we could go through the village in our gipsy
+clothes without exciting <i>some</i> remark.</p>
+
+<p>The more we thought of it the more it
+seemed as if it would be a good thing to get
+some way from our village before we began
+our gipsy career.</p>
+
+<p>The woman at the sweet shop where Alice
+got the pins has a donkey and cart, and for
+two shillings she consented to lend us this,
+so that some of us could walk while some of
+us would always be resting in the cart.</p>
+
+<p>And next morning the weather was bright
+and blue as ever, and we started. We were
+beautifully clean, but all our hairs had been
+arranged with the brush solely, because at
+the last moment nobody could find it's comb.
+Mrs. Beale had packed up a jolly sandwichy
+and apply lunch for us. We told her we were
+going to gather bluebells in the woods, and of
+course we meant to do that too.</p>
+
+<p>The donkey-cart drew up at the door and
+we started. It was found impossible to get
+every one into the cart at once, so we agreed
+to cast lots for who should run behind, and
+to take it in turns, mile and mile. The lot
+fell on Dora and H.O., but there was precious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+little running about it. Anything slower
+than that donkey Oswald has never known,
+and when it came to passing its own front
+door the donkey simply would not. It ended
+in Oswald getting down and going to the
+animal's head, and having it out with him,
+man to man. The donkey was small, but of
+enormous strength. He set all his four feet
+firm and leant back&mdash;and Oswald set his two
+feet firm and leant back&mdash;so that Oswald
+and the front part of the donkey formed an
+angry and contentious letter V. And Oswald
+gazed in the donkey's eyes in a dauntless
+manner, and the donkey looked at Oswald
+as though it thought he was hay or thistles.</p>
+
+<p>Alice beat the donkey from the cart with
+a stick that had been given us for the purpose.
+The rest shouted. But all was in vain. And
+four people in a motor car stopped it to see
+the heroic struggle, and laughed till I thought
+they would have upset their hateful motor.
+However, it was all for the best, though
+Oswald did not see it at the time. When
+they had had enough of laughing they started
+their machine again, and the noise it made
+penetrated the donkey's dull intelligence, and
+he started off without a word&mdash;I mean without
+any warning, and Oswald has only just
+time to throw himself clear of the wheels
+before he fell on the ground and rolled over,
+biting the dust.</p>
+
+<p>The motor car people behaved as you would
+expect. But accidents happen even to motor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>
+cars, when people laugh too long and too
+unfeelingly. The driver turned round to laugh,
+and the motor instantly took the bit between
+its teeth and bolted into the stone wall of the
+churchyard. No one was hurt except the
+motor, but that had to spend the day at the
+blacksmith's, we heard afterwards. Thus
+was the outraged Oswald avenged by Fate.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/gs32.png" width="600" height="334" alt="ALICE BEAT THE DONKEY FROM THE CART. THE REST SHOUTED." title="ALICE BEAT THE DONKEY FROM THE CART. THE REST SHOUTED." />
+<span class="caption">ALICE BEAT THE DONKEY FROM THE CART. THE REST SHOUTED.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He was not hurt either&mdash;though much the
+motor people would have cared if he had
+been&mdash;and he caught up with the others at the
+end of the village, for the donkey's pace had
+been too good to last, and the triumphal
+progress was resumed.</p>
+
+<p>It was some time before we found a wood
+sufficiently lurking-looking for our secret
+purposes. There are no woods close to the
+village. But at last, up by Bonnington, we
+found one, and tying our noble steed to the
+sign-post that says how many miles it is to
+Ashford, we cast a hasty glance round, and
+finding no one in sight disappeared in the
+wood with our bundles.</p>
+
+<p>We went in just ordinary creatures. We
+came out gipsies of the deepest dye, for we
+had got a pennorth of walnut stain from
+Mr. Jameson the builder, and mixed with
+water&mdash;the water we had brought in a
+medicine-bottle&mdash;it was a prime disguise.
+And we knew it would wash off, unlike the
+Condy's fluid we once stained ourselves with
+during a never-to-be-forgotten game of
+Jungle-Book.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We had put on all the glorious things we
+had bagged from Miss Sandal's attic treasures,
+but still Alice had a small bundle unopened.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" Dora asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I meant to keep it as a reserve force in
+case the fortune-telling didn't turn out all
+our fancy painted it," said Alice; "but I
+don't mind telling you now."</p>
+
+<p>She opened the bundle, and there was a
+tambourine, some black lace, a packet of
+cigarette papers, and our missing combs.</p>
+
+<p>"What ever on earth&mdash;&mdash;" Dicky was
+beginning, but Oswald saw it all. He has a
+wonderfully keen nose. And he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Bully for you, Alice. I wish I'd thought
+it myself."</p>
+
+<p>Alice was much pleased by this handsome
+speech.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said; "perhaps really it would
+be best to begin with it. It would attract
+the public's attention, and then we could tell
+the fortunes. You see," she kindly explained
+to Dicky and H.O. and Dora, who had not
+seen it yet&mdash;though No&euml;l had, almost as soon
+as I did&mdash;"you see, we'll all play on the
+combs with the veils over our faces, so that
+no one can see what our instruments are.
+Why, they might be mouth-organs for anything
+any one will know, or some costly
+instruments from the far-off East, like they
+play to sultans in zenanas. Let's just try
+a tune or two before we go on, to be sure that
+all the combs work right. Dora's has such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+big teeth, I shouldn't wonder if it wouldn't
+act at all."</p>
+
+<p>So we all papered our combs and did
+"Heroes," but that sounded awful. "The Girl
+I Left Behind Me" went better, and so did
+"Bonnie Dundee." But we thought "See the
+Conquering" or "The Death of Nelson"
+would be the best to begin with.</p>
+
+<p>It was beastly hot doing it under the veils,
+but when Oswald had done one tune without
+the veil to see how the others looked he could
+not help owning that the veils did give a
+hidden mystery that was a stranger to simple
+combs.</p>
+
+<p>We were all a bit puffed when we had
+played for awhile, so we decided that as the
+donkey seemed calm and was eating grass
+and resting, we might as well follow his
+example.</p>
+
+<p>"We ought not to be too proud to take
+pattern by the brute creation," said Dora.</p>
+
+<p>So we had our lunch in the wood. We
+lighted a little fire of sticks and fir-cones,
+so as to be as gipsyish as we could, and we
+sat round the fire. We made a charming
+picture in our bright clothes, among what
+would have been our native surroundings if
+we had been real gipsies, and we knew how
+nice we looked, and stayed there though the
+smoke got in our eyes, and everything we ate
+tasted of it.</p>
+
+<p>The woods were a little damp, and that was
+why the fire smoked so. There were the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>
+jackets we had cast off when we dressed up,
+to sit on, and there was a horse-cloth in the
+cart intended for the donkey's wear, but we
+decided that our need was greater than <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'it's'">its</ins>,
+so we took the blanket to recline on.</p>
+
+<p>It was as jolly a lunch as ever I remember,
+and we lingered over that and looking romantic
+till we could not bear the smoke any
+more.</p>
+
+<p>Then we got a lot of bluebells and we
+trampled out the fire most carefully, because
+we know about not setting woods and places
+alight, rolled up our clothes in bundles, and
+went out of the shadowy woodland into the
+bright sunlight, as sparkling looking a crew
+of gipsies as any one need wish for.</p>
+
+<p>Last time we had seen the road it had been
+quite white and bare of persons walking on
+it, but now there were several. And not
+only walkers, but people in carts. And some
+carriages passed us too.</p>
+
+<p>Every one stared at us, but they did not
+seem so astonished as we had every right
+to expect, and though interested they were
+not rude, and this is very rare among English
+people&mdash;and not only poor people either&mdash;when
+they see anything at all out of the
+way.</p>
+
+<p>We asked one man, who was very Sunday-best
+indeed in black clothes and a blue tie,
+where every one was going, for every one
+was going the same way, and every one
+looked as if it was going to church, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>
+was unlikely, it being but Thursday. He
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Same place wot you're going to I expect."</p>
+
+<p>And when we said where was that we were
+requested by him to get along with us.
+Which we did.</p>
+
+<p>An old woman in the heaviest bonnet I
+have ever seen and the highest&mdash;it was like a
+black church&mdash;revealed the secret to us, and
+we learned that there was a Primrose <i>f&ecirc;te</i>
+going on in Sir Willoughby Blockson's
+grounds.</p>
+
+<p>We instantly decided to go to the <i>f&ecirc;te</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been to a Primrose <i>f&ecirc;te</i>, and so have
+you, Dora," Oswald remarked, "and people
+are so dull at them, they'd gladly give gold
+to see the dark future. And, besides, the
+villages will be unpopulated, and no one at
+home but idiots and babies and their keepers."</p>
+
+<p>So we went to the <i>f&ecirc;te</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The people got thicker and thicker, and
+when we got to Sir Willoughby's lodge gates,
+which have sprawling lions on the gate-posts,
+we were told to take the donkey cart round
+to the stable-yard.</p>
+
+<p>This we did, and proud was the moment
+when a stiff groom had to bend his proud
+stomach to go to the head of Bates's donkey.</p>
+
+<p>"This is something like," said Alice, and
+No&euml;l added:</p>
+
+<p>"The foreign princes are well received at
+this palace."</p>
+
+<p>"We aren't princes, we're gipsies," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>
+Dora, tucking his scarf in. It would keep
+on getting loose.</p>
+
+<p>"There <i>are</i> gipsy princes, though," said
+No&euml;l, "because there are gipsy kings."</p>
+
+<p>"You aren't always a prince first," said Dora;
+"don't wriggle so or I can't fix you. Sometimes
+being made a king just happens to
+some one who isn't any one in particular."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think so," said No&euml;l; "you have
+to be a prince before you're a king, just as
+you have to be a kitten before you're a cat,
+or a puppy before you're a dog, or a worm
+before you're a serpent, or&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What about the King of Sweden?" Dora
+was beginning, when a very nice tall, thin
+man, with white flowers in his buttonhole
+like for a wedding, came strolling up and
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And whose show is this? Eh, what?"</p>
+
+<p>We said it was ours.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you expected?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>We said we thought not, but we hoped he
+didn't mind.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you? Acrobats? Tight-rope?
+That's a ripping Burmese coat you've got
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is. No we aren't," said Alice, with
+dignity. "I am Za&iuml;da, the mysterious
+prophetess of the golden Orient, and the
+others are mysterious too, but we haven't
+fixed on their names yet."</p>
+
+<p>"By jove!" said the gentleman; "but who
+are you really?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Our names are our secret," said Oswald,
+with dignity, but Alice said, "Oh, but we
+don't mind telling <i>you</i>, because I'm sure you're
+nice. We're really the Bastables, and we
+want to get some money for some one we
+know that's rather poor&mdash;of course I can't
+tell you <i>her</i> name. And we've learnt how
+to tell fortunes&mdash;really we have. Do you
+think they'll let us tell them at the <i>f&ecirc;te</i>.
+People are often dull at <i>f&ecirc;tes</i>, aren't they?"</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove!" said the gentleman again&mdash;"by
+Jove, they are!"</p>
+
+<p>He plunged for a moment in deep reflection.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got co&mdash;musical instruments,"
+said No&euml;l; "shall we play to you a little?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not here," said the gentleman; "follow
+me."</p>
+
+<p>He led the way by the backs of shrubberies
+to an old summer-house, and we asked him
+to wait outside.</p>
+
+<p>Then we put on our veils and tuned up.
+"See, see the conquering&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But he did not let us finish the tune; he
+burst in upon us, crying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ripping&mdash;oh, ripping! And now tell me
+my fortune."</p>
+
+<p>Alice took off her veil and looked at his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You will travel in distant lands," she said;
+"you will have great wealth and honour;
+you will marry a beautiful lady&mdash;a very fine
+woman, it says in the book, but I think a
+beautiful lady sounds nicer, don't you?"</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 407px;">
+<img src="images/gs33.png" width="407" height="400" alt="&quot;WE&#39;VE GOT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS,&quot; SAID NO&Euml;L." title="&quot;WE&#39;VE GOT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS,&quot; SAID NO&Euml;L." />
+<span class="caption">&quot;WE&#39;VE GOT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS,&quot; SAID NO&Euml;L.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Much; but I shouldn't mention the book
+when you're telling the fortune."</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't, except to you," said Alice,
+"and she'll have lots of money and a very
+sweet disposition. Trials and troubles beset
+your path, but do but be brave and fearless
+and you will overcome all your enemies.
+Beware of a dark woman&mdash;most likely a
+widow."</p>
+
+<p>"I will," said he, for Alice had stopped for
+breath. "Is that all?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Beware of a dark woman and shun
+the society of drunkards and gamblers. Be
+very cautious in your choice of acquaintances,
+or you will make a false friend who will be
+your ruin. That's all, except that you will
+be married very soon and live to a green old
+age with the beloved wife of your bosom, and
+have twelve sons and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, stop!" said the gentleman; "twelve
+sons are as many as I can bring up
+handsomely on my present income. Now,
+look here. You did that jolly well, only go
+slower, and pretend to look for things in
+the hand before you say them. Everything's
+free at the <i>f&ecirc;te</i>, so you'll get no money for
+your fortune-telling."</p>
+
+<p>Gloom was on each young brow.</p>
+
+<p>"It's like this," he went on, "there is a lady
+fortune-teller in a tent in the park."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we may as well get along home,"
+said Dicky.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," said our new friend, for such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>
+he was now about to prove himself to be;
+"that lady does not want to tell fortunes
+to-day. She has a headache. Now, if you'll
+really stick to it, and tell the people's fortunes
+as well as you told mine, I'll stand you&mdash;let's
+see&mdash;two quid for the afternoon. Will that
+do? What?"</p>
+
+<p>We said we should just jolly well think it
+would.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got some Eau de Cologne in a medicine-bottle,"
+Dora said; "my brother No&euml;l has
+headaches sometimes, but I think he's going
+to be all right to-day. Do take it, it will do
+the lady's head good."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take care of her head," he said, laughing,
+but he took the bottle and said, "Thank you."</p>
+
+<p>Then he told us to stay where we were
+while he made final arrangements, and we
+were left with palpitating breasts to look
+wildly through the Book of Fate, so as to
+have the things ready. But it turned out to
+be time thrown away, for when he came
+back he said to Alice&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It'll have to be only you and your sister,
+please, for I see they've stuck up a card with
+'Esmeralda, the gipsy Princess, reads the hand
+and foretells the future' on it. So you boys
+will have to be mum. You can be attendants&mdash;mutes,
+by jove!&mdash;yes that's it. And, I say,
+kiddies, you will jolly well play up, won't
+you? Don't stand any cheek. Stick it on,
+you know. I can't tell you how important
+it is about&mdash;&mdash;about the lady's headache."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I should think this would be a cool place
+for a headache to be quiet in," said Dora;
+and it was, for it was quite hidden in the
+shrubbery and no path to it.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove!" he remarked yet once again,
+"so it would. You're right!"</p>
+
+<p>He led us out of the shrubbery and across
+the park. There were people dotted all about
+and they stared, but they touched their hats
+to the gentleman, and he returned their salute
+with stern politeness.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the tent with "Esmeralda, &amp;c.," outside
+there was a lady in a hat and dust-cloak.
+But we could see her spangles under the
+cloak.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said the gentleman to Dicky, "you
+stand at the door and let people in, one at a
+time. You others can just play a few bars on
+your instruments for each new person&mdash;only
+a very little, because you do get out of tune,
+though that's barbaric certainly. Now, here's
+the two quid. And you stick to the show till
+five; you'll hear the stable clock chime."</p>
+
+<p>The lady was very pale with black marks
+under her eyes, and her eyes looked red,
+Oswald thought. She seemed about to speak,
+but the gentleman said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Do trust me, Ella. I'll explain everything
+directly. Just go to the old summer-house&mdash;<i>you</i>
+know&mdash;and I'll be there directly. I'll take
+a couple of pegs out of the back and you can
+slip away among the trees. Hold your cloak
+close over your gown. Goodbye, kiddies.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>
+Stay, give me your address, and I'll write and
+tell you if my fortune comes true."</p>
+
+<p>So he shook hands with us and went. And
+we did stick to it, though it is far less fun
+than you would think telling fortunes all the
+afternoon in a stuffy tent, while outside you
+know there are things to eat and people
+enjoying themselves. But there were the two
+gold quid, and we were determined to earn
+them. It is very hard to tell a different
+fortune for each person, and there were a
+great many. The girls took it in turns, and
+Oswald wonders why their hairs did not go
+gray. Though of course it was much better
+fun for them than for us, because we had just
+to be mutes when we weren't playing on the
+combs.</p>
+
+<p>The people we told fortunes to at first
+laughed rather, and said we were too young
+to know anything. But Oswald said in a
+hollow voice that we were as old as the
+Pyramids, and after that Alice took the tucks
+out of Dicky's red coat and put it on and
+turbaned herself, and looked much older.</p>
+
+<p>The stable clock had chimed the quarter to
+five some little time, when an elderly gentleman
+with whiskers, who afterwards proved to
+be Sir Willoughby, burst into the tent.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Miss Blockson?" he said, and we
+answered truthfully that we did not know.</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you been here?" he
+furiously asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Ever since two," said Alice wearily.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He said a word that I should have thought
+a baronet would have been above using.</p>
+
+<p>"Who brought you here?"</p>
+
+<p>We described the gentleman who had done
+this, and again the baronet said things we
+should never be allowed to say. "That confounded
+Carew!" he added, with more words.</p>
+
+<p>"Is anything wrong?" asked Dora&mdash;"can
+we do anything? We'll stay on longer if you
+like&mdash;if you can't find the lady who was doing
+Esmeralda before we came."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not very likely to find her," he said
+ferociously. "Stay longer indeed! Get away
+out of my sight before I have you locked up
+for vagrants and vagabonds."</p>
+
+<p>He left the scene in bounding and mad fury.
+We thought it best to do as he said, and went
+round the back way to the stables so as to
+avoid exciting his ungoverned rage by meeting
+him again. We found our cart and went
+home. We had got two quid and something
+to talk about.</p>
+
+<p>But none of us&mdash;not even Oswald the discerning&mdash;understood
+exactly what we had
+been mixed up in, till the pink satin box with
+three large bottles of A1 scent in it, and
+postmarks of foreign lands, came to Dora.
+And there was a letter. It said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Gipsies,&mdash;I beg to return the Eau
+de Cologne you so kindly lent me. The lady
+did use a little of it, but I found that foreign
+travel was what she really wanted to make
+her quite happy. So we caught the 4.15 to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>
+town, and now we are married, and intend to
+live to a green old age, &amp;c., as you foretold.
+But for your help my fortune couldn't have
+come true, because my wife's father, Sir
+Willoughby, thought I was not rich enough
+to marry. But you see I was. And my wife
+and I both thank you heartily for your kind
+help. I hope it was not an awful swat. I
+had to say five because of the train. Good
+luck to you, and thanks awfully.</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 5em;">"Yours faithfully,</span><br />
+"<span class="smcap">Carisbrook Carew</span>."<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>If Oswald had known beforehand we should
+never have made that two quid for Miss
+Sandal.</p>
+
+<p>For Oswald does not approve of marriages
+and would never, if he knew it, be the means
+of assisting one to occur.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span></p>
+<h2><i>THE LADY AND THE LICENSE;<br />
+OR, FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND</i></h2>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">"<span class="smcap">My dear Kiddies</span>,&mdash;Miss Sandal's married
+sister has just come home from Australia, and
+she feels very tired. No wonder, you will say,
+after such a long journey. So she is going to
+Lymchurch to rest. Now I want you all to be
+very quiet, because when you are in your usual
+form you aren't exactly restful, are you? If
+this weather lasts you will be able to be out
+most of the time, and when you are indoors
+for goodness' sake control your lungs and your
+boots, especially H.O.'s. Mrs. Bax has travelled
+about a good deal, and once was nearly eaten
+by cannibals. But I hope you won't bother
+her to tell you stories. She is coming on
+Friday. I am glad to hear from Alice's letter
+that you enjoyed the Primrose F&ecirc;te. Tell
+No&euml;l that 'poetticle' is not the usual way of
+spelling the word he wants. I send you ten
+shillings for pocket-money, and again implore
+you to let Mrs. Bax have a little rest and
+peace.<br />
+
+<div class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 3em;">"Your loving</span><br />
+"<span class="smcap">Father</span>."<br /></div>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
+
+<p>"PS.&mdash;If you want anything sent down, tell
+me, and I will get Mrs. Bax to bring it. I met
+your friend Mr. Red House the other day at
+lunch."</p></div>
+
+<p>When the letter had been read aloud, and
+we had each read it to ourselves, a sad silence
+took place.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky was the first to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> rather beastly, I grant you," he said,
+"but it might be worse."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how," said H.O. "I do wish
+Father would jolly well learn to leave my
+boots alone."</p>
+
+<p>"It might be worse, I tell you," said Dicky.
+"Suppose instead of telling us to keep out of
+doors it had been the other way?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Alice, "suppose it had been,
+'Poor Mrs. Bax requires to be cheered up.
+Do not leave her side day or night. Take it
+in turns to make jokes for her. Let not a
+moment pass without some merry jest'? Oh
+yes, it might be much, much worse."</p>
+
+<p>"Being able to get out all day makes it all
+right about trying to make that two pounds
+increase and multiply," remarked Oswald.
+"Now who's going to meet her at the station?
+Because after all it's her sister's house, and
+we've got to be polite to visitors even if we're
+in a house we aren't related to."</p>
+
+<p>This was seen to be so, but no one was
+keen on going to the station. At last
+Oswald, ever ready for forlorn hopes, consented
+to go.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We told Mrs. Beale, and she got the best
+room ready, scrubbing everything till it smelt
+deliciously of wet wood and mottled soap.
+And then we decorated the room as well as
+we could.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll want some pretty things," said Alice,
+"coming from the land of parrots and opossums
+and gum-trees and things."</p>
+
+<p>We did think of borrowing the stuffed wild-cat
+that is in the bar at the "Ship," but we
+decided that our decorations must be very
+quiet&mdash;and the wild-cat, even in its stuffed
+state, was anything but; so we borrowed a
+stuffed roach in a glass box and stood it on
+the chest of drawers. It looked very calm.
+Sea-shells are quiet things when they are
+vacant, and Mrs. Beale let us have the four
+big ones off her chiffonnier.</p>
+
+<p>The girls got flowers&mdash;bluebells and white
+wood-<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'anenomes'">anemones</ins>. We might have had poppies
+or buttercups, but we thought the colours
+might be too loud. We took some books up
+for Mrs. Bax to read in the night. And we
+took the quietest ones we could find.</p>
+
+<p>"Sonnets on Sleep," "Confessions of an
+Opium Eater," "Twilight of the Gods," "Diary
+of a Dreamer," and "By Still Waters," were
+some of them. The girls covered them with
+grey paper, because some of the bindings were
+rather gay.</p>
+
+<p>The girls hemmed grey calico covers for the
+drawers and the dressing-table, and we drew
+the blinds half-down, and when all was done<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>
+the room looked as quiet as a roosting wood-pigeon.</p>
+
+<p>We put in a clock, but we did not wind
+it up.</p>
+
+<p>"She can do that herself," said Dora, "if
+she feels she can bear to hear it ticking."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald went to the station to meet her.
+He rode on the box beside the driver. When
+the others saw him mount there I think they
+were sorry they had not been polite and gone
+to meet her themselves. Oswald had a jolly
+ride. We got to the station just as the train
+came in. Only one lady got out of it, so
+Oswald knew it must be Mrs. Bax. If he had
+not been told how quiet she wanted to be he
+would have thought she looked rather jolly.
+She had short hair and gold spectacles. Her
+skirts were short, and she carried a parrot-cage
+in her hand. It contained our parrot,
+and when we wrote to tell Father that it and
+Pincher were the only things we wanted sent
+we never thought she would have brought
+either.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Bax, I believe," was the only break
+Oswald made in the polite silence that he took
+the parrot-cage and her bag from her in.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do?" she said very briskly for
+a tired lady; and Oswald thought it was noble
+of her to make the effort to smile. "Are you
+Oswald or Dicky?"</p>
+
+<p>Oswald told her in one calm word which
+he was, and then Pincher rolled madly out
+of a dog-box almost into his arms. Pincher<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>
+would not be quiet. Of course he did not
+understand the need for it. Oswald conversed
+with Pincher in low, restraining whispers as
+he led the way to the "Ship's" fly. He put the
+parrot-cage on the inside seat of the carriage,
+held the door open for Mrs. Bax with silent
+politeness, closed it as quietly as possible, and
+prepared to mount on the box.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, won't you come inside?" asked Mrs.
+Bax. "Do!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you," said Oswald in calm and
+mouse-like tones; and to avoid any more jaw
+he got at once on to the box with Pincher.</p>
+
+<p>So that Mrs. Bax was perfectly quiet for the
+whole six miles&mdash;unless you count the rattle
+and shake-up-and-down of the fly. On the
+box Oswald and Pincher "tasted the sweets of
+a blissful re-union," like it says in novels.
+And the man from the "Ship" looked on
+and said how well bred Pincher was. It
+was a happy drive.</p>
+
+<p>There was something almost awful about the
+sleek, quiet tidiness of the others, who were
+all standing in a row outside the cottage to
+welcome Mrs. Bax. They all said, "How do
+you do?" in hushed voices, and all looked as if
+butter would not melt in any of their young
+mouths. I never saw a more soothing-looking
+lot of kids.</p>
+
+<p>She went to her room, and we did not see
+her again till tea-time.</p>
+
+<p>Then, still exquisitely brushed and combed,
+we sat round the board&mdash;in silence. We had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>
+left the tea-tray place for Mrs. Bax, of course.
+But she said to Dora&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't you like to pour out?"</p>
+
+<p>And Dora replied in low, soft tones, "If you
+wish me to, Mrs. Bax. I usually do." And
+she did.</p>
+
+<p>We passed each other bread-and-butter and
+jam and honey with silent courteousness.
+And of course we saw that she had enough
+to eat.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you manage to amuse yourself pretty
+well here?" she asked presently.</p>
+
+<p>We said, "Yes, thank you," in hushed
+tones.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you do?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>We did not wish to excite her by telling her
+what we did, so Dicky murmured&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing in particular," at the same moment
+that Alice said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"All sorts of things."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me about them," said Mrs. Bax
+invitingly.</p>
+
+<p>We replied by a deep silence. She sighed,
+and passed her cup for more tea.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you ever feel shy," she asked suddenly.
+"I do, dreadfully, with new people."</p>
+
+<p>We liked her for saying that, and Alice
+replied that she hoped she would not feel shy
+with us.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not," she said. "Do you know,
+there was such a funny woman in the train?
+She had seventeen different parcels, and she
+kept counting them, and one of them was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>
+kitten, and it was always under the seat
+when she began to count, so she always got
+the number wrong."</p>
+
+<p>We should have liked to hear about that
+kitten&mdash;especially what colour it was and
+how old&mdash;but Oswald felt that Mrs. Bax was
+only trying to talk for our sakes, so that we
+shouldn't feel shy, so he simply said, "Will
+you have some more cake?" and nothing
+more was said about the kitten.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bax seemed very noble. She kept trying
+to talk to us about Pincher, and trains and
+Australia, but we were determined she should
+be quiet, as she wished it so much, and we
+restrained our brimming curiosity about
+opossums up gum-trees, and about emus and
+kangaroos and wattles, and only said "Yes"
+or "No," or, more often, nothing at all.</p>
+
+<p>When tea was over we melted away, "like
+snow-wreaths in Thawjean," and went out on
+the beach and had a yelling match. Our
+throats felt as though they were full of wool,
+from the hushed tones we had used in talking
+to <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Mr.'">Mrs.</ins> Bax. Oswald won the match. Next
+day we kept carefully out of the way, except
+for meals. Mrs. Bax tried talking again at
+breakfast-time, but we checked our wish to
+listen, and passed the pepper, salt, mustard,
+bread, toast, butter, marmalade, and even the
+cayenne, vinegar, and oil, with such politeness
+that she gave up.</p>
+
+<p>We took it in turns to watch the house and
+drive away organ-grinders. We told them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>
+they must not play in front of that house,
+because there was an Australian lady who
+had to be kept quiet. And they went at once.
+This cost us expense, because an organ-grinder
+will never consent to fly the spot
+under twopence a flight.</p>
+
+<p>We went to bed early. We were quite
+weary with being so calm and still. But we
+knew it was our duty, and we liked the feel
+of having done it.</p>
+
+<p>The day after was the day Jake Lee got
+hurt. Jake is the man who drives about the
+country in a covered cart, with pins and
+needles, and combs and frying-pans, and all
+the sort of things that farmers' wives are
+likely to want in a hurry, and no shops for
+miles. I have always thought Jake's was a
+beautiful life. I should like to do it myself.
+Well, this particular day he had got his
+cart all ready to start and had got his foot on
+the wheel to get up, when a motor-car went
+by puffing and hooting. I always think
+motor-cars seem so rude somehow. And the
+horse was frightened; and no wonder. It
+shied, and poor Jake was thrown violently to
+the ground, and hurt so much that they had
+to send for the doctor. Of course we went and
+asked Mrs. Jake if we could do anything&mdash;such
+as take the cart out and sell the things
+to the farmers' wives.</p>
+
+<p>But she thought not.</p>
+
+<p>It was after this that Dicky said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't we get things of our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>
+own and go and sell them&mdash;with Bates'
+donkey?"</p>
+
+<p>Oswald was thinking the same thing, but
+he wishes to be fair, so he owns that Dicky
+spoke first. We all saw at once that the idea
+was a good one.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we dress up for it?" H.O. asked.
+We thought not. It is always good sport to
+dress up, but I have never heard of people
+selling things to farmers' wives in really
+beautiful disguises.</p>
+
+<p>"We ought to go as shabby as we can," said
+Alice; "but somehow that always seems to
+come natural to your clothes when you've
+done a few interesting things in them. We
+have plenty of clothes that look poor but
+deserving. What shall we buy to sell?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pins and needles, and tape and bodkins,"
+said Dora.</p>
+
+<p>"Butter," said No&euml;l; "it is terrible when
+there is no butter."</p>
+
+<p>"Honey is nice," said H.O., "and so are
+sausages."</p>
+
+<p>"Jake has ready-made shirts and corduroy
+trousers. I suppose a farmer's shirt and
+trousers may give at any moment," said Alice,
+"and if he can't get new ones he has to go to
+bed till they are mended."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald thought tin-tacks, and glue, and
+string must often be needed to mend barns
+and farm tools with if they broke suddenly.
+And Dicky said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I think the pictures of ladies hanging on to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>
+crosses in foaming seas are good. Jake told
+me he sold more of them than anything. I
+suppose people suddenly break the old ones,
+and home isn't home without a lady holding
+on to a cross."</p>
+
+<p>We went to Munn's shop, and we bought
+needles and pins, and tapes and bodkins, a
+pound of butter, a pot of honey and one of
+marmalade, and tin-tacks, string, and glue. But
+we could not get any ladies with crosses, and
+the shirts and trousers were too expensive for
+us to dare to risk it. Instead, we bought a
+head-stall for eighteenpence, because how
+providential we should be to a farmer whose
+favourite horse had escaped and he had
+nothing to catch it with; and three tin-openers,
+in case of a distant farm subsisting
+entirely on tinned things, and the only opener
+for miles lost down the well or something.
+We also bought several other thoughtful and
+far-sighted things.</p>
+
+<p>That night at supper we told Mrs. Bax we
+wanted to go out for the day. She had
+hardly said anything that supper-time, and
+now she said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going? Teaching Sunday
+school?"</p>
+
+<p>As it was Monday, we felt her poor brain
+was wandering&mdash;most likely for want of
+quiet. And the room smelt of tobacco smoke,
+so we thought some one had been to see her
+and perhaps been too noisy for her. So
+Oswald said gently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"No, we are not going to teach Sunday
+school."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bax sighed. Then she said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I am going out myself to-morrow&mdash;for the
+day."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it will not tire you too much," said
+Dora, with soft-voiced and cautious politeness.
+"If you want anything bought we could do it
+for you, with pleasure, and you could have a
+nice, quiet day at home."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Mrs. Bax shortly; and
+we saw she would do what she chose, whether
+it was really for her own good or not.</p>
+
+<p>She started before we did next morning,
+and we were careful to be mouse-quiet till
+the "Ship's" fly which contained her was out
+of hearing. Then we had another yelling
+competition, and No&euml;l won with that new
+shriek of his that is like railway engines in
+distress; and then we went and fetched Bates'
+donkey and cart and packed our bales in it
+and started, some riding and some running
+behind.</p>
+
+<p>Any faint distant traces of respectableness
+that were left to our clothes were soon
+covered up by the dust of the road and by
+some of the ginger-beer bursting through
+the violence of the cart, which had no
+springs.</p>
+
+<p>The first farm we stopped at the woman
+really did want some pins, for though a very
+stupid person, she was making a pink blouse,
+and we said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Do have some tape! You never know
+when you may want it."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe in buttons," she said. "No
+strings for me, thank you."</p>
+
+<p>But when Oswald said, "What about
+pudding-strings? You can't button up
+puddings as if they were pillows!" she
+consented to listen to reason. But it was
+only twopence altogether.</p>
+
+<p>But at the next place the woman said we
+were "mummickers," and told us to "get
+along, do." And she set her dog at us; but
+when Pincher sprang from the inmost recesses
+of the cart she called her dog off.
+But too late, for it and Pincher were
+locked in the barking, scuffling, growling
+embrace of deadly combat. When we had
+separated the dogs she went into her house
+and banged the door, and we went on
+through the green flat marshes, among the
+buttercups and may-bushes.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what she meant by 'mummickers'?"
+said H.O.</p>
+
+<p>"She meant she saw our high-born airs
+through our shabby clothes," said Alice.
+"It's always happening, especially to princes.
+There's nothing so hard to conceal as a really
+high-bred air."</p>
+
+<p>"I've been thinking," said Dicky, "whether
+honesty wouldn't perhaps be the best policy&mdash;not
+always, of course; but just this once. If
+people knew what we were doing it for they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>
+might be glad to help on the good
+work&mdash;&mdash; What?"</p>
+
+<p>So at the next farm, which was half hidden
+by trees, like the picture at the beginning of
+"Sensible Susan," we tied the pony to the
+gate-post and knocked at the door. It was
+opened by a man this time, and Dora said
+to him&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We are honest traders. We are trying to
+sell these things to keep a lady who is poor.
+If you buy some you will be helping too.
+Wouldn't you like to do that? It is a good
+work, and you will be glad of it afterwards,
+when you come to think over the acts of your
+life."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word an' 'onner!" said the man,
+whose red face was surrounded by a frill of
+white whiskers. "If ever I see a walkin'
+Tract 'ere it stands!"</p>
+
+<p>"She doesn't mean to be tractish," said
+Oswald quickly; "it's only her way. But
+we really are trying to sell things to help a
+poor person&mdash;no humbug, sir&mdash;so if we <i>have</i>
+got anything you want we shall be glad.
+And if not&mdash;well, there's no harm in asking,
+is there, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>The man with the frilly whiskers was very
+pleased to be called "sir"&mdash;Oswald knew he
+would be&mdash;and he looked at everything we'd
+got, and bought the head-stall and two tin-openers,
+and a pot of marmalade, and a ball
+of string, and a pair of braces. This came to
+four and twopence, and we were very pleased.
+It really seemed that our business was establishing
+itself root and branch.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When it came to its being dinner-time,
+which was first noticed through H.O. beginning
+to cry and say he did not want to play
+any more, it was found that we had forgotten
+to bring any dinner. So we had to eat some
+of our stock&mdash;the jam, the biscuits, and the
+cucumber.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel a new man," said Alice, draining
+the last of the ginger-beer bottles. "At that
+homely village on the brow of yonder hill we
+shall sell all that remains of the stock, and go
+home with money in both pockets."</p>
+
+<p>But our luck had changed. As so often
+happens, our hearts beat high with hopeful
+thoughts, and we felt jollier than we had
+done all day. Merry laughter and snatches
+of musical song re-echoed from our cart, and
+from round it as we went up the hill. All
+Nature was smiling and gay. There was
+nothing sinister in the look of the trees or
+the road&mdash;or anything.</p>
+
+<p>Dogs are said to have inside instincts that
+warn them of intending perils, but Pincher
+was not a bit instinctive that day somehow.
+He sported gaily up and down the hedge-banks
+after pretending rats, and once he was
+so excited that I believe he was playing at
+weasels and stoats. But of course there was
+really no trace of these savage denizens of
+the jungle. It was just Pincher's varied
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>We got to the village, and with joyful expectations
+we knocked at the first door we came to.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Alice had spread out a few choice treasures&mdash;needles,
+pins, tape, a photograph-frame, and
+the butter, rather soft by now, and the last
+of the tin-openers&mdash;on a basket-lid, like the
+fish-man does with herrings and whitings and
+plums and apples (you cannot sell fish in the
+country unless you sell fruit too. The author
+does not know why this is).</p>
+
+<p>The sun was shining, the sky was blue.
+There was no sign at all of the intending
+thunderbolt, not even when the door was
+opened. This was done by a woman.</p>
+
+<p>She just looked at our basket-lid of things
+any one might have been proud to buy, and
+smiled. I saw her do it. Then she turned her
+traitorous head and called "Jim!" into the
+cottage.</p>
+
+<p>A sleepy grunt rewarded her.</p>
+
+<p>"Jim, I say!" she repeated. "Come here
+directly minute."</p>
+
+<p>Next moment Jim appeared. He was Jim
+to her because she was his wife, I suppose, but
+to us he was the Police, with his hair ruffled&mdash;from
+his hateful sofa-cushions, no doubt&mdash;and
+his tunic unbuttoned.</p>
+
+<p>"What's up?" he said in a husky voice, as
+if he had been dreaming that he had a cold.
+"Can't a chap have a minute to himself to
+read the paper in?"</p>
+
+<p>"You told me to," said the woman. "You
+said if any folks come to the door with things
+I was to call you, whether or no."</p>
+
+<p>Even now we were blind to the disaster<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>
+that was entangling us in the meshes of its
+trap. Alice said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We've sold a good deal, but we've <i>some</i>
+things left&mdash;very nice things. These crochet
+needles&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But the Police, who had buttoned up his
+tunic in a hurry, said quite fiercely&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Let's have a look at your license."</p>
+
+<p>"We didn't bring any," said No&euml;l, "but if
+you will give us an order we'll bring you some
+to-morrow." He thought a lisen was a thing
+to sell that we ought to have thought of.</p>
+
+<p>"None of your lip," was the unexpected
+reply of the now plainly brutal constable.
+"Where's your license, I say?"</p>
+
+<p>"We have a license for our dog, but Father's
+got it," said Oswald, always quick-witted, but
+not, this time, quite quick enough.</p>
+
+<p>"Your 'awker's license is what I want, as
+well you knows, you young limb. Your
+pedlar's license&mdash;your license to sell things.
+You ain't half so half-witted as you want to
+make out."</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't got a pedlar's license," said
+Oswald. If we had been in a book the Police
+would have been touched to tears by Oswald's
+simple honesty. He would have said "Noble
+boy!" and then gone on to say he had only
+asked the question to test our honour. But
+life is not really at all the same as books. I
+have noticed lots of differences. Instead of
+behaving like the book-Police, this thick-headed
+constable said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Blowed if I wasn't certain of it! Well,
+my young blokes, you'll just come along o'
+me to Sir James. I've got orders to bring up
+the next case afore him."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Case!</i>" said Dora. "<i>Oh, don't!</i> We didn't
+know we oughtn't to. We only wanted&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ho, yes," said the constable, "you can tell
+all that to the magistrate; and anything you
+say will be used against you."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure it will," said Oswald. "Dora,
+don't lower yourself to speak to him. Come,
+we'll go home."</p>
+
+<p>The Police was combing its hair with a half-toothless
+piece of comb, and we turned to go.
+But it was vain.</p>
+
+<p>Ere any of our young and eager legs could
+climb into the cart the Police had seized the
+donkey's bridle. We could not desert our
+noble steed&mdash;and besides, it wasn't really
+ours, but Bates's, and this made any hope of
+flight quite a forlorn one. For better, for
+worse, we had to go with the donkey.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't cry, for goodness' sake!" said Oswald
+in stern undertones. "Bite your lips. Take
+long breaths. Don't let him see we mind.
+This beast's only the village police. Sir
+James will be a gentleman. <i>He'll</i> understand.
+Don't disgrace the house of Bastable.
+Look here! Fall into line&mdash;no, Indian file
+will be best, there are so few of us. Alice,
+if you snivel I'll never say you ought to have
+been a boy again. H.O., shut your mouth; no
+one's going to hurt you&mdash;you're too young."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I <i>am</i> trying," said Alice, gasping.</p>
+
+<p>"No&euml;l," Oswald went on&mdash;now, as so often,
+showing the brilliant qualities of the born
+leader and general&mdash;"don't <i>you</i> be in a funk.
+Remember how Byron fought for the Greeks
+at Missy-what's-its-name. <i>He</i> didn't grouse,
+and he was a poet, like you! Now look here,
+let's be <i>game</i>. Dora, you're the eldest. Strike
+up&mdash;any tune. We'll <i>march</i> up, and show this
+sneak we Bastables aren't afraid, whoever
+else is."</p>
+
+<p>You will perhaps find it difficult to believe,
+but we <i>did</i> strike up. We sang "The British
+Grenadiers," and when the Police told us to
+stow it we did not. And No&euml;l said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Singing isn't dogs or pedlaring. You
+don't want a license for that."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll soon show you!" said the Police.</p>
+
+<p>But he had to jolly well put up with
+our melodious song, because he knew that
+there isn't really any law to prevent you
+singing if you want to.</p>
+
+<p>We went on singing. It soon got easier
+than at first, and we followed Bates's donkey
+and cart through some lodge gates and up a
+drive with big trees, and we came out in front
+of a big white house, and there was a lawn.
+We stopped singing when we came in sight of
+the house, and got ready to be polite to Sir
+James. There were some ladies on the lawn
+in pretty blue and green dresses. This
+cheered us. Ladies are seldom quite heartless,
+especially when young.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Police drew up Bates's donkey opposite
+the big front door with pillars, and rang the
+bell. Our hearts were beating desperately.
+We cast glances of despair at the ladies.
+Then, quite suddenly, Alice gave a yell that
+wild Indian war-whoops are simply nothing
+to, and tore across the lawn and threw her
+arms round the green waist of one of the
+ladies.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so glad!" she cried; "oh, save us!
+We haven't done anything wrong, really and
+truly we haven't."</p>
+
+<p>And then we all saw that the lady was our
+own Mrs. Red House, that we liked so much.
+So we all rushed to her, and before that
+Police had got the door answered we had told
+her our tale. The other ladies had turned
+away when we approached her, and gone
+politely away into a shrubbery.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there," she said, patting Alice and
+No&euml;l and as much of the others as she could
+get hold of. "Don't you worry, dears, don't.
+I'll make it all right with Sir James. Let's
+all sit down in a comfy heap, and get our
+breaths again. I am so glad to see you all.
+My husband met your father at lunch the
+other day. I meant to come over and see you
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>You cannot imagine the feelings of joy and
+safeness that we felt now we had found someone
+who knew we were Bastables, and not
+vagrant outcasts like the Police thought.</p>
+
+<p>The door had now been answered. We saw<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>
+the base Police talking to the person who
+answered it. Then he came towards us, very
+red in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave off bothering the lady," he said,
+"and come along of me. Sir James is in his
+lib<i>ra</i>ry, and he's ready to do justice on you, so
+he is."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Red House jumped up, and so did we.
+She said with smiles, as if nothing was
+wrong&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Inspector!"</p>
+
+<p>He looked pleased and surprised, as well he
+might, for it'll be long enough before he's
+within a mile of being <i>that</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, miss, I'm sure," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"I think there's been a little mistake,
+Inspector," she said. "I expect it's some of
+your men&mdash;led away by zeal for their duties.
+But I'm sure <i>you'll</i> understand. I am staying
+with Lady Harborough, and these children
+are very dear friends of mine."</p>
+
+<p>The Police looked very silly, but he said
+something about hawking without a license.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, not <i>hawking</i>," said Mrs. Red
+House, "not <i>hawking</i>, surely! They were
+just <i>playing</i> at it, you know. Your subordinates
+must have been quite mistaken."</p>
+
+<p>Our honesty bade us say that he was his
+own only subordinate, and that he hadn't
+been mistaken; but it is rude to interrupt,
+especially a lady, so we said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The Police said firmly, "You'll excuse me,
+miss, but Sir James expressly told me to lay a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>
+information directly next time I caught any of
+'em at it without a license."</p>
+
+<p>"But, you see, you didn't catch them at it."
+Mrs. Red House took some money out of her
+purse. "You might just give this to your
+subordinates to console them for the mistake
+they've made. And look here, these mistakes
+do lead to trouble sometimes. So I'll tell you
+what I'll do. I'll promise not to tell Sir
+James a word about it. <i>So</i> nobody will be
+blamed."</p>
+
+<p>We listened breathless for his reply. He
+put his hands behind him&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Well, miss," he said at last, "you've
+managed to put the Force in the wrong
+somehow, which isn't often done, and I'm
+blest if I know how you make it out. But
+there's Sir James a-waiting for me to come
+before him with my complaint. What am I
+a-goin' to say to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, anything," said Mrs. Red House;
+"surely some one else has done something
+wrong that you can tell him about?"</p>
+
+<p>"There was a matter of a couple of snares
+and some night lines," he said slowly, drawing
+nearer to Mrs. Red House; "but I couldn't
+take no money, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not," she said; "I beg your
+pardon for offering it. But I'll give you my
+name and address, and if ever I can be of any
+use to you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She turned her back on us while she wrote
+it down with a stumpy pencil he lent her;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>
+but Oswald could swear that he heard money
+chink, and that there was something large
+and round wrapped up in the paper she gave
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry for any little misunderstanding,"
+the Police now said, feeling the paper with
+his fingers; "and my respects to you, miss,
+and your young friends. I'd best be going."</p>
+
+<p>And he went&mdash;to Sir James, I suppose. He
+seemed quite tamed. I hope the people who
+set the snares got off.</p>
+
+<p>"So <i>that's</i> all right," said Mrs. Red House.
+"Oh, you dear children, you must stay to
+lunch, and we'll have a splendid time."</p>
+
+<p>"What a darling Princess you are!" No&euml;l
+said slowly. "You are a witch Princess, too,
+with magic powers over the Police."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not a very pretty sort of magic," she
+said, and she sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything about you is pretty," said
+No&euml;l. And I could see him beginning to
+make the faces that always precur his poetry-fits.
+But before the fit could break out
+thoroughly the rest of us awoke from our
+stupor of grateful safeness and began to
+dance round Mrs. Red House in a ring. And
+the girls sang&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"The rose is red, the violet's blue,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Carnation's sweet, and so are you,"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>over and over again, so we had to join in;
+though I think "She's a jolly good fellow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>
+would have been more manly and less like a
+poetry book."</div>
+
+<p>Suddenly a known voice broke in on our
+singing.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Well!</i>" it said. And we stopped dancing.
+And there were the other two ladies who had
+politely walked off when we first discovered
+Mrs. Red House. And one of them was Mrs.
+Bax&mdash;of all people in the world! And she
+was smoking a cigarette. So now we knew
+where the smell of tobacco came from, in the
+White House.</p>
+
+<p>We said, "<i>Oh!</i>" in one breath, and were
+silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible," said Mrs. Bax, "that these
+are the Sunday-school children I've been living
+with these three long days?"</p>
+
+<p>"We're sorry," said Dora, softly; "we
+wouldn't have made a noise if we'd know you
+were here."</p>
+
+<p>"So I suppose," said Mrs. Bax. "Chloe, you
+seem to be a witch. How have you galvanised
+my six rag dolls into life like this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rag dolls!" said H.O., before we could
+stop him. "I think you're jolly mean and
+ungrateful; and it was sixpence for making
+the organs fly."</p>
+
+<p>"My brain's reeling," said Mrs. Bax, putting
+her hands to her head.</p>
+
+<p>"H.O. is very rude, and I am sorry," said
+Alice, "but it <i>is</i> hard to be called rag dolls,
+when you've only tried to do as you were
+told."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And then, in answer to Mrs. Red House's
+questions, we told how father had begged
+us to be quiet, and how we had earnestly tried
+to. When it was told, Mrs. Bax began to
+laugh, and so did Mrs. Red House, and at last
+Mrs. Bax said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dears! you don't know how glad
+I am that you're really alive! I began to think&mdash;oh&mdash;I
+don't know what I thought! And
+you're not rag dolls. You're heroes and
+heroines, every man jack of you. And I do
+thank you. But I never wanted to be quiet
+like <i>that</i>. I just didn't want to be bothered
+with London and tiresome grown-up people.
+And now let's enjoy ourselves! Shall it be
+rounders, or stories about cannibals?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rounders first and stories after," said H.O.
+And it was so.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bax, now that her true nature was
+revealed, proved to be A1. The author does
+not ask for a jollier person to be in the house
+with. We had rare larks the whole time she
+stayed with us.</p>
+
+<p>And to think that we might never have
+known her true character if she hadn't been
+an old school friend of Mrs. Red House's, and
+if Mrs. Red House hadn't been such a friend of
+ours!</p>
+
+<p>"Friendship," as Mr. William Smith so truly
+says in his book about Latin, "is the crown of
+life."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span></p>
+<h2><i>THE POOR AND NEEDY</i></h2>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'>"<span class="smcap">What</span> shall we do to-day, kiddies?" said
+Mrs. Bax. We had discovered her true nature
+but three days ago, and already she had
+taken us out in a sailing-boat and in a motor
+car, had given us sweets every day, and taught
+us eleven new games that we had not known
+before; and only four of the new games
+were rotters. How seldom can as much be
+said for the games of a grown-up, however
+gifted!</div>
+
+<p>The day was one of cloudless blue perfectness,
+and we were all basking on the beach.
+We had all bathed. Mrs. Bax said we might.
+There are points about having a grown-up
+with you, if it is the right kind. You can
+then easily get it to say "Yes" to what you
+want, and after that, if anything goes wrong
+it is their fault, and you are pure from blame.
+But nothing had gone wrong with the bathe,
+and, so far, we were all alive, and not cold at
+all, except our fingers and feet.</p>
+
+<p>"What would you <i>like</i> to do?" asked Mrs.
+Bax. We were far away from human sight
+along the beach, and Mrs. Bax was smoking
+cigarettes as usual.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," we all said politely. But
+H.O. said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What about poor Miss Sandal?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why poor?" asked Mrs. Bax.</p>
+
+<p>"Because she is," said H.O.</p>
+
+<p>"But how? What do you mean?" asked
+Mrs. Bax.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, isn't she?" said H.O.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't she what?" said Mrs. Bax.</p>
+
+<p>"What you said why about," said H.O.</p>
+
+<p>She put her hands to her head. Her short
+hair was still damp and rumpled from contact
+with the foaming billows of ocean.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's have a fresh deal and start fair," she
+said; "why do you think my sister is poor?"</p>
+
+<p>"I forgot she was your sister," said H.O.,
+"or I wouldn't have said it&mdash;honour bright I
+wouldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mention it," said Mrs. Bax, and began
+throwing stones at a groin in amiable silence.</p>
+
+<p>We were furious with H.O., first because it
+is such bad manners to throw people's poverty
+in their faces, or even in their sisters' faces,
+like H.O. had just done, and second because
+it seemed to have put out of Mrs. Bax's head
+what she was beginning to say about what
+would we like to do.</p>
+
+<p>So Oswald presently remarked, when he
+had aimed at the stump she was aiming at,
+and hit it before she did, for though a fair
+shot for a lady, she takes a long time to get
+her eye in.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Bax, we should like to do whatever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span>
+<i>you</i> like to do." This was real politeness and
+true too, as it happened, because by this time
+we could quite trust her not to want to do
+anything deeply duffing.</p>
+
+<p>"That's very nice of you," she replied, "but
+don't let me interfere with any plans of yours.
+My own idea was to pluck a waggonette from
+the nearest bush. I suppose they grow freely
+in these parts?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's one at the 'Ship,'" said Alice; "it
+costs seven-and-six to pluck it, just for going
+to the station."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then! And to stuff our waggonette
+with lunch and drive over to Lynwood Castle,
+and eat it there."</p>
+
+<p>"A picnic!" fell in accents of joy from the
+lips of one and all.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll also boil the billy in the castle courtyard,
+and eat buns in the shadow of the keep."</p>
+
+<p>"Tea as well?" said H.O., "with buns?
+You can't be poor and needy any way, whatever
+your&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>We hastily hushed him, stifling his murmurs
+with sand.</p>
+
+<p>"I always think," said Mrs. Bax dreamily,
+"that 'the more the merrier,' is peculiarly
+true of picnics. So I have arranged&mdash;always
+subject to your approval, of course&mdash;to meet
+your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Red House, there,
+and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>We drowned her conclusive remarks with a
+cheer. And Oswald, always willing to be of
+use, offered to go to the 'Ship' and see about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>
+the waggonette. I like horses and stable-yards,
+and the smell of hay and straw, and
+talking to ostlers and people like that.</p>
+
+<p>There turned out to be two horses belonging
+to the best waggonette, or you could have a
+one-horse one, much smaller, with the blue
+cloth of the cushions rather frayed, and mended
+here and there, and green in patches from
+age and exposition to the weather.</p>
+
+<p>Oswald told Mrs. Bax this, not concealing
+about how shabby the little one was, and she
+gloriously said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The pair by all means! We don't kill a
+pig every day!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed," said Dora, but if "killing a
+pig" means having a lark, Mrs. Bax is as good
+a pig-killer as any I ever knew.</p>
+
+<p>It was splendid to drive (Oswald, on the box
+beside the driver, who had his best coat with
+the bright buttons) along the same roads that
+we had trodden as muddy pedestrinators, or
+travelled along behind Bates's donkey.</p>
+
+<p>It was a perfect day, as I said before. We
+were all clean and had our second-best things
+on. I think second-bests are much more
+comfy than first-bests. You feel equivalent
+to meeting any one, and have "a heart for
+any fate," as it says in the poetry-book, and
+yet you are not starched and booted and
+stiffened and tightened out of all human
+feelings.</p>
+
+<p>Lynwood Castle is in a hollow in the hills.
+It has a moat all round it with water-lily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>
+leaves on it. I suppose there are lilies when
+in season. There is a bridge over the moat&mdash;not
+the draw kind of bridge. And the castle
+has eight towers&mdash;four round and four square
+ones, and a courtyard in the middle, all green
+grass, and heaps of stones&mdash;stray bits of castle,
+I suppose they are&mdash;and a great white may-tree
+in the middle that Mrs. Bax said was
+hundreds of years old.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Red House was sitting under the may-tree
+when we got there, nursing her baby, in
+a blue dress and looking exactly like a picture
+on the top of a chocolate-box.</p>
+
+<p>The girls instantly wanted to nurse the baby
+so we let them. And we explored the castle.
+We had never happened to explore one
+thoroughly before. We did not find the
+deepest dungeon below the castle moat,
+though we looked everywhere for it, but
+we found everything else you can think of
+belonging to castles&mdash;even the holes they used
+to pour boiling lead through into the eyes of
+besiegers when they tried to squint up to see
+how strong the garrison was in the keep&mdash;and
+the little slits they shot arrows through, and
+the mouldering remains of the portcullis.
+We went up the eight towers, every single
+one of them, and some parts were jolly
+dangerous, I can tell you. Dicky and I would
+not let H.O. and No&euml;l come up the dangerous
+parts. There was no lasting ill-feeling about
+this. By the time we had had a thorough
+good explore lunch was ready.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was a glorious lunch&mdash;not too many
+meaty things, but all sorts of cakes and
+sweets, and grapes and figs and nuts.</p>
+
+<p>We gazed at the feast, and Mrs. Bax said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There you are, young Copperfield, and a
+royal spread you've got."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>They</i> had currant wine," said No&euml;l, who
+has only just read the book by Mr. Charles
+Dickens.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, so have you," said Mrs. Bax. And
+we had. Two bottles of it.</p>
+
+<p>"I never knew any one like you," said No&euml;l
+to Mrs. Red House, dreamily with his mouth
+full, "for knowing the things people really
+like to eat, not the things that are good for
+them, but what they <i>like</i>, and Mrs. Bax is just
+the same."</p>
+
+<p>"It was one of the things they taught at
+our school," said Mrs. Bax. "Do you remember
+the Saturday night feasts, Chloe, and how
+good the cocoanut ice tasted after extra strong
+peppermints?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy you knowing <i>that!</i>" said H.O. "I
+thought it was us found <i>that</i> out."</p>
+
+<p>"I really know much more about things to
+eat than <i>she</i> does," said Mrs. Bax. "I was
+quite an old girl when she was a little thing
+in pinafores. She was such a nice little girl."</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't wonder if she was always nice,"
+said No&euml;l, "even when she was a baby!"</p>
+
+<p>Everybody laughed at this, except the
+existing baby, and it was asleep on the
+waggonette cushions, under the white may-tree,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>
+and perhaps if it had been awake it
+wouldn't have laughed, for Oswald himself,
+though possessing a keen sense of humour,
+did not see anything to laugh at.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Red House made a speech after dinner,
+and said drink to the health of everybody,
+one after the other, in currant wine, which
+was done, beginning with Mrs. Bax and ending
+with H.O.</p>
+
+<p>Then he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Somnus, avaunt! What shall we play
+at?" and nobody, as so often happens, had
+any idea ready. Then suddenly Mrs. Red
+House said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious, look there!" and we looked
+there, and where we were to look was the
+lowest piece of the castle wall, just beside the
+keep that the bridge led over to, and what we
+were to look at was a strange blobbiness of
+knobbly bumps along the top, that looked
+exactly like human heads.</p>
+
+<p>It turned out, when we had talked about
+cannibals and New Guinea, that human heads
+were just exactly what they were. Not loose
+heads, stuck on pikes or things like that, such
+as there often must have been while the castle
+stayed in the olden times it was built in and
+belonged to, but real live heads with their
+bodies still in attendance on them.</p>
+
+<p>They were, in fact, the village children.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little Lazaruses!" said Mr. Red House.</p>
+
+<p>"There's not such a bad slice of Dives' feast
+left," said Mrs. Bax. "Shall we&mdash;&mdash;?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So Mr. Red House went out by the keep
+and called the heads in (with the bodies they
+were connected with, of course), and they
+came and ate up all that was left of the lunch.
+Not the buns, of course, for those were sacred
+to tea-time, but all the other things, even the
+nuts and figs, and we were quite glad that
+they should have them&mdash;really and truly we
+were, even H.O.!</p>
+
+<p>They did not seem to be very clever children,
+or just the sort you would choose for your
+friends, but I suppose you like to play, however
+little you are other people's sort. So,
+after they had eaten all there was, when Mrs.
+Red House invited them all to join in games
+with us we knew we ought to be pleased.
+But village children are not taught rounders,
+and though we wondered at first why their
+teachers had not seen to this, we understood
+presently. Because it is most awfully difficult
+to make them understand the very simplest
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>But they could play all the ring games, and
+"Nuts and May," and "There Came Three
+Knights"&mdash;and another one we had never
+heard of before. The singing part begins:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Up and down the green grass,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">This and that and thus,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Come along, my pretty maid,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And take a walk with us.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">You shall have a duck, my dear,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And you shall have a drake,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And you shall have a handsome man</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">For your father's sake."</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span></div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>I forget the rest, and if anybody who reads
+this knows it, and will write and tell me, the
+author will not have laboured in vain.</div>
+
+<p>The grown-ups played with all their heart
+and soul&mdash;I expect it is but seldom they are
+able to play, and they enjoy the novel excitement.
+And when we'd been at it some time
+we saw there was another head looking over
+the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo!" said Mrs. Bax, "here's another of
+them, run along and ask it to come and join
+in."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke to the village children, but nobody
+ran.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, you go," she said, pointing at a girl
+in red plaits tied with dirty sky-blue ribbon.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, miss, I'd leifer not," replied the red-haired.
+"Mother says we ain't to play along
+of him."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what's the matter with him?" asked
+Mrs. Red House.</p>
+
+<p>"His father's in jail, miss, along of snares
+and night lines, and no one won't give his
+mother any work, so my mother says we ain't
+to demean ourselves to speak to him."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's not the child's fault," said Mrs. Red
+House, "is it now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, miss," said the red-haired.</p>
+
+<p>"But it's cruel," said Mrs. Bax. "How would
+you like it if your father was sent to prison,
+and nobody would speak to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Father's always kep' hisself respectable,"
+said the girl with the dirty blue ribbon. "You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>
+can't be sent to gaol, not if you keeps yourself
+respectable, you can't, miss."</p>
+
+<p>"And do none of you speak to him?"</p>
+
+<p>The other children put their fingers in their
+mouths, and looked silly, showing plainly that
+they didn't.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you feel sorry for the poor little
+chap?" said Mrs. Bax.</p>
+
+<p>No answer transpired.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you imagine how you'd feel if it was
+<i>your</i> father?"</p>
+
+<p>"My father always kep' hisself respectable,"
+the red-haired girl said again.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I shall ask him to come and play
+with us," said Mrs. Red House. "Little
+pigs!" she added in low tones only heard by
+the author and Mr. Red House.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Red House said in a whisper that
+no one overheard except Mrs. R. H. and the
+present author.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, Puss-cat; it's no good. The poor
+little pariah wouldn't like it. And these kids
+only do what their parents teach them."</p>
+
+<p>If the author didn't know what a stainless
+gentleman Mr. Red House is he would think
+he heard him mutter a word that gentlemen
+wouldn't say.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell off a detachment of consolation," Mr.
+Red House went on; "look here, <i>our</i> kids&mdash;who'll
+go and talk to the poor little chap?"</p>
+
+<p>We all instantly said, "<i>I</i> will!"</p>
+
+<p>The present author was chosen to be the
+one.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When you think about yourself there is a
+kind of you that is not what you generally
+are but that you know you would like to be if
+only you were good enough. Albert's uncle
+says this is called your ideal of yourself. I
+will call it your best I, for short. Oswald's
+"best I" was glad to go and talk to that boy
+whose father was in prison, but the Oswald that
+generally exists hated being out of the games.
+Yet the whole Oswald, both the best and the
+ordinary, was pleased that he was the one
+chosen to be a detachment of consolation.</p>
+
+<p>He went out under the great archway, and
+as he went he heard the games beginning
+again. This made him feel noble, and yet he
+was ashamed of feeling it. Your feelings are
+a beastly nuisance, if once you begin to let
+yourself think about them. Oswald soon saw
+the broken boots of the boy whose father
+was in jail so nobody would play with him,
+standing on the stones near the top of the
+wall where it was broken to match the boots.</p>
+
+<p>He climbed up and said, "Hullo!"</p>
+
+<p>To this remark the boy replied, "Hullo!"</p>
+
+<p>Oswald now did not know what to say.
+The sorrier you are for people the harder it
+is to tell them so.</p>
+
+<p>But at last he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I've just heard about your father being
+where he is. It's beastly rough luck. I hope
+you don't mind my saying I'm jolly sorry for
+you."</p>
+
+<p>The boy had a pale face and watery blue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>
+eyes. When Oswald said this his eyes got
+waterier than ever, and he climbed down to
+the ground before he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care so much, but it do upset
+mother something crool."</p>
+
+<p>It is awfully difficult to console those in
+affliction. Oswald thought this, then he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I say; never mind if those beastly kids
+won't play with you. It isn't your fault, you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor it ain't father's neither," the boy said;
+"he broke his arm a-falling off of a rick, and
+he hadn't paid up his club money along of
+mother's new baby costing what it did when it
+come, so there warn't nothing&mdash;and what's a
+hare or two, or a partridge? It ain't as if
+it was pheasants as is as dear to rear as
+chicks."</p>
+
+<p>Oswald did not know what to say, so he got
+out his new pen-and-pencil-combined and
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Look here! You can have this to keep if
+you like."</p>
+
+<p>The pale-eyed boy took it and looked at it
+and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't foolin' me?"</p>
+
+<p>And Oswald said no he wasn't, but he felt
+most awfully rum and uncomfy, and though
+he wanted most frightfully to do something
+for the boy he felt as if he wanted to get away
+more than anything else, and he never was
+gladder in his life than when he saw Dora
+coming along, and she said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You go back and play, Oswald. I'm tired
+and I'd like to sit down a bit."</p>
+
+<p>She got the boy to sit down beside her, and
+Oswald went back to the others.</p>
+
+<p>Games, however unusually splendid, have
+to come to an end. And when the games
+were over and it was tea, and the village
+children were sent away, and Oswald went to
+call Dora and the prisoner's son, he found
+nothing but Dora, and he saw at once, in his
+far-sighted way, that she had been crying.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of the A1est days we ever had,
+and the drive home was good, but Dora was
+horribly quiet, as though the victim of dark
+interior thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>And the next day she was but little better.</p>
+
+<p>We were all paddling on the sands, but
+Dora would not. And presently Alice left us
+and went back to Dora, and we all saw across
+the sandy waste that something was up.</p>
+
+<p>And presently Alice came down and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Dry your feet and legs and come to a
+council. Dora wants to tell you something."</p>
+
+<p>We dried our pink and sandy toes and we
+came to the council. Then Alice said: "I
+don't think H.O. is wanted at the council, it
+isn't anything amusing; you go and enjoy
+yourself by the sea, and catch the nice little
+crabs, H.O. dear."</p>
+
+<p>H.O. said: "You always want me to be out
+of everything. I can be councils as well as
+anybody else."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, H.O.!" said Alice, in pleading tones,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span>
+"not if I give you a halfpenny to go and buy
+bulls-eyes with?"</p>
+
+<p>So then he went, and Dora said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I can't think how I could do it when you'd
+all trusted me so. And yet I couldn't help it.
+I remember Dicky saying when you decided
+to give it me to take care of&mdash;about me being
+the most trustworthy of all of us. I'm not fit
+for any one to speak to. But it did seem the
+really right thing at the time, it really and
+truly did. And now it all looks different."</p>
+
+<p>"What has she done?" Dicky asked this,
+but Oswald almost knew.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell them," said Dora, turning over on her
+front and hiding her face partly in her hands,
+and partly in the sand.</p>
+
+<p>"She's given all Miss Sandal's money to that
+little boy that the father of was in prison,"
+said Alice.</p>
+
+<p>"It was one pound thirteen and sevenpence
+halfpenny," sobbed Dora.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to have consulted us, I do think,
+really," said Dicky. "Of course, I see you're
+sorry now, but I do think that."</p>
+
+<p>"How could I consult you?" said Dora;
+"you were all playing Cat and Mouse, and he
+wanted to get home. I only wish you'd heard
+what he told me&mdash;that's all&mdash;about his mother
+being ill, and nobody letting her do any work
+because of where his father is, and his baby
+brother ill, poor little darling, and not enough
+to eat, and everything as awful as you can
+possibly think. I'll save up and pay it all back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span>
+out of my own money. Only do forgive me,
+all of you, and say you don't despise me for a
+forger and embezzlementer. I couldn't help
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you couldn't," said the sudden
+voice of H.O., who had sneaked up on his
+young stomach unobserved by the council.
+"You shall have all my money too, Dora,
+and here's the bulls-eye halfpenny to begin
+with." He crammed it into her hand.
+"Listen? I should jolly well think I did
+listen," H.O. went on. "I've just as much
+right as anybody else to be in at a council,
+and I think Dora was quite right, and the rest
+of you are beasts not to say so, too, when you
+see how she's blubbing. Suppose it had been
+<i>your</i> darling baby-brother ill, and nobody
+hadn't given you nothing when they'd got
+pounds and pounds in their silly pockets?"</p>
+
+<p>He now hugged Dora, who responded.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't her own money," said Dicky.</p>
+
+<p>"If you think <i>you're</i> our darling baby-brother&mdash;&mdash;"
+said Oswald.</p>
+
+<p>But Alice and No&euml;l began hugging Dora
+and H.O., and Dicky and I felt it was no go.
+Girls have no right and honourable feelings
+about business, and little boys are the same.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said Oswald rather bitterly, "if
+a majority of the council backs Dora up, we'll
+give in. But we must all save up and repay
+the money, that's all. We shall all be beastly
+short for ages."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said Dora, and now her sobs were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span>
+beginning to turn into sniffs, "you don't
+know how I felt! And I've felt most awful
+ever since, but those poor, poor people&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Mrs. Bax came down on to
+the beach by the wooden steps that lead from
+the sea-wall where the grass grows between
+the stones.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo!" she said, "hurt yourself, my
+Dora-dove?"</p>
+
+<p>Dora was rather a favourite of hers.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right now," said Dora.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>That's</i> all right," said Mrs. Bax, who has
+learnt in anti-what's-its-name climes the great
+art of not asking too many questions. "Mrs.
+Red House has come to lunch. She went this
+morning to see that boy's mother&mdash;you know,
+the boy the others wouldn't play with?"</p>
+
+<p>We said "Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mrs. Red House has arranged to get
+the woman some work&mdash;like the dear she is&mdash;the
+woman told her that the little lady&mdash;and
+that's you, Dora&mdash;had given the little boy one
+pound thirteen and sevenpence."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bax looked straight out to sea through
+her gold-rimmed spectacles, and went on&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"That must have been about all you had
+among the lot of you. I don't want to jaw,
+but I think you're a set of little bricks, and I
+must say so or expire on the sandy spot."</p>
+
+<p>There was a painful silence.</p>
+
+<p>H.O. looked, "There, what did I tell you?"
+at the rest of us.</p>
+
+<p>Then Alice said, "We others had nothing to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>
+do with it. It was Dora's doing." I suppose
+she said this because we did not mean to tell
+Mrs. Bax anything about it, and if there was
+any brickiness in the act we wished Dora to
+have the consolement of getting the credit
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>But of course Dora couldn't stand that. She
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mrs. Bax, it was very wrong of me.
+It wasn't my own money, and I'd no business
+to, but I was so sorry for the little boy and
+his mother and his darling baby-brother. The
+money belonged to some one else."</p>
+
+<p>"Who?" Mrs. Bax asked ere she had time
+to remember the excellent Australian rule
+about not asking questions.</p>
+
+<p>And H.O. blurted out, "It was Miss Sandal's
+money&mdash;every penny," before we could stop
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Once again in our career concealment was
+at an end. The rule about questions was again
+unregarded, and the whole thing came out.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long story, and Mrs. Red House
+came out in the middle, but nobody could
+mind her hearing things.</p>
+
+<p>When she knew all, from the plain living to
+the pedlar who hadn't a license, Mrs. Bax
+spoke up like a man, and said several kind
+things that I won't write down.</p>
+
+<p>She then went on to say that her sister was
+not poor and needy at all, but that she lived
+plain and thought high just because she
+liked it!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We were very disappointed as soon as we
+had got over our hardly believing any one
+could&mdash;like it, I mean&mdash;and then Mrs. Red
+House said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Sir James gave me five pounds for the
+poor woman, and she sent back thirty of your
+shillings. She had spent three and sevenpence,
+and they had a lovely supper of boiled
+pork and greens last night. So now you've
+only got that to make up, and you can buy a
+most splendid present for Miss Sandal."</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to choose presents for people
+who live plain and think high because they
+like it. But at last we decided to get books.
+They were written by a person called Emerson,
+and of a dull character, but the backs
+were very beautiful, and Miss Sandal was
+most awfully pleased with them when she
+came down to her cottage with her partially
+repaired brother, who had fallen off the
+scaffold when treating a bricklayer to tracts.</p>
+
+<p>This is the end of the things we did when
+we were at Lymchurch in Miss Sandal's
+house.</p>
+
+<p>It is the last story that the present author
+means ever to be the author of. So goodbye,
+if you have got as far as this.</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Your affectionate author,</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Oswald Bastable</span>.<br />
+</div>
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+<div class='tnote'><h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3>
+<p>Obvious punctuation errors repaired.</p>
+<p>Varied hyphenation was retained: was armchair and arm-chair; boathouse
+and boat-house; halfway and half-way; postmark and post-mark; stationmaster and
+station-master; tablecloths and table-cloths; thoroughbred and thorough-bred; wastepaper
+and waste-paper; motor car; motor-car.</p>
+
+<p>Both Krikey and crikey were used and retained as were handkie and hankie.</p>
+<p>The remaining corrections made are indicated by dotted lines under the corrections. Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'apprear'">appear</ins>.</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW TREASURE SEEKERS***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 25496-h.txt or 25496-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/4/9/25496">http://www.gutenberg.org/2/5/4/9/25496</a></p>
+<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, New Treasure Seekers, by E. (Edith) Nesbit,
+Illustrated by Gordon Browne and Lewis Baumer
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: New Treasure Seekers
+       or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune
+
+
+Author: E. (Edith) Nesbit
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2008  [eBook #25496]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW TREASURE SEEKERS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Emmy, and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
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+      See 25496-h.htm or 25496-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/4/9/25496/25496-h/25496-h.htm)
+      or
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+
+
+
+
+
+NEW TREASURE SEEKERS
+
+[Illustration: THE STAIR WAS OF STONE, ARCHED OVERHEAD LIKE CHURCHES.]
+
+NEW TREASURE SEEKERS
+
+Or The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune
+
+by
+
+E. NESBIT
+          Author of "The Treasure Seekers,"
+          "The Would-Be-Goods," Etc.
+
+With Illustrations by Gordon Browne and Lewis Baumer [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+New York
+Frederick A. Stokes Company
+Publishers
+
+
+
+
+          TO
+          ARTHUR WATTS
+          (OSWALD IN PARIS)
+          FROM
+          E. NESBIT
+
+          _Montparnasse, 1904._
+
+
+
+
+NEW TREASURE SEEKERS
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                               PAGE
+  THE ROAD TO ROME; OR, THE SILLY STOWAWAY                      15
+
+  THE CONSCIENCE-PUDDING                                        37
+
+  ARCHIBALD THE UNPLEASANT                                      62
+
+  OVER THE WATER TO CHINA                                       88
+
+  THE YOUNG ANTIQUARIES                                        113
+
+  THE INTREPID EXPLORER AND HIS LIEUTENANT                     136
+
+  THE TURK IN CHAINS; OR, RICHARD'S REVENGE                    161
+
+  THE GOLDEN GONDOLA                                           185
+
+  THE FLYING LODGER                                            209
+
+  THE SMUGGLER'S REVENGE                                       236
+
+  ZAIDA, THE MYSTERIOUS PROPHETESS OF THE GOLDEN ORIENT        262
+
+  THE LADY AND THE LICENSE; OR, FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND           287
+
+  THE POOR AND NEEDY                                           311
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                           PAGE
+
+  THE STAIR WAS OF STONE, ARCHED OVERHEAD LIKE CHURCHES _Frontispiece_
+
+  DORA DID SOME WHITE SEWING                                  19
+
+  THEY LAUGHED EVER SO                                        34
+
+  AND HE WAS AWFULLY RUDE TO THE SERVANTS                     69
+
+  THE OTHERS CAME UP BY THE ROPE-LADDER                       73
+
+  SO OSWALD OPENED THE TRAP-DOOR AND SQUINTED DOWN, AND
+    THERE WAS THAT ARCHIBALD                                  75
+
+  "WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT?" HE ASKED. "NYANG, NYANG," JANE
+    ANSWERED TAUNTINGLY                                       83
+
+  WHEN FATHER CAME HOME THERE WAS AN AWFUL ROW                85
+
+  IT SEEMS THE SAILOR WAS ASLEEP, BUT OF COURSE WE DID NOT
+    KNOW, OR WE SHOULD NOT HAVE DISTURBED HIM                 94
+
+  WE WENT ROUND A CORNER RATHER FAST, AND CAME SLAP INTO
+    THE LARGEST WOMAN I HAVE EVER SEEN                        99
+
+  IT WAS INDEED A CELESTIAL CHINAMAN IN DEEP DIFFICULTIES    103
+
+  ON THE SIDEBOARD WAS A BLUEY-WHITE CROCKERY IMAGE          107
+
+  OSWALD LISTENED AS CAREFULLY AS HE COULD, BUT DENNY
+    ALWAYS BUZZES SO WHEN HE WHISPERS                        117
+
+  IT WAS NOT TILL NEXT DAY THAT HE OWNED THAT THE TYPEWRITER
+    HAD BEEN A FIEND IN DISGUISE                             123
+
+  THE STATIONMASTER AND PORTER LOOKED RESPECTFULLY AT US     127
+
+  HER VOICE WHEN SHE TOLD US WE WERE TRESPASSING WAS NOT SO
+    FURIOUS                                                  131
+
+  THE LUNCH WAS A PERFECT DREAM OF A.1.-NESS                 137
+
+  OSWALD DID NOT STRIKE THE NEXT MATCH CAREFULLY ENOUGH      145
+
+  WITH SCISSORS AND GAS PLIERS THEY CUT EVERY FUSE           157
+
+  "HI, BRIGANDS!" HE EXCLAIMED                               167
+
+  IT WAS RATHER DIFFICULT TO GET ANYTHING THE SHAPE OF A
+    TURKEY                                                   173
+
+  WHEN THE DOOR WAS SHUT HE SAID, "I AIN'T GOT MUCH TO SAY,
+    YOUNG GEMMEN"                                            179
+
+  THE FIVE OTHERS                                            191
+
+  OSWALD SAW THE DRIVER WINK AS HE PUT HIS BOOT ON THE STEP,
+    AND THE PORTER WHO WAS OPENING THE CAB DOOR WINKED BACK  201
+
+  HE LOOKED AT OSWALD'S BOOTS                                203
+
+  HE FETCHED DOWN HALF A DOZEN PLANKS AND THE WORKMAN        218
+
+  "HOW MUCH?" SAID THE GENTLEMAN SHORTLY                     222
+
+  "THEN I'LL MAKE YOU!" HE SAID, CATCHING HOLD OF OSWALD     232
+
+  A COASTGUARD ORDERED US QUITE HARSHLY                      244
+
+  SURE ENOUGH IT WAS SEA-WATER, AS THE UNAMIABLE ONE SAID
+    WHEN HE HAD TASTED IT                                    259
+
+  "I SAY, BEALIE DEAR, YOU'VE GOT A BOOK UP AT YOUR PLACE"   265
+
+  ALICE BEAT THE DONKEY FROM THE CART, THE REST SHOUTED      272
+
+  "WE'VE GOT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS," SAID NOEL                 280
+
+
+
+
+_THE ROAD TO ROME; OR, THE SILLY STOWAWAY_
+
+
+WE Bastables have only two uncles, and neither of them, are our
+own natural-born relatives. One is a great-uncle, and the other is
+the  uncle from his birth of Albert, who used to live next door to
+us in  the Lewisham Road. When we first got to know him (it was over
+some baked potatoes, and is quite another story) we called him
+Albert-next-door's-Uncle, and then Albert's uncle for short. But
+Albert's uncle and my father joined in taking a jolly house in the
+country, called the Moat House, and we stayed there for our summer
+holidays; and it was there, through an accident to a pilgrim with peas
+in his shoes--that's another story too--that we found Albert's uncle's
+long-lost love; and as she was very old indeed--twenty-six next
+birthday--and he was ever so much older in the vale of years, he had to
+get married almost directly, and it was fixed for about Christmas-time.
+And when our holidays came the whole six of us went down to the Moat
+House with Father and Albert's uncle. We never had a Christmas in the
+country before. It was simply ripping. And the long-lost love--her name
+was Miss Ashleigh, but we were allowed to call her Aunt Margaret even
+before the wedding made it really legal for us to do so--she and her
+jolly clergyman brother used to come over, and sometimes we went to the
+Cedars, where they live, and we had games and charades, and
+hide-and-seek, and Devil in the Dark, which is a game girls pretend to
+like, and very few do really, and crackers and a Christmas-tree for the
+village children, and everything you can jolly well think of.
+
+And all the time, whenever we went to the Cedars, there was all sorts of
+silly fuss going on about the beastly wedding; boxes coming from London
+with hats and jackets in, and wedding presents--all glassy and silvery,
+or else brooches and chains--and clothes sent down from London to choose
+from. I can't think how a lady can want so many petticoats and boots and
+things just because she's going to be married. No man would think of
+getting twenty-four shirts and twenty-four waistcoats, and so on, just
+to be married in.
+
+"It's because they're going to Rome, I think," Alice said, when we
+talked it over before the fire in the kitchen the day Mrs. Pettigrew
+went to see her aunt, and we were allowed to make toffee. "You see, in
+Rome you can only buy Roman clothes, and I think they're all stupid
+bright colours--at least I know the sashes are. You stir now, Oswald.
+My face is all burnt black."
+
+Oswald took the spoon, though it was really not his turn by three; but
+he is one whose nature is so that he cannot make a fuss about little
+things--and he knows he can make toffee.
+
+"Lucky hounds," H.O. said, "to be going to Rome. I wish I was."
+
+"Hounds isn't polite, H.O., dear," Dora said; and H.O. said--
+
+"Well, lucky bargees, then."
+
+"It's the dream of my life to go to Rome," Noel said. Noel is our poet
+brother. "Just think of what the man says in the 'Roman Road.' I wish
+they'd take me."
+
+"They won't," Dicky said. "It costs a most awful lot. I heard Father
+saying so only yesterday."
+
+"It would only be the fare," Noel answered; "and I'd go third, or even
+in a cattle-truck, or a luggage van. And when I got there I could easily
+earn my own living. I'd make ballads and sing them in the streets. The
+Italians would give me lyres--that's the Italian kind of shilling, they
+spell it with an _i_. It shows how poetical they are out there, their
+calling it that."
+
+"But you couldn't make Italian poetry," H.O. said, staring at Noel with
+his mouth open.
+
+"Oh, I don't know so much about that," Noel said. "I could jolly soon
+learn anyway, and just to begin with I'd do it in English. There are
+sure to be some people who would understand. And if they didn't, don't
+you think their warm Southern hearts would be touched to see a pale,
+slender, foreign figure singing plaintive ballads in an unknown tongue?
+I do. Oh! they'd chuck along the lyres fast enough--they're not hard and
+cold like North people. Why, every one here is a brewer, or a baker, or
+a banker, or a butcher, or something dull. Over there they're all
+bandits, or vineyardiners, or play the guitar, or something, and they
+crush the red grapes and dance and laugh in the sun--you know jolly well
+they do."
+
+"This toffee's about done," said Oswald suddenly. "H.O., shut your silly
+mouth and get a cupful of cold water." And then, what with dropping a
+little of the toffee into the water to see if it was ready, and pouring
+some on a plate that wasn't buttered and not being able to get it off
+again when it was cold without breaking the plate, and the warm row
+there was about its being one of the best dinner-service ones, the wild
+romances of Noel's poetical intellect went out of our heads altogether;
+and it was not till later, and when deep in the waters of affliction,
+that they were brought back to us.
+
+Next day H.O. said to Dora, "I want to speak to you all by yourself and
+me." So they went into the secret staircase that creaks and hasn't been
+secret now for countless years; and after that Dora did some white
+sewing she wouldn't let us look at, and H.O. helped her.
+
+[Illustration: DORA DID SOME WHITE SEWING.]
+
+"It's another wedding present, you may depend," Dicky said--"a beastly
+surprise, I shouldn't wonder." And no more was said. The rest of us were
+busy skating on the moat, for it was now freezing hard. Dora never did
+care for skating; she says it hurts her feet.
+
+And now Christmas and Boxing Day passed like a radiating dream, and it
+was the wedding-day. We all had to go to the bride's mother's house
+before the wedding, so as to go to church with the wedding party. The
+girls had always wanted to be somebody's bridesmaids, and now they
+were--in white cloth coats like coachmen, with lots of little capes, and
+white beaver bonnets. They didn't look so bad, though rather as if they
+were in a Christmas card; and their dresses were white silk like
+pocket-handkerchiefs under the long coats. And their shoes had real
+silver buckles our great Indian uncle gave them. H.O. went back just as
+the waggonette was starting, and came out with a big brown-paper parcel.
+We thought it was the secret surprise present Dora had been making, and,
+indeed, when I asked her she nodded. We little recked what it really
+was, or how our young brother was going to shove himself forward once
+again. He _will_ do it. Nothing you say is of any lasting use.
+
+There were a great many people at the wedding--quite crowds. There was
+lots to eat and drink, and though it was all cold, it did not matter,
+because there were blazing fires in every fireplace in the house, and
+the place all decorated with holly and mistletoe and things. Every one
+seemed to enjoy themselves very much, except Albert's uncle and his
+blushing bride; and they looked desperate. Every one said how sweet she
+looked, but Oswald thought she looked as if she didn't like being
+married as much as she expected. She was not at all a blushing bride
+really; only the tip of her nose got pink, because it was rather cold in
+the church. But she is very jolly.
+
+Her reverend but nice brother read the marriage service. He reads better
+than any one I know, but he is not a bit of a prig really, when you come
+to know him.
+
+When the rash act was done Albert's uncle and his bride went home in a
+carriage all by themselves, and then we had the lunch and drank the
+health of the bride in real champagne, though Father said we kids must
+only have just a taste. I'm sure Oswald, for one, did not want any more;
+one taste was quite enough. Champagne is like soda-water with medicine
+in it. The sherry we put sugar in once was much more decent.
+
+Then Miss Ashleigh--I mean Mrs. Albert's uncle--went away and took off
+her white dress and came back looking much warmer. Dora heard the
+housemaid say afterwards that the cook had stopped the bride on the
+stairs with "a basin of hot soup, that would take no denial, because the
+bride, poor dear young thing, not a bite or sup had passed her lips that
+day." We understood then why she had looked so unhappy. But Albert's
+uncle had had a jolly good breakfast--fish and eggs and bacon and three
+goes of marmalade. So it was not hunger made him sad. Perhaps he was
+thinking what a lot of money it cost to be married and go to Rome.
+
+A little before the bride went to change, H.O. got up and reached his
+brown-paper parcel from under the sideboard and sneaked out. We thought
+he might have let us see it given, whatever it was. And Dora said she
+had understood he meant to; but it was his secret.
+
+The bride went away looking quite comfy in a furry cloak, and Albert's
+uncle cheered up at the last and threw off the burden of his cares and
+made a joke. I forget what it was; it wasn't a very good one, but it
+showed he was trying to make the best of things.
+
+Then the Bridal Sufferers drove away, with the luggage on a cart--heaps
+and heaps of it, and we all cheered and threw rice and slippers. Mrs.
+Ashleigh and some other old ladies cried.
+
+And then every one said, "What a pretty wedding!" and began to go. And
+when our waggonette came round we all began to get in. And suddenly
+Father said--
+
+"Where's H.O.?" And we looked round. He was in absence.
+
+"Fetch him along sharp--some of you," Father said; "I don't want to keep
+the horses standing here in the cold all day."
+
+So Oswald and Dicky went to fetch him along. We thought he might have
+wandered back to what was left of the lunch--for he is young and he does
+not always know better. But he was not there, and Oswald did not even
+take a crystallised fruit in passing. He might easily have done this,
+and no one would have minded, so it would not have been wrong. But it
+would have been ungentlemanly. Dicky did not either. H.O. was not there.
+
+We went into the other rooms, even the one the old ladies were crying
+in, but of course we begged their pardons. And at last into the kitchen,
+where the servants were smart with white bows and just sitting down to
+their dinner, and Dicky said--
+
+"I say, cookie love, have you seen H.O.?"
+
+"Don't come here with your imperence!" the cook said, but she was
+pleased with Dicky's unmeaning compliment all the same.
+
+"_I_ see him," said the housemaid. "He was colloguing with the butcher
+in the yard a bit since. He'd got a brown-paper parcel. Perhaps he got a
+lift home."
+
+So we went and told Father, and about the white present in the parcel.
+
+"I expect he was ashamed to give it after all," Oswald said, "so he
+hooked off home with it."
+
+And we got into the wagonette.
+
+"It wasn't a present, though," Dora said; "it was a different kind of
+surprise--but it really is a secret."
+
+Our good Father did not command her to betray her young brother.
+
+But when we got home H.O. wasn't there. Mrs. Pettigrew hadn't seen him,
+and he was nowhere about. Father biked back to the Cedars to see if he'd
+turned up. No. Then all the gentlemen turned out to look for him through
+the length and breadth of the land.
+
+"He's too old to be stolen by gipsies," Alice said.
+
+"And too ugly," said Dicky.
+
+"Oh _don't_!" said both the girls; "and now when he's lost, too!"
+
+We had looked for a long time before Mrs. Pettigrew came in with a
+parcel she said the butcher had left. It was not addressed, but we knew
+it was H.O.'s, because of the label on the paper from the shop where
+Father gets his shirts. Father opened it at once.
+
+Inside the parcel we found H.O.'s boots and braces, his best hat and his
+chest-protector. And Oswald felt as if we had found his skeleton.
+
+"Any row with any of you?" Father asked. But there hadn't been any.
+
+"Was he worried about anything? Done anything wrong, and afraid to own
+up?"
+
+We turned cold, for we knew what he meant. That parcel was so horribly
+like the lady's hat and gloves that she takes off on the seashore and
+leaves with a letter saying it has come to this.
+
+"_No_, _no_, NO, NO!" we all said. "He was perfectly jolly all the
+morning."
+
+Then suddenly Dicky leaned on the table and one of H.O.'s boots toppled
+over, and there was something white inside. It was a letter. H.O. must
+have written it before we left home. It said--
+
+          "DEAR FATHER AND EVERY ONE,--I am going to be a
+          Clown. When I am rich and reveared I will come
+          back rolling.
+
+                          "Your affectionate son,
+                                   "HORACE OCTAVIUS BASTABLE."
+
+"Rolling?" Father said.
+
+"He means rolling in money," Alice said. Oswald noticed that every one
+round the table where H.O.'s boots were dignifiedly respected as they
+lay, was a horrid pale colour, like when the salt is thrown into
+snapdragons.
+
+"Oh dear!" Dora cried, "that was it. He asked me to make him a clown's
+dress and keep it deeply secret. He said he wanted to surprise Aunt
+Margaret and Albert's uncle. And I didn't think it was wrong," said
+Dora, screwing up her face; she then added, "Oh dear, oh dear, oh, oh!"
+and with these concluding remarks she began to howl.
+
+Father thumped her on the back in an absent yet kind way.
+
+"But where's he gone?" he said, not to any one in particular. "I saw the
+butcher; he said H.O. asked him to take a parcel home and went back
+round the Cedars."
+
+Here Dicky coughed and said--
+
+"I didn't think he meant anything, but the day after Noel was talking
+about singing ballads in Rome, and getting poet's lyres given him, H.O.
+did say if Noel had been really keen on the Roman lyres and things he
+could easily have been a stowaway, and gone unknown."
+
+"A stowaway!" said my Father, sitting down suddenly and hard.
+
+"In Aunt Margaret's big dress basket--the one she let him hide in when
+we had hide-and-seek there. He talked a lot about it after Noel had said
+that about the lyres--and the Italians being so poetical, you know. You
+remember that day we had toffee."
+
+My Father is prompt and decisive in action, so is his eldest son.
+
+"I'm off to the Cedars," he said.
+
+"Do let me come, Father," said the decisive son. "You may want to send a
+message."
+
+So in a moment Father was on his bike and Oswald on the step--a
+dangerous but delightful spot--and off to the Cedars.
+
+"Have your teas; and _don't_ any more of you get lost, and don't sit up
+if we're late," Father howled to them as we rushed away. How glad then
+the thoughtful Oswald was that he was the eldest. It was very cold in
+the dusk on the bicycle, but Oswald did not complain.
+
+At the Cedars my father explained in a few manly but well-chosen words,
+and the apartment of the dear departed bride was searched.
+
+"Because," said my father, "if H.O. really was little ass enough to get
+into that basket, he must have turned out something to make room for
+himself."
+
+Sure enough, when they came to look, there was a great bundle rolled in
+a sheet under the bed--all lace things and petticoats and ribbons and
+dressing-gowns and ladies' flummery.
+
+"If you will put the things in something else, I'll catch the express to
+Dover and take it with me," Father said to Mrs. Ashleigh; and while she
+packed the things he explained to some of the crying old ladies who had
+been unable to leave off, how sorry he was that a son of his--but you
+know the sort of thing.
+
+Oswald said: "Father, I wish you'd let me come too. I won't be a bit of
+trouble."
+
+Perhaps it was partly because my Father didn't want to let me walk home
+in the dark, and he didn't want to worry the Ashleighs any more by
+asking them to send me home. He said this was why, but I hope it was his
+loving wish to have his prompt son, so like himself in his decisiveness,
+with him.
+
+We went.
+
+It was an anxious journey. We knew how far from pleased the bride would
+be to find no dressing-gowns and ribbons, but only H.O. crying and cross
+and dirty, as likely as not, when she opened the basket at the hotel at
+Dover.
+
+Father smoked to pass the time, but Oswald had not so much as a
+peppermint or a bit of Spanish liquorice to help him through the
+journey. Yet he bore up.
+
+When we got out at Dover there were Mr. and Mrs. Albert's uncle on the
+platform.
+
+"Hullo," said Albert's uncle. "What's up? Nothing wrong at home, I
+hope."
+
+"We've only lost H.O.," said my father. "You don't happen to have him
+with you?"
+
+"No; but you're joking," said the bride. "We've lost a dress-basket."
+
+_Lost a dress-basket!_ The words struck us dumb, but my father recovered
+speech and explained. The bride was very glad when we said we had
+brought her ribbons and things, but we stood in anxious gloom, for now
+H.O. was indeed lost. The dress-basket might be on its way to Liverpool,
+or rocking on the Channel, and H.O. might never be found again. Oswald
+did not say these things. It is best to hold your jaw when you want to
+see a thing out, and are liable to be sent to bed at a strange hotel if
+any one happens to remember you.
+
+Then suddenly the station master came with a telegram.
+
+It said: "A dress-basket without label at Cannon Street detained for
+identification suspicious sounds from inside detain inquirers dynamite
+machine suspected."
+
+He did not show us this till my Father had told him about H.O., which it
+took some time for him to believe, and then he did and laughed, and said
+he would wire them to get the dynamite machine to speak, and if so, to
+take it out and keep it till its Father called for it.
+
+So back we went to London, with hearts a little lighter, but not gay,
+for we were a very long time from the last things we had had to eat. And
+Oswald was almost sorry he had not taken those crystallised fruits.
+
+It was quite late when we got to Cannon Street, and we went straight
+into the cloakroom, and there was the man in charge, a very jolly chap,
+sitting on a stool. And there was H.O., the guilty stowaway, dressed in
+a red-and-white clown's dress, very dusty, and his face as dirty as I
+have ever seen it, sitting on some one else's tin box, with his feet on
+some body else's portmanteau, eating bread and cheese, and drinking ale
+out of a can.
+
+My Father claimed him at once, and Oswald identified the basket. It was
+very large. There was a tray on the top with hats in it, and H.O. had
+this on top of him. We all went to bed in Cannon Street Hotel. My Father
+said nothing to H.O. that night. When we were in bed I tried to get H.O.
+to tell me all about it, but he was too sleepy and cross. It was the
+beer and the knocking about in the basket, I suppose. Next day we went
+back to the Moat House, where the raving anxiousness of the others had
+been cooled the night before by a telegram from Dover.
+
+My Father said he would speak to H.O. in the evening. It is very horrid
+not to be spoken to at once and get it over. But H.O. certainly deserved
+something.
+
+It is hard to tell this tale, because so much of it happened all at once
+but at different places. But this is what H.O. said to us about it. He
+said--
+
+"Don't bother--let me alone."
+
+But we were all kind and gentle, and at last we got it out of him what
+had happened. He doesn't tell a story right from the beginning like
+Oswald and some of the others do, but from his disjunctured words the
+author has made the following narration. This is called editing, I
+believe.
+
+"It was all Noel's fault," H.O. said; "what did he want to go jawing
+about Rome for?--and a clown's as good as a beastly poet, anyhow! You
+remember that day we made toffee? Well, I thought of it then."
+
+"You didn't tell us."
+
+"Yes, I did. I half told Dicky. He never said don't, or you'd better
+not, or gave me any good advice or anything. It's his fault as much as
+mine. Father ought to speak to him to-night the same as me--and Noel,
+too."
+
+We bore with him just then because we wanted to hear the story. And we
+made him go on.
+
+"Well--so I thought if Noel's a cowardy custard I'm not--and I wasn't
+afraid of being in the basket, though it was quite dark till I cut the
+air-holes with my knife in the railway van. I think I cut the string off
+the label. It fell off afterwards, and I saw it through the hole, but of
+course I couldn't say anything. I thought they'd look after their silly
+luggage better than that. It was all their fault I was lost."
+
+"Tell us how you did it, H.O. dear," Dora said; "never mind about it
+being everybody else's fault."
+
+"It's yours as much as any one's, if you come to that," H.O. said. "You
+made me the clown dress when I asked you. You never said a word about
+not. So there!"
+
+"Oh, H.O., you _are_ unkind!" Dora said. "You know you said it was for a
+surprise for the bridal pair."
+
+"So it would have been, if they'd found me at Rome, and I'd popped up
+like what I meant to--like a jack-in-the-box--and said, 'Here we are
+again!' in my clown's clothes, at them. But it's all spoiled, and
+father's going to speak to me this evening." H.O. sniffed every time he
+stopped speaking. But we did not correct him then. We wanted to hear
+about everything.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me straight out what you were going to do?" Dicky
+asked.
+
+"Because you'd jolly well have shut me up. You always do if I want to do
+anything you haven't thought of yourself."
+
+"What did you take with you, H.O.?" asked Alice in a hurry, for H.O. was
+now sniffing far beyond a whisper.
+
+"Oh, I'd saved a lot of grub, only I forgot it at the last. It's under
+the chest of drawers in our room. And I had my knife--and I changed into
+the clown's dress in the cupboard at the Ashleighs--over my own things
+because I thought it would be cold. And then I emptied the rotten girl's
+clothes out and hid them--and the top-hatted tray I just put it on a
+chair near, and I got into the basket, and I lifted the tray up over my
+head and sat down and fitted it down over me--it's got webbing bars, you
+know, across it. And none of you would ever have thought of it, let
+alone doing it."
+
+"I should hope not," Dora said, but H.O. went on unhearing.
+
+"I began to think perhaps I wished I hadn't directly they strapped up
+the basket. It was beastly hot and stuffy--I had to cut an air-hole in
+the cart, and I cut my thumb; it was so bumpety. And they threw me about
+as if I was coals--and wrong way up as often as not. And the train was
+awful wobbly, and I felt so sick, and if I'd had the grub I couldn't
+have eaten it. I had a bottle of water. And that was all right till I
+dropped the cork, and I couldn't find it in the dark till the water got
+upset, and then I found the cork that minute.
+
+"And when they dumped the basket on to the platform I was so glad to sit
+still a minute without being jogged I nearly went to sleep. And then I
+looked out, and the label was off, and lying close by. And then some one
+gave the basket a kick--big brute, I'd like to kick him!--and said,
+'What's this here?' And I daresay I did squeak--like a rabbit-noise, you
+know--and then some one said, 'Sounds like live-stock, don't it? No
+label.' And he was standing on the label all the time. I saw the string
+sticking out under his nasty boot. And then they trundled me off
+somewhere, on a wheelbarrow it felt like, and dumped me down again in a
+dark place--and I couldn't see anything more."
+
+"I wonder," said the thoughtful Oswald, "what made them think you were a
+dynamite machine?"
+
+"Oh, that was awful!" H.O. said. "It was my watch. I wound it up, just
+for something to do. You know the row it makes since it was broken, and
+I heard some one say, 'Shish! what's that?' and then, 'Sounds like an
+infernal machine'--don't go shoving me, Dora, it was him said it, not
+me--and then, 'If I was the inspector I'd dump it down in the river, so
+I would. Any way, let's shift it.' But the other said, 'Let well alone,'
+so I wasn't dumped any more. And they fetched another man, and there was
+a heap of jaw, and I heard them say 'Police,' so I let them have it."
+
+[Illustration: THEY LAUGHED EVER SO.]
+
+"What _did_ you do?"
+
+"Oh, I just kicked about in the basket, and I heard them all start off,
+and I shouted, 'Hi, here! let me out, can't you!'"
+
+"And did they?"
+
+"Yes, but not for ever so long, I had to jaw at them through the cracks
+of the basket. And when they opened it there was quite a crowd, and they
+laughed ever so, and gave me bread and cheese, and said I was a plucky
+youngster--and I am, and I do wish Father wouldn't put things off so. He
+might just as well have spoken to me this morning. And I can't see I've
+done anything so awful--and it's all your faults for not looking after
+me. Aren't I your little brother? and it's your duty to see I do what's
+right. You've told me so often enough."
+
+These last words checked the severe reprimand trembling on the hitherto
+patient Oswald's lips. And then H.O. began to cry, and Dora nursed him,
+though generally he is much too big for this and knows it. And he went
+to sleep on her lap, and said he didn't want any dinner.
+
+When it came to Father's speaking to H.O. that evening it never came
+off, because H.O. was ill in bed, not sham, you know, but real,
+send-for-the-doctor ill. The doctor said it was fever from chill and
+excitement, but I think myself it was very likely the things he ate at
+lunch, and the shaking up, and then the bread and cheese, and the beer
+out of a can.
+
+He was ill a week. When he was better, not much was said. My Father, who
+is the justest man in England, said the boy had been punished
+enough--and so he had, for he missed going to the pantomime, and to
+"Shock-Headed Peter" at the Garrick Theatre, which is far and away the
+best play that ever was done, and quite different from any other acting
+I ever saw. They are exactly like real boys; I think they must have been
+reading about us. And he had to take a lot of the filthiest medicine I
+ever tasted. I wonder if Father told the doctor to make it nasty on
+purpose? A woman would have directly, but gentlemen are not generally so
+sly. Any way, you live and learn. None of us would now ever consent to
+be a stowaway, no matter who wanted us to, and I don't think H.O.'s very
+likely to do it again.
+
+The only _meant_ punishment he had was seeing the clown's dress burnt
+before his eyes by Father. He had bought it all with his own saved-up
+money, red trimmings and all.
+
+Of course, when he got well we soon taught him not to say again that it
+was any of our faults. As he owned himself, he _is_ our little brother,
+and we are not going to stand that kind of cheek from _him_.
+
+
+
+
+_THE CONSCIENCE-PUDDING_
+
+
+IT was Christmas, nearly a year after Mother died. I cannot write about
+Mother--but I will just say one thing. If she had only been away for a
+little while, and not for always, we shouldn't have been so keen on
+having a Christmas. I didn't understand this then, but I am much older
+now, and I think it was just because everything was so different and
+horrid we felt we _must_ do something; and perhaps we were not
+particular enough _what_. Things make you much more unhappy when you
+loaf about than when you are doing events.
+
+Father had to go away just about Christmas. He had heard that his wicked
+partner, who ran away with his money, was in France, and he thought he
+could catch him, but really he was in Spain, where catching criminals is
+never practised. We did not know this till afterwards.
+
+Before Father went away he took Dora and Oswald into his study, and
+said--
+
+"I'm awfully sorry I've got to go away, but it is very serious business,
+and I must go. You'll be good while I'm away, kiddies, won't you?"
+
+We promised faithfully. Then he said--
+
+"There are reasons--you wouldn't understand if I tried to tell you--but
+you can't have much of a Christmas this year. But I've told Matilda to
+make you a good plain pudding. Perhaps next Christmas will be brighter."
+
+(It was; for the next Christmas saw us the affluent nephews and nieces
+of an Indian uncle--but that is quite another story, as good old Kipling
+says.)
+
+When Father had been seen off at Lewisham Station with his bags, and a
+plaid rug in a strap, we came home again, and it was horrid. There were
+papers and things littered all over his room where he had packed. We
+tidied the room up--it was the only thing we could do for him. It was
+Dicky who accidentally broke his shaving-glass, and H.O. made a paper
+boat out of a letter we found out afterwards Father particularly wanted
+to keep. This took us some time, and when we went into the nursery the
+fire was black out, and we could not get it alight again, even with the
+whole _Daily Chronicle_. Matilda, who was our general then, was out, as
+well as the fire, so we went and sat in the kitchen. There is always a
+good fire in kitchens. The kitchen hearthrug was not nice to sit on, so
+we spread newspapers on it.
+
+It was sitting in the kitchen, I think, that brought to our minds my
+Father's parting words--about the pudding, I mean.
+
+Oswald said, "Father said we couldn't have much of a Christmas for
+secret reasons, and he said he had told Matilda to make us a plain
+pudding."
+
+The plain pudding instantly cast its shadow over the deepening gloom of
+our young minds.
+
+"I wonder _how_ plain she'll make it?" Dicky said.
+
+"As plain as plain, you may depend," said Oswald. "A
+here-am-I-where-are-you pudding--that's her sort."
+
+The others groaned, and we gathered closer round the fire till the
+newspapers rustled madly.
+
+"I believe I could make a pudding that _wasn't_ plain, if I tried,"
+Alice said. "Why shouldn't we?"
+
+"No chink," said Oswald, with brief sadness.
+
+"How much would it cost?" Noel asked, and added that Dora had twopence
+and H.O. had a French halfpenny.
+
+Dora got the cookery-book out of the dresser drawer, where it lay
+doubled up among clothes-pegs, dirty dusters, scallop shells, string,
+penny novelettes, and the dining-room corkscrew. The general we had
+then--it seemed as if she did all the cooking on the cookery-book
+instead of on the baking-board, there were traces of so many bygone
+meals upon its pages.
+
+"It doesn't say Christmas pudding at all," said Dora.
+
+"Try plum," the resourceful Oswald instantly counselled.
+
+Dora turned the greasy pages anxiously.
+
+"'Plum-pudding, 518.
+
+"'A rich, with flour, 517.
+
+"'Christmas, 517.
+
+"'Cold brandy sauce for, 241.'
+
+"We shouldn't care about that, so it's no use looking.
+
+"'Good without eggs, 518.
+
+"'Plain, 518.'
+
+"We don't want _that_ anyhow. 'Christmas, 517'--that's the one."
+
+It took her a long time to find the page. Oswald got a shovel of coals
+and made up the fire. It blazed up like the devouring elephant the
+_Daily Telegraph_ always calls it. Then Dora read--
+
+"'Christmas plum-pudding. Time six hours.'"
+
+"To eat it in?" said H.O.
+
+"No, silly! to make it."
+
+"Forge ahead, Dora," Dicky replied.
+
+Dora went on--
+
+"'2072. One pound and a half of raisins; half a pound of currants; three
+quarters of a pound of breadcrumbs; half a pound of flour;
+three-quarters of a pound of beef suet; nine eggs; one wine glassful of
+brandy; half a pound of citron and orange peel; half a nutmeg; and a
+little ground ginger.' I wonder _how_ little ground ginger."
+
+"A teacupful would be enough, I think," Alice said; "we must not be
+extravagant."
+
+"We haven't got anything yet to be extravagant _with_," said Oswald, who
+had toothache that day. "What would you do with the things if you'd got
+them?"
+
+"You'd 'chop the suet as fine as possible'--I wonder how fine that is?"
+replied Dora and the book together--"'and mix it with the breadcrumbs
+and flour; add the currants washed and dried.'"
+
+"Not starched, then," said Alice.
+
+"'The citron and orange peel cut into thin slices'--I wonder what they
+call thin? Matilda's thin bread-and-butter is quite different from what
+I mean by it--'and the raisins stoned and divided.' How many heaps would
+you divide them into?"
+
+"Seven, I suppose," said Alice; "one for each person and one for the
+pot--I mean pudding."
+
+"'Mix it all well together with the grated nutmeg and ginger. Then stir
+in nine eggs well beaten, and the brandy'--we'll leave that out, I
+think--'and again mix it thoroughly together that every ingredient may
+be moistened; put it into a buttered mould, tie over tightly, and boil
+for six hours. Serve it ornamented with holly and brandy poured over
+it.'"
+
+"I should think holly and brandy poured over it would be simply
+beastly," said Dicky.
+
+"I expect the book knows. I daresay holly and water would do as well
+though. 'This pudding may be made a month before'--it's no use reading
+about that though, because we've only got four days to Christmas."
+
+"It's no use reading about any of it," said Oswald, with thoughtful
+repeatedness, "because we haven't got the things, and we haven't got the
+coin to get them."
+
+"We might get the tin somehow," said Dicky.
+
+"There must be lots of kind people who would subscribe to a Christmas
+pudding for poor children who hadn't any," Noel said.
+
+"Well, I'm going skating at Penn's," said Oswald. "It's no use thinking
+about puddings. We must put up with it plain."
+
+So he went, and Dicky went with him.
+
+When they returned to their home in the evening the fire had been
+lighted again in the nursery, and the others were just having tea. We
+toasted our bread-and-butter on the bare side, and it gets a little warm
+among the butter. This is called French toast. "I like English better,
+but it is more expensive," Alice said--
+
+"Matilda is in a frightful rage about your putting those coals on the
+kitchen fire, Oswald. She says we shan't have enough to last over
+Christmas as it is. And Father gave her a talking to before he went
+about them--asked her if she ate them, she says--but I don't believe he
+did. Anyway, she's locked the coal-cellar door, and she's got the key in
+her pocket. I don't see how we can boil the pudding."
+
+"What pudding?" said Oswald dreamily. He was thinking of a chap he had
+seen at Penn's who had cut the date 1899 on the ice with four strokes.
+
+"_The_ pudding," Alice said. "Oh, we've had such a time, Oswald! First
+Dora and I went to the shops to find out exactly what the pudding would
+cost--it's only two and elevenpence halfpenny, counting in the holly."
+
+"It's no good," Oswald repeated; he is very patient and will say the
+same thing any number of times. "It's no good. You know we've got no
+tin."
+
+"Ah," said Alice, "but Noel and I went out, and we called at some of the
+houses in Granville Park and Dartmouth Hill--and we got a lot of
+sixpences and shillings, besides pennies, and one old gentleman gave us
+half-a-crown. He was so nice. Quite bald, with a knitted red and blue
+waistcoat. We've got eight-and-sevenpence."
+
+Oswald did not feel quite sure Father would like us to go asking for
+shillings and sixpences, or even half-crowns from strangers, but he did
+not say so. The money had been asked for and got, and it couldn't be
+helped--and perhaps he wanted the pudding--I am not able to remember
+exactly why he did not speak up and say, "This is wrong," but anyway he
+didn't.
+
+Alice and Dora went out and bought the things next morning. They bought
+double quantities, so that it came to five shillings and elevenpence,
+and was enough to make a noble pudding. There was a lot of holly left
+over for decorations. We used very little for the sauce. The money that
+was left we spent very anxiously in other things to eat, such as dates
+and figs and toffee.
+
+We did not tell Matilda about it. She was a red-haired girl, and apt to
+turn shirty at the least thing.
+
+Concealed under our jackets and overcoats we carried the parcels up to
+the nursery, and hid them in the treasure-chest we had there. It was the
+bureau drawer. It was locked up afterwards because the treacle got all
+over the green baize and the little drawers inside it while we were
+waiting to begin to make the pudding. It was the grocer told us we ought
+to put treacle in the pudding, and also about not so much ginger as a
+teacupful.
+
+When Matilda had begun to pretend to scrub the floor (she pretended this
+three times a week so as to have an excuse not to let us in the kitchen,
+but I know she used to read novelettes most of the time, because Alice
+and I had a squint through the window more than once), we barricaded the
+nursery door and set to work. We were very careful to be quite clean. We
+washed our hands as well as the currants. I have sometimes thought we
+did not get all the soap off the currants. The pudding smelt like a
+washing-day when the time came to cut it open. And we washed a corner of
+the table to chop the suet on. Chopping suet looks easy till you try.
+
+Father's machine he weighs letters with did to weigh out the things. We
+did this very carefully, in case the grocer had not done so. Everything
+was right except the raisins. H.O. had carried them home. He was very
+young then, and there was a hole in the corner of the paper bag and his
+mouth was sticky.
+
+Lots of people have been hanged to a gibbet in chains on evidence no
+worse than that, and we told H.O. so till he cried. This was good for
+him. It was not unkindness to H.O., but part of our duty.
+
+Chopping suet as fine as possible is much harder than any one would
+think, as I said before. So is crumbling bread--especially if your loaf
+is new, like ours was. When we had done them the breadcrumbs and the
+suet were both very large and lumpy, and of a dingy gray colour,
+something like pale slate pencil.
+
+They looked a better colour when we had mixed them with the flour. The
+girls had washed the currants with Brown Windsor soap and the sponge.
+Some of the currants got inside the sponge and kept coming out in the
+bath for days afterwards. I see now that this was not quite nice. We cut
+the candied peel as thin as we wish people would cut our
+bread-and-butter. We tried to take the stones out of the raisins, but
+they were too sticky, so we just divided them up in seven lots. Then we
+mixed the other things in the wash-hand basin from the spare bedroom
+that was always spare. We each put in our own lot of raisins and turned
+it all into a pudding-basin, and tied it up in one of Alice's pinafores,
+which was the nearest thing to a proper pudding-cloth we could find--at
+any rate clean. What was left sticking to the wash-hand basin did not
+taste so bad.
+
+"It's a little bit soapy," Alice said, "but perhaps that will boil out;
+like stains in table-cloths."
+
+It was a difficult question how to boil the pudding. Matilda proved
+furious when asked to let us, just because some one had happened to
+knock her hat off the scullery door and Pincher had got it and done for
+it. However, part of the embassy nicked a saucepan while the others were
+being told what Matilda thought about the hat, and we got hot water out
+of the bath-room and made it boil over our nursery fire. We put the
+pudding in--it was now getting on towards the hour of tea--and let it
+boil. With some exceptions--owing to the fire going down, and Matilda
+not hurrying up with coals--it boiled for an hour and a quarter. Then
+Matilda came suddenly in and said, "I'm not going to have you messing
+about in here with my saucepans"; and she tried to take it off the fire.
+You will see that we couldn't stand this; it was not likely. I do not
+remember who it was that told her to mind her own business, and I think
+I have forgotten who caught hold of her first to make her chuck it. I am
+sure no needless violence was used. Anyway, while the struggle
+progressed, Alice and Dora took the saucepan away and put it in the
+boot-cupboard under the stairs and put the key in their pocket.
+
+This sharp encounter made every one very hot and cross. We got over it
+before Matilda did, but we brought her round before bedtime. Quarrels
+should always be made up before bedtime. It says so in the Bible. If
+this simple rule was followed there would not be so many wars and
+martyrs and law suits and inquisitions and bloody deaths at the stake.
+
+All the house was still. The gas was out all over the house except on
+the first landing, when several darkly-shrouded figures might have been
+observed creeping downstairs to the kitchen.
+
+On the way, with superior precaution, we got out our saucepan. The
+kitchen fire was red, but low; the coal-cellar was locked, and there was
+nothing in the scuttle but a little coal-dust and the piece of brown
+paper that is put in to keep the coals from tumbling out through the
+bottom where the hole is. We put the saucepan on the fire and plied it
+with fuel--two _Chronicles_, a _Telegraph_, and two _Family Herald_
+novelettes were burned in vain. I am almost sure the pudding did not
+boil at all that night.
+
+"Never mind," Alice said. "We can each nick a piece of coal every time
+we go into the kitchen to-morrow."
+
+This daring scheme was faithfully performed, and by night we had nearly
+half a waste-paper basket of coal, coke, and cinders. And in the depth
+of night once more we might have been observed, this time with our
+collier-like waste-paper basket in our guarded hands.
+
+There was more fire left in the grate that night, and we fed it with the
+fuel we had collected. This time the fire blazed up, and the pudding
+boiled like mad. This was the time it boiled two hours--at least I think
+it was about that, but we dropped asleep on the kitchen tables and
+dresser. You dare not be lowly in the night in the kitchen, because of
+the beetles. We were aroused by a horrible smell. It was the
+pudding-cloth burning. All the water had secretly boiled itself away. We
+filled it up at once with cold, and the saucepan cracked. So we cleaned
+it and put it back on the shelf and took another and went to bed. You
+see what a lot of trouble we had over the pudding. Every evening till
+Christmas, which had now become only the day after to-morrow, we sneaked
+down in the inky midnight and boiled that pudding for as long as it
+would.
+
+On Christmas morning we chopped the holly for the sauce, but we put hot
+water (instead of brandy) and moist sugar. Some of them said it was not
+so bad. Oswald was not one of these.
+
+Then came the moment when the plain pudding Father had ordered smoked
+upon the board. Matilda brought it in and went away at once. She had a
+cousin out of Woolwich Arsenal to see her that day, I remember. Those
+far-off days are quite distinct in memory's recollection still.
+
+Then we got out our own pudding from its hiding-place and gave it one
+last hurried boil--only seven minutes, because of the general impatience
+which Oswald and Dora could not cope with.
+
+We had found means to secrete a dish, and we now tried to dish the
+pudding up, but it stuck to the basin, and had to be dislodged with the
+chisel. The pudding was horribly pale. We poured the holly sauce over
+it, and Dora took up the knife and was just cutting it when a few simple
+words from H.O. turned us from happy and triumphing cookery artists to
+persons in despair.
+
+He said: "How pleased all those kind ladies and gentlemen would be if
+they knew _we_ were the poor children they gave the shillings and
+sixpences and things for!"
+
+We all said, "_What?_" It was no moment for politeness.
+
+"I say," H.O. said, "they'd be glad if they knew it was us was enjoying
+the pudding, and not dirty little, really poor children."
+
+"You should say 'you were,' not 'you was,'" said Dora, but it was as in
+a dream and only from habit.
+
+"Do you mean to say"--Oswald spoke firmly, yet not angrily--"that you
+and Alice went and begged for money for poor children, and then _kept_
+it?"
+
+"We didn't keep it," said H.O., "we spent it."
+
+"We've kept the _things_, you little duffer!" said Dicky, looking at the
+pudding sitting alone and uncared for on its dish. "You begged for money
+for poor children, and then _kept_ it. It's stealing, that's what it is.
+I don't say so much about you--you're only a silly kid--but Alice knew
+better. Why did you do it?"
+
+He turned to Alice, but she was now too deep in tears to get a word out.
+
+H.O. looked a bit frightened, but he answered the question. We have
+taught him this. He said--
+
+"I thought they'd give us more if I said poor children than if I said
+just us."
+
+"_That's_ cheating," said Dicky--"downright beastly, mean, low
+cheating."
+
+"I'm not," said H.O.; "and you're another." Then he began to cry too. I
+do not know how the others felt, but I understand from Oswald that he
+felt that now the honour of the house of Bastable had been stamped on
+in the dust, and it didn't matter what happened. He looked at the
+beastly holly that had been left over from the sauce and was stuck up
+over the pictures. It now appeared hollow and disgusting, though it had
+got quite a lot of berries, and some of it was the varied kind--green
+and white. The figs and dates and toffee were set out in the doll's
+dinner service. The very sight of it all made Oswald blush sickly. He
+owns he would have liked to cuff H.O., and, if he did for a moment wish
+to shake Alice, the author, for one, can make allowances.
+
+Now Alice choked and spluttered, and wiped her eyes fiercely, and said,
+"It's no use ragging H.O. It's my fault. I'm older than he is."
+
+H.O. said, "It couldn't be Alice's fault. I don't see as it was wrong."
+
+"That, not as," murmured Dora, putting her arm round the sinner who had
+brought this degrading blight upon our family tree, but such is girls'
+undetermined and affectionate silliness. "Tell sister all about it, H.O.
+dear. Why couldn't it be Alice's fault?"
+
+H.O. cuddled up to Dora and said snufflingly in his nose--
+
+"Because she hadn't got nothing to do with it. I collected it all. She
+never went into one of the houses. She didn't want to."
+
+"And then took all the credit of getting the money," said Dicky
+savagely.
+
+Oswald said, "Not much _credit_," in scornful tones.
+
+"Oh, you are _beastly_, the whole lot of you, except Dora!" Alice said,
+stamping her foot in rage and despair. "I tore my frock on a nail going
+out, and I didn't want to go back, and I got H.O. to go to the houses
+alone, and I waited for him outside. And I asked him not to say anything
+because I didn't want Dora to know about the frock--it's my best. And I
+don't know what he said inside. He never told me. But I'll bet anything
+he didn't _mean_ to cheat."
+
+"You _said_ lots of kind people would be ready to give money to get
+pudding for poor children. So I asked them to."
+
+Oswald, with his strong right hand, waved a wave of passing things over.
+
+"We'll talk about that another time," he said; "just now we've got
+weightier things to deal with."
+
+He pointed to the pudding, which had grown cold during the conversation
+to which I have alluded. H.O. stopped crying, but Alice went on with it.
+Oswald now said--
+
+"We're a base and outcast family. Until that pudding's out of the house
+we shan't be able to look any one in the face. We must see that that
+pudding goes to poor children--not grisling, grumpy, whiney-piney,
+pretending poor children--but real poor ones, just as poor as they can
+stick."
+
+"And the figs too--and the dates," said Noel, with regretting tones.
+
+"Every fig," said Dicky sternly. "Oswald is quite right."
+
+This honourable resolution made us feel a bit better. We hastily put on
+our best things, and washed ourselves a bit, and hurried out to find
+some really poor people to give the pudding to. We cut it in slices
+ready, and put it in a basket with the figs and dates and toffee. We
+would not let H.O. come with us at first because he wanted to. And Alice
+would not come because of him. So at last we had to let him. The
+excitement of tearing into your best things heals the hurt that wounded
+honour feels, as the poetry writer said--or at any rate it makes the
+hurt feel better.
+
+We went out into the streets. They were pretty quiet--nearly everybody
+was eating its Christmas dessert. But presently we met a woman in an
+apron. Oswald said very politely--
+
+"Please, are you a poor person?" And she told us to get along with us.
+
+The next we met was a shabby man with a hole in his left boot.
+
+Again Oswald said, "Please, are you a poor person, and have you any poor
+little children?"
+
+The man told us not to come any of our games with him, or we should
+laugh on the wrong side of our faces. We went on sadly. We had no heart
+to stop and explain to him that we had no games to come.
+
+The next was a young man near the Obelisk. Dora tried this time.
+
+She said, "Oh, if you please we've got some Christmas pudding in this
+basket, and if you're a poor person you can have some."
+
+"Poor as Job," said the young man in a hoarse voice, and he had to come
+up out of a red comforter to say it.
+
+We gave him a slice of the pudding, and he bit into it without thanks or
+delay. The next minute he had thrown the pudding slap in Dora's face,
+and was clutching Dicky by the collar.
+
+"Blime if I don't chuck ye in the river, the whole bloomin' lot of you!"
+he exclaimed.
+
+The girls screamed, the boys shouted, and though Oswald threw himself on
+the insulter of his sister with all his manly vigour, yet but for a
+friend of Oswald's, who is in the police, passing at that instant, the
+author shudders to think what might have happened, for he was a strong
+young man, and Oswald is not yet come to his full strength, and the
+Quaggy runs all too near.
+
+Our policeman led our assailant aside, and we waited anxiously, as he
+told us to. After long uncertain moments the young man in the comforter
+loafed off grumbling, and our policeman turned to us.
+
+"Said you give him a dollop o' pudding, and it tasted of soap and
+hair-oil."
+
+I suppose the hair-oil must have been the Brown Windsoriness of the soap
+coming out. We were sorry, but it was still our duty to get rid of the
+pudding. The Quaggy was handy, it is true, but when you have collected
+money to feed poor children and spent it on pudding it is not right to
+throw that pudding in the river. People do not subscribe shillings and
+sixpences and half-crowns to feed a hungry flood with Christmas pudding.
+
+Yet we shrank from asking any more people whether they were poor
+persons, or about their families, and still more from offering the
+pudding to chance people who might bite into it and taste the soap
+before we had time to get away.
+
+It was Alice, the most paralysed with disgrace of all of us, who thought
+of the best idea.
+
+She said, "Let's take it to the workhouse. At any rate they're all poor
+people there, and they mayn't go out without leave, so they can't run
+after us to do anything to us after the pudding. No one would give them
+leave to go out to pursue people who had brought them pudding, and wreck
+vengeance on them, and at any rate we shall get rid of the
+conscience-pudding--it's a sort of conscience-money, you know--only it
+isn't money but pudding."
+
+The workhouse is a good way, but we stuck to it, though very cold, and
+hungrier than we thought possible when we started, for we had been so
+agitated we had not even stayed to eat the plain pudding our good Father
+had so kindly and thoughtfully ordered for our Christmas dinner.
+
+The big bell at the workhouse made a man open the door to us, when we
+rang it. Oswald said (and he spoke because he is next eldest to Dora,
+and she had had jolly well enough of saying anything about pudding)--he
+said--
+
+"Please we've brought some pudding for the poor people."
+
+He looked us up and down, and he looked at our basket, then he said:
+"You'd better see the Matron."
+
+We waited in a hall, feeling more and more uncomfy, and less and less
+like Christmas. We were very cold indeed, especially our hands and our
+noses. And we felt less and less able to face the Matron if she was
+horrid, and one of us at least wished we had chosen the Quaggy for the
+pudding's long home, and made it up to the robbed poor in some other way
+afterwards.
+
+Just as Alice was saying earnestly in the burning cold ear of Oswald,
+"Let's put down the basket and make a bolt for it. Oh, Oswald, _let's_!"
+a lady came along the passage. She was very upright, and she had eyes
+that went through you like blue gimlets. I should not like to be obliged
+to thwart that lady if she had any design, and mine was opposite. I am
+glad this is not likely to occur.
+
+She said, "What's all this about a pudding?"
+
+H.O. said at once, before we could stop him, "They say I've stolen the
+pudding, so we've brought it here for the poor people."
+
+"No, we didn't!" "That wasn't why!" "The money was given!" "It was
+meant for the poor!" "Shut up, H.O.!" said the rest of us all at once.
+
+Then there was an awful silence. The lady gimleted us again one by one
+with her blue eyes.
+
+Then she said: "Come into my room. You all look frozen."
+
+She took us into a very jolly room with velvet curtains and a big fire,
+and the gas lighted, because now it was almost dark, even out of doors.
+She gave us chairs, and Oswald felt as if his was a dock, he felt so
+criminal, and the lady looked so Judgular.
+
+Then she took the arm-chair by the fire herself, and said, "Who's the
+eldest?"
+
+"I am," said Dora, looking more like a frightened white rabbit than I've
+ever seen her.
+
+"Then tell me all about it."
+
+Dora looked at Alice and began to cry. That slab of pudding in the face
+had totally unnerved the gentle girl. Alice's eyes were red, and her
+face was puffy with crying; but she spoke up for Dora and said--
+
+"Oh, please let Oswald tell. Dora can't. She's tired with the long walk.
+And a young man threw a piece of it in her face, and----"
+
+The lady nodded and Oswald began. He told the story from the very
+beginning, as he has always been taught to, though he hated to lay bare
+the family honour's wound before a stranger, however judgelike and
+gimlet-eyed. He told all--not concealing the pudding-throwing, nor what
+the young man said about soap.
+
+"So," he ended, "we want to give the conscience-pudding to you. It's
+like conscience-money--you know what that is, don't you? But if you
+really think it is soapy and not just the young man's horridness,
+perhaps you'd better not let them eat it. But the figs and things are
+all right."
+
+When he had done the lady said, for most of us were crying more or
+less--
+
+"Come, cheer up! It's Christmas-time, and he's very little--your
+brother, I mean. And I think the rest of you seem pretty well able to
+take care of the honour of the family. I'll take the conscience-pudding
+off your minds. Where are you going now?"
+
+"Home, I suppose," Oswald said. And he thought how nasty and dark and
+dull it would be. The fire out most likely and Father away.
+
+"And your Father's not at home, you say," the blue-gimlet lady went on.
+"What do you say to having tea with me, and then seeing the
+entertainment we have got up for our old people?"
+
+Then the lady smiled and the blue gimlets looked quite merry.
+
+The room was so warm and comfortable and the invitation was the last
+thing we expected. It was jolly of her, I do think.
+
+No one thought quite at first of saying how pleased we should be to
+accept her kind invitation. Instead we all just said "Oh!" but in a tone
+which must have told her we meant "Yes, please," very deeply.
+
+Oswald (this has more than once happened) was the first to restore his
+manners. He made a proper bow like he has been taught, and said--
+
+"Thank you very much. We should like it very much. It is very much nicer
+than going home. Thank you very much."
+
+I need not tell the reader that Oswald could have made up a much better
+speech if he had had more time to make it up in, or if he had not been
+so filled with mixed flusteredness and furification by the shameful
+events of the day.
+
+We washed our faces and hands and had a first rate muffin and crumpet
+tea, with slices of cold meats, and many nice jams and cakes. A lot of
+other people were there, most of them people who were giving the
+entertainment to the aged poor.
+
+After tea it was the entertainment. Songs and conjuring and a play
+called "Box and Cox," very amusing, and a lot of throwing things about
+in it--bacon and chops and things--and nigger minstrels. We clapped till
+our hands were sore.
+
+When it was over we said goodbye. In between the songs and things Oswald
+had had time to make up a speech of thanks to the lady.
+
+He said--
+
+"We all thank you heartily for your goodness. The entertainment was
+beautiful. We shall never forget your kindness and hospitableness."
+
+The lady laughed, and said she had been very pleased to have us. A fat
+gentleman said--
+
+"And your teas? I hope you enjoyed those--eh?"
+
+Oswald had not had time to make up an answer to that, so he answered
+straight from the heart, and said--
+
+"Ra--_ther_!"
+
+And every one laughed and slapped us boys on the back and kissed the
+girls, and the gentleman who played the bones in the nigger minstrels
+saw us home. We ate the cold pudding that night, and H.O. dreamed that
+something came to eat him, like it advises you to in the advertisements
+on the hoardings. The grown-ups said it was the pudding, but I don't
+think it could have been that, because, as I have said more than once,
+it was so very plain.
+
+Some of H.O.'s brothers and sisters thought it was a judgment on him for
+pretending about who the poor children were he was collecting the money
+for. Oswald does not believe such a little boy as H.O. would have a real
+judgment made just for him and nobody else, whatever he did.
+
+But it certainly is odd. H.O. was the only one who had bad dreams, and
+he was also the only one who got any of the things we bought with that
+ill-gotten money, because, you remember, he picked a hole in the
+raisin-paper as he was bringing the parcel home. The rest of us had
+nothing, unless you count the scrapings of the pudding-basin, and those
+don't really count at all.
+
+
+
+
+_ARCHIBALD THE UNPLEASANT_
+
+
+THE house of Bastable was once in poor, but honest, circs. That was when
+it lived in a semi-detached house in the Lewisham Road, and looked for
+treasure. There were six scions of the house who looked for it--in fact
+there were seven, if you count Father. I am sure he looked right enough,
+but he did not do it the right way. And we did. And so we found a
+treasure of a great-uncle, and we and Father went to live with him in a
+very affluent mansion on Blackheath--with gardens and vineries and
+pineries and everything jolly you can think of. And then, when we were
+no longer so beastly short of pocket-money, we tried to be good, and
+sometimes it came out right, and sometimes it didn't. Something like
+sums.
+
+And then it was the Christmas holidays--and we had a bazaar and raffled
+the most beautiful goat you ever saw, and we gave the money to the poor
+and needy.
+
+And then we felt it was time to do something new, because we were as
+rich as our worthy relative, the uncle, and our Father--now also
+wealthy, at least, compared to what he used to be--thought right for us;
+and we were as good as we could be without being good for nothing and
+muffs, which I hope no one calling itself a Bastable will ever stoop to.
+
+So then Oswald, so often the leader in hazardous enterprises, thought
+long and deeply in his interior self, and he saw that something must be
+done, because, though there was still the goat left over, unclaimed by
+its fortunate winner at the Bazaar, somehow no really fine idea seemed
+to come out of it, and nothing else was happening. Dora was getting a
+bit domineering, and Alice was too much taken up with trying to learn to
+knit. Dicky was bored and so was Oswald, and Noel was writing far more
+poetry than could be healthy for any poet, however young, and H.O. was
+simply a nuisance. His boots are always much louder when he is not
+amused, and that gets the rest of us into rows, because there are hardly
+any grown-up persons who can tell the difference between his boots and
+mine. Oswald decided to call a council (because even if nothing comes of
+a council it always means getting Alice to drop knitting, and making
+Noel chuck the poetical influences, that are no use and only make him
+silly), and he went into the room that is our room. It is called the
+common-room, like in colleges, and it is very different from the room
+that was ours when we were poor, but honest. It is a jolly room, with a
+big table and a big couch, that is most useful for games, and a thick
+carpet because of H.O.'s boots.
+
+Alice was knitting by the fire; it was for Father, but I am sure his
+feet are not at all that shape. He has a high and beautifully formed
+instep like Oswald's. Noel was writing poetry, of course.
+
+          "My dear sister sits
+           And knits,
+           I hope to goodness the stocking fits,"
+
+was as far as he had got.
+
+"It ought to be 'my dearest sister' to sound right," he said, "but that
+wouldn't be kind to Dora."
+
+"Thank you," said Dora, "You needn't trouble to be kind to me, if you
+don't want to."
+
+"Shut up, Dora!" said Dicky, "Noel didn't mean anything."
+
+"He never does," said H.O., "nor yet his poetry doesn't neither."
+
+"_And_ his poetry doesn't _either_," Dora corrected; "and besides, you
+oughtn't to say that at all, it's unkind----"
+
+"You're too jolly down on the kid," said Dicky.
+
+And Alice said, "Eighty-seven, eighty-eight--oh, do be quiet half a
+sec.!--eighty-nine, ninety--now I shall have to count the stitches all
+over again!"
+
+Oswald alone was silent and not cross. I tell you this to show that the
+sort of worryingness was among us that is catching, like measles.
+Kipling calls it the cameelious hump, and, as usual, that great and good
+writer is quite correct.
+
+So Oswald said, "Look here, let's have a council. It says in Kipling's
+book when you've got the hump go and dig till you gently perspire. Well,
+we can't do that, because it's simply pouring, but----"
+
+The others all interrupted him, and said they hadn't got the hump and
+they didn't know what he meant. So he shrugged his shoulders patiently
+(it is not his fault that the others hate him to shrug his shoulders
+patiently) and he said no more.
+
+Then Dora said, "Oh, don't be so disagreeable, Oswald, for goodness'
+sake!"
+
+I assure you she did, though he had done simply nothing.
+
+Matters were in this cryptical state when the door opened and Father
+came in.
+
+"Hullo, kiddies!" he remarked kindly. "Beastly wet day, isn't it? And
+dark too. I can't think why the rain can't always come in term time. It
+seems a poor arrangement to have it in 'vac.,' doesn't it?"
+
+I think every one instantly felt better. I know one of us did, and it
+was me.
+
+Father lit the gas, and sat down in the armchair and took Alice on his
+knee.
+
+"First," he said, "here is a box of chocs." It was an extra big and
+beautiful one and Fuller's best. "And besides the chocs., a piece of
+good news! You're all asked to a party at Mrs. Leslie's. She's going to
+have all sorts of games and things, with prizes for every one, and a
+conjurer and a magic lantern."
+
+The shadow of doom seemed to be lifted from each young brow, and we felt
+how much fonder we were of each other than any one would have thought.
+At least Oswald felt this, and Dicky told me afterwards he felt Dora
+wasn't such a bad sort after all.
+
+"It's on Tuesday week," said Father. "I see the prospect pleases. Number
+three is that your cousin Archibald has come here to stay a week or two.
+His little sister has taken it into her head to have whooping-cough. And
+he's downstairs now, talking to your uncle."
+
+We asked what the young stranger was like, but Father did not know,
+because he and cousin Archibald's father had not seen much of each other
+for some years. Father said this, but we knew it was because Archibald's
+father hadn't bothered to see ours when he was poor and honest, but now
+he was the wealthy sharer of the red-brick, beautiful Blackheath house
+it was different. This made us not like Uncle Archibald very much, but
+we were too just to blame it on to young Archibald. All the same we
+should have liked him better if his father's previous career had not
+been of such a worldly and stuck-up sort. Besides, I do think Archibald
+is quite the most rotten sort of name. We should have called him
+Archie, of course, if he had been at all decent.
+
+"You'll be as jolly to him as you can, I know," Father said; "he's a bit
+older than you, Oswald. He's not a bad-looking chap."
+
+Then Father went down and Oswald had to go with him, and there was
+Archibald sitting upright in a chair and talking to our Indian uncle as
+if he was some beastly grown-up. Our cousin proved to be dark and rather
+tall, and though he was only fourteen he was always stroking his lip to
+see if his moustache had begun to come.
+
+Father introduced us to each other, and we said, "How do you do?" and
+looked at each other, and neither of us could think of anything else to
+say. At least Oswald couldn't. So then we went upstairs. Archibald shook
+hands with the others, and every one was silent except Dora, and she
+only whispered to H.O. to keep his feet still.
+
+You cannot keep for ever in melancholy silence however few things you
+have to say, and presently some one said it was a wet day, and this
+well-chosen remark made us able to begin to talk.
+
+I do not wish to be injurious to anybody, especially one who was a
+Bastable, by birth at least if not according to the nobler attributes,
+but I must say that Oswald never did dislike a boy so much as he did
+that young Archibald. He was as cocky as though he'd done something to
+speak of--been captain of his eleven, or passed a beastly exam., or
+something--but we never could find that he had done anything. He was
+always bragging about the things he had at home, and the things he was
+allowed to do, and all the things he knew all about, but he was a most
+untruthful chap. He laughed at Noel's being a poet--a thing we never do,
+because it makes him cry and crying makes him ill--and of course Oswald
+and Dicky could not punch his head in their own house because of the
+laws of hospitableness, and Alice stopped it at last by saying she
+didn't care if it was being a sneak, she would tell Father the very next
+time. I don't think she would have, because we made a rule, when we were
+poor and honest, not to bother Father if we could possibly help it. And
+we keep it up still. But Archibald didn't know that. Then this cousin,
+who is, I fear, the black sheep of the Bastables, and hardly worthy to
+be called one, used to pull the girls' hair, and pinch them at prayers
+when they could not call out or do anything to him back.
+
+And he was awfully rude to the servants, ordering them about, and
+playing tricks on them, not amusing tricks like other Bastables might
+have done--such as booby-traps and mice under dish-covers, which seldom
+leaves any lasting ill-feeling--but things no decent boy would do--like
+hiding their letters and not giving them to them for days, and then it
+was too late to meet the young man the letter was from, and squirting
+ink on their aprons when they were just going to open the door, and once
+he put a fish-hook in the cook's pocket when she wasn't looking. He did
+not do anything to Oswald at that time. I suppose he was afraid. I just
+tell you this to show you that Oswald didn't cotton to him for no
+selfish reason, but because Oswald has been taught to feel for others.
+
+[Illustration: AND HE WAS AWFULLY RUDE TO THE SERVANTS.]
+
+He called us all kids--and he was that kind of boy we knew at once it
+was no good trying to start anything new and jolly--so Oswald, ever
+discreet and wary, shut up entirely about the council. We played games
+with him sometimes, not really good ones, but Snap and Beggar my
+Neighbour, and even then he used to cheat. I hate to say it of one of
+our blood, but I can hardly believe he was. I think he must have been
+changed at nurse like the heirs to monarchies and dukeries.
+
+Well, the days passed slowly. There was Mrs. Leslie's party shining
+starrishly in the mysteries of the future. Also we had another thing to
+look forward to, and that was when Archibald would have to go back to
+school. But we could not enjoy that foreshadowing so much because of us
+having to go back at nearly the same time.
+
+Oswald always tries to be just, no matter how far from easy, and so I
+will say that I am not quite sure that it was Archibald that set the
+pipes leaking, but we were all up in the loft the day before, snatching
+a golden opportunity to play a brief game of robbers in a cave, while
+Archibald had gone down to the village to get his silly hair cut.
+Another thing about him that was not natural was his being always
+looking in the glass and wanting to talk about whether people were
+handsome or not; and he made as much fuss about his ties as though he
+had been a girl. So when he was gone Alice said--
+
+"Hist! The golden moment. Let's be robbers in the loft, and when he
+comes back he won't know where we are."
+
+"He'll hear us," said Noel, biting his pencil.
+
+"No, he won't. We'll be the Whispering Band of Weird Bandits. Come on,
+Noel; you can finish the poetry up here."
+
+"It's about _him_," said Noel gloomily, "when he's gone back to----"
+(Oswald will not give the name of Archibald's school for the sake of the
+other boys there, as they might not like everybody who reads this to
+know about there being a chap like him in their midst.) "I shall do it
+up in an envelope and put a stamp on it and post it to him, and----"
+
+"Haste!" cried Alice. "Bard of the Bandits, haste while yet there's
+time."
+
+So we tore upstairs and put on our slippers and socks over them, and we
+got the high-backed chair out of the girls' bedroom, and the others held
+it steady while Oswald agilitively mounted upon its high back and opened
+the trap-door and got up into the place between the roof and the
+ceiling (the boys in "Stalky & Co." found this out by accident, and they
+were surprised and pleased, but we have known all about it ever since we
+can remember).
+
+Then the others put the chair back, and Oswald let down the rope ladder
+that we made out of bamboo and clothes-line after uncle told us the
+story of the missionary lady who was shut up in a rajah's palace, and
+some one shot an arrow to her with a string tied to it, and it might
+have killed her I should have thought, but it didn't, and she hauled in
+the string and there was a rope and a bamboo ladder, and so she escaped,
+and we made one like it on purpose for the loft. No one had ever told us
+not to make ladders.
+
+The others came up by the rope-ladder (it was partly bamboo, but
+rope-ladder does for short) and we shut the trap-door down. It is jolly
+up there. There are two big cisterns, and one little window in a gable
+that gives you just enough light. The floor is plaster with wooden
+things going across, beams and joists they are called. There are some
+planks laid on top of these here and there. Of course if you walk on the
+plaster you will go through with your foot into the room below.
+
+We had a very jolly game, in whispers, and Noel sat by the little
+window, and was quite happy, being the bandit bard. The cisterns are
+rocks you hide behind. But the jolliest part was when we heard Archibald
+shouting out, "Hullo! kids, where are you?" and we all stayed as still
+as mice, and heard Jane say she thought we must have gone out. Jane was
+the one that hadn't got her letter, as well as having her apron inked
+all over.
+
+[Illustration: THE OTHERS CAME UP BY THE ROPE-LADDER.]
+
+Then we heard Archibald going all over the house looking for us. Father
+was at business and uncle was at his club. And we were _there_. And so
+Archibald was all alone. And we might have gone on for hours enjoying
+the spectacle of his confusion and perplexedness, but Noel happened to
+sneeze--the least thing gives him cold and he sneezes louder for his age
+than any one I know--just when Archibald was on the landing underneath.
+Then he stood there and said--
+
+"I know where you are. Let me come up."
+
+We cautiously did not reply. Then he said:
+
+"All right. I'll go and get the step-ladder."
+
+We did not wish this. We had not been told not to make rope-ladders, nor
+yet about not playing in the loft; but if he fetched the step-ladder
+Jane would know, and there are some secrets you like to keep to
+yourself.
+
+So Oswald opened the trap-door and squinted down, and there was that
+Archibald with his beastly hair cut. Oswald said--
+
+"We'll let you up if you promise not to tell you've been up here."
+
+So he promised, and we let down the rope-ladder. And it will show you
+the kind of boy he was that the instant he had got up by it he began
+to find fault with the way it was made.
+
+[Illustration: SO OSWALD OPENED THE TRAP-DOOR AND SQUINTED DOWN, AND
+THERE WAS THAT ARCHIBALD.]
+
+Then he wanted to play with the ball-cock. But Oswald knows it is better
+not to do this.
+
+"I daresay _you're_ forbidden," Archibald said, "little kids like you.
+But _I_ know all about plumbing."
+
+And Oswald could not prevent his fiddling with the pipes and the
+ball-cock a little. Then we went down. All chance of further banditry
+was at an end. Next day was Sunday. The leak was noticed then. It was
+slow, but steady, and the plumber was sent for on Monday morning.
+
+Oswald does not know whether it was Archibald who made the leak, but he
+does know about what came after.
+
+I think our displeasing cousin found that piece of poetry that Noel was
+beginning about him, and read it, because he is a sneak. Instead of
+having it out with Noel he sucked up to him and gave him a six-penny
+fountain-pen which Noel liked, although it is really no good for him to
+try to write poetry with anything but a pencil, because he always sucks
+whatever he writes with, and ink is poisonous, I believe.
+
+Then in the afternoon he and Noel got quite thick, and went off
+together. And afterwards Noel seemed very peacocky about something, but
+he would not say what, and Archibald was grinning in a way Oswald would
+have liked to pound his head for.
+
+Then, quite suddenly, the peaceable quietness of that happy Blackheath
+home was brought to a close by screams. Servants ran about with brooms
+and pails, and the water was coming through the ceiling of uncle's room
+like mad, and Noel turned white and looked at our unattractive cousin
+and said: "Send him away."
+
+Alice put her arm round Noel and said: "Do go, Archibald."
+
+But he wouldn't.
+
+So then Noel said he wished he had never been born, and whatever would
+Father say.
+
+"Why, what is it, Noel?" Alice asked that. "Just tell us, we'll all
+stand by you. What's he been doing?"
+
+"You won't let him do anything to me if I tell?"
+
+"Tell tale tit," said Archibald.
+
+"He got me to go up into the loft and he said it was a secret, and would
+I promise not to tell, and I won't tell; only I've done it, and now the
+water's coming in."
+
+"You've done it? You young ass, I was only kidding you!" said our
+detestable cousin. And he laughed.
+
+"I don't understand," said Oswald. "What did you tell Noel?"
+
+"He can't tell you because he promised--and I won't--unless you vow by
+the honour of the house you talk so much about that you'll never tell I
+had anything to do with it."
+
+That will show you what he was. We had never mentioned the honour of the
+house except once quite at the beginning, before we knew how discapable
+he was of understanding anything, and how far we were from wanting to
+call him Archie.
+
+We had to promise, for Noel was getting greener and more gurgly every
+minute, and at any moment Father or uncle might burst in foaming for an
+explanation, and none of us would have one except Noel, and him in this
+state of all-anyhow.
+
+So Dicky said--
+
+"We promise, you beast, you!" And we all said the same.
+
+Then Archibald said, drawling his words and feeling for the moustache
+that wasn't there, and I hope he'll be quite old before he gets one--
+
+"It's just what comes of trying to amuse silly little kids. I told the
+foolish little animal about people having arteries cut, and your having
+to cut the whole thing to stop the bleeding. And he said, 'Was that what
+the plumber would do to the leaky pipe?' And how pleased your governor
+would be to find it mended. And then he went and did it."
+
+"You told me to," said Noel, turning greener and greener.
+
+"Go along with Alice," said Oswald. "We'll stand by you. And Noel, old
+chap, you must keep your word and not sneak about that sneaking hound."
+
+Alice took him away, and we were left with the horrid Archibald.
+
+"Now," said Oswald, "I won't break my word, no more will the rest of us.
+But we won't speak another word to you as long as we live."
+
+"Oh, Oswald," said Dora, "what about the sun going down?"
+
+"Let it jolly well go," said Dicky in furiousness. "Oswald didn't say
+we'd go on being angry for ever, but I'm with Oswald all the way. I
+won't talk to cads--no, not even before grown-ups. They can jolly well
+think what they like."
+
+After this no one spoke to Archibald.
+
+Oswald rushed for a plumber, and such was his fiery eloquence he really
+caught one and brought him home. Then he and Dicky waited for Father
+when he came in, and they got him into the study, and Oswald said what
+they had all agreed on. It was this:
+
+"Father, we are all most awfully sorry, but one of us has cut the pipe
+in the loft, and if you make us tell you any more it will not be
+honourable, and we are very sorry. Please, please don't ask who it was
+did it."
+
+Father bit his moustache and looked worried, and Dicky went on--
+
+"Oswald has got a plumber and he is doing it now."
+
+Then Father said, "How on earth did you get into the loft?"
+
+And then of course the treasured secret of the rope-ladder had to be
+revealed. We had never been told not to make rope-ladders and go into
+the loft, but we did not try to soften the anger of our Father by saying
+this. It would not have been any good either. We just had to stick it.
+And the punishment of our crime was most awful. It was that we weren't
+to go to Mrs. Leslie's party. And Archibald was to go, because when
+Father asked him if he was in it with the rest of us, he said "No." I
+cannot think of any really gentle, manly, and proper words to say what I
+think about my unnatural cousin.
+
+We kept our word about not speaking to him, and I think Father thought
+we were jealous because he was going to that conjuring, magic lantern
+party and we were not. Noel was the most unhappy, because he knew we
+were all being punished for what he had done. He was very affectionate
+and tried to write pieces of poetry to us all, but he was so unhappy he
+couldn't even write, and he went into the kitchen and sat on Jane's knee
+and said his head ached.
+
+Next day it was the day of the party and we were plunged in gloom.
+Archibald got out his Etons and put his clean shirt ready, and a pair of
+flashy silk socks with red spots, and then he went into the bath-room.
+
+Noel and Jane were whispering on the stairs. Jane came up and Noel went
+down, Jane knocked at the bath-room door and said--
+
+"Here's the soap, Master Archerbald. I didn't put none in to-day."
+
+He opened the door and put out his hand.
+
+"Half a moment," said Jane, "I've got something else in my hand."
+
+As she spoke the gas all over the house went down blue, and then went
+out. We held our breaths heavily.
+
+"Here it is," she said; "I'll put it in your hand. I'll go down and turn
+off the burners and see about the gas. You'll be late, sir. If I was you
+I should get on a bit with the washing of myself in the dark. I daresay
+the gas'll be five or ten minutes, and it's five o'clock now."
+
+It wasn't, and of course she ought not to have said it, but it was
+useful all the same.
+
+Noel came stumping up the stairs in the dark. He fumbled about and then
+whispered, "I've turned the little white china knob that locks the
+bath-room door on the outside."
+
+The water was bubbling and hissing in the pipes inside, and the darkness
+went on. Father and uncle had not come in yet, which was a fortunate
+blessing.
+
+"Do be quiet!" said Noel. "Just you wait."
+
+We all sat on the stairs and waited. Noel said--
+
+"Don't ask me yet--you'll see--you wait."
+
+And we waited, and the gas did not come back.
+
+At last Archibald tried to come out--he thought he had washed himself
+clean, I suppose--and of course the door was fastened. He kicked and he
+hammered and he shouted, and we were glad.
+
+At last Noel banged on the door and screamed through the keyhole--
+
+"If we let you out will you let us off our promise not to tell about you
+and the pipes? We won't tell till you've gone back to school."
+
+He wouldn't for a long time, but at last he had to.
+
+"I shan't ever come to your beastly house again," he bellowed through
+the keyhole, "so I don't mind."
+
+"Turn off the gas-burners then," said Oswald, ever thoughtful, though he
+was still in ignorance of the beautiful truth.
+
+Then Noel sang out over the stairs, "Light up!" and Jane went round with
+a taper, and when the landing gas was lighted Noel turned the knob of
+the bath-room, and Archibald exited in his Indian red and yellow
+dressing-gown that he thought so much of. Of course we expected his face
+to be red with rage, or white with passion, or purple with mixed
+emotions, but you cannot think what our feelings were--indeed, we hardly
+knew what they were ourselves--when we saw that he was not red or white
+or purple, but _black_. He looked like an uneven sort of bluish nigger.
+His face and hands were all black and blue in streaks, and so were the
+bits of his feet that showed between his Indian dressing-gown and his
+Turkish slippers.
+
+[Illustration: "WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT?" HE ASKED. "NYANG, NYANG!" JANE
+ANSWERED TAUNTINGLY.]
+
+The word "Krikey" fell from more than one lip.
+
+"What are you staring at?" he asked.
+
+We did not answer even then, though I think it was less from
+keep-your-wordishness than amazement. But Jane did.
+
+"Nyang, Nyang!" she uttered tauntingly. "You thought it was soap I was
+giving you, and all the time it was Maple's dark bright navy-blue
+indelible dye--won't wash out." She flashed a looking-glass in his face,
+and he looked and saw the depth of his dark bright navy-blueness.
+
+Now, you may think that we shouted with laughing to see him done brown
+and dyed blue like this, but we did not. There was a spellbound silence.
+Oswald, I know, felt a quite uncomfortable feeling inside him.
+
+When Archibald had had one good look at himself he did not want any
+more. He ran to his room and bolted himself in.
+
+"_He_ won't go to no parties," said Jane, and she flounced downstairs.
+
+We never knew how much Noel had told her. He is very young, and not so
+strong as we are, and we thought it better not to ask.
+
+Oswald and Dicky and H.O.--particularly H.O.--told each other it served
+him right, but after a bit Dora asked Noel if he would mind her trying
+to get some of it off our unloved cousin, and he said "No."
+
+[Illustration: WHEN FATHER CAME HOME THERE WAS AN AWFUL ROW.]
+
+But nothing would get it off him; and when Father came home there was an
+awful row. And he said we had disgraced ourselves and forgotten the
+duties of hospitality. We got it pretty straight, I can tell you. And we
+bore it all. I do not say we were martyrs to the honour of our house and
+to our plighted word, but I do say that we got it very straight indeed,
+and we did not tell the provocativeness we had had from our guest that
+drove the poet Noel to this wild and desperate revenge.
+
+But some one told, and I have always thought it was Jane, and that is
+why we did not ask too many questions about what Noel had told her,
+because late that night Father came and said he now understood that we
+had meant to do right, except perhaps the one who cut the pipe with a
+chisel, and that must have been more silliness than naughtiness; and
+perhaps the being dyed blue served our cousin rather right. And he gave
+Archibald a few remarks in private, and when the dye began to come
+off--it was not a fast dye, though it said so on the paper it was
+wrapped in--Archibald, now a light streaky blue, really did seem to be
+making an effort to be something like decent. And when, now merely a
+pale grey, he had returned to school, he sent us a letter. It said:--
+
+          "_My dear Cousins_,--
+
+          "_I think that I was beastlier than I meant to
+          be, but I am not accustomed to young kids. And I
+          think uncle was right, and the way you stand up
+          for the honour of our house is not all nonsense,
+          like I said it was. If we ever meet in the future
+          life I hope you will not keep a down on me about
+          things. I don't think you can expect me to say
+          more. From your affectionate cousin,_
+
+                                     "_Archibald Bastable._"
+
+So I suppose rays of remorse penetrated that cold heart, and now perhaps
+he will be a reformed Bastable. I am sure I hope so, but I believe it is
+difficult, if not impossible, for a leopard to change his skin.
+
+Still, I remember how indelibly black he looked when he came out of the
+fatal bath-room; and it nearly all wore off. And perhaps spots on the
+honourable inside parts of your soul come off with time. I hope so. The
+dye never came off the inside of the bath though. I think that was what
+annoyed our good great-uncle the most.
+
+
+
+
+_OVER THE WATER TO CHINA_
+
+
+OSWALD is a very modest boy, I believe, but even he would not deny that
+he has an active brain. The author has heard both his Father and
+Albert's uncle say so. And the most far-reaching ideas often come to him
+quite naturally--just as silly notions that aren't any good might come
+to you. And he had an idea which he meant to hold a council; about with
+his brothers and sisters; but just as he was going to unroll his idea to
+them our Father occurred suddenly in our midst and said a strange cousin
+was coming, and he came, and he was strange indeed! And when Fate had
+woven the threads of his dark destiny and he had been dyed a dark bright
+navy-blue, and had gone from our midst, Oswald went back to the idea
+that he had not forgotten. The words "tenacious of purpose" mean
+sticking to things, and these words always make me think of the
+character of the young hero of these pages. At least I suppose his
+brothers Dicky and Noel and H.O. are heroes too, in a way, but somehow
+the author of these lines knows more about Oswald's inside realness
+than he does about the others. But I am getting too deep for words.
+
+So Oswald went into the common-room. Every one was busy. Noel and H.O.
+were playing Halma. Dora was covering boxes with silver paper to put
+sweets in for a school treat, and Dicky was making a cardboard model of
+a new screw he has invented for ocean steamers. But Oswald did not mind
+interrupting, because Dora ought not to work too hard, and Halma always
+ends in a row, and I would rather not say what I think of Dicky's screw.
+So Oswald said--
+
+"I want a council. Where's Alice?"
+
+Every one said they didn't know, and they made haste to say that we
+couldn't have a council without her. But Oswald's determined nature made
+him tell H.O. to chuck that rotten game and go and look for her. H.O. is
+our youngest brother, and it is right that he should remember this and
+do as he was told. But he happened to be winning the beastly Halma game,
+and Oswald saw that there was going to be trouble--"big trouble," as Mr.
+Kipling says. And he was just bracing his young nerves for the conflict
+with H.O., because he was not going to stand any nonsense from his young
+brother about his not fetching Alice when he was jolly well told to,
+when the missing maiden bounced into the room bearing upon her brow the
+marks of ravaging agitatedness.
+
+"Have any of you seen Pincher?" she cried, in haste.
+
+We all said, "No, not since last night."
+
+"Well, then, he's lost," Alice said, making the ugly face that means you
+are going to blub in half a minute.
+
+Every one had sprung to their feet. Even Noel and H.O. saw at once what
+a doddering game Halma is, and Dora and Dicky, whatever their faults,
+care more for Pincher than for boxes and screws. Because Pincher is our
+fox-terrier. He is of noble race, and he was ours when we were poor,
+lonely treasure-seekers and lived in humble hard-upness in the Lewisham
+Road.
+
+To the faithful heart of young Oswald the Blackheath affluent mansion
+and all it contains, even the stuffed fox eating a duck in the glass
+case in the hall that he is so fond of, and even the council he wanted
+to have, seemed to matter much less than old Pincher.
+
+"I want you all to let's go out and look for him," said Alice, carrying
+out the meaning of the faces she had made and beginning to howl. "Oh,
+Pincher, suppose something happens to him; you might get my hat and
+coat, Dora. Oh, oh, oh!"
+
+We all got our coats and hats, and by the time we were ready Alice had
+conquered it to only sniffing, or else, as Oswald told her kindly, she
+wouldn't have been allowed to come.
+
+"Let's go on the Heath," Noel said. "The dear departed dog used to like
+digging there."
+
+So we went. And we said to every single person we met--
+
+"Please have you seen a thorough-bred fox-terrier dog with a black patch
+over one eye, and another over his tail, and a tan patch on his right
+shoulder?" And every one said, "No, they hadn't," only some had more
+polite ways of saying it than others. But after a bit we met a
+policeman, and he said, "I see one when I was on duty last night, like
+what you describe, but it was at the end of a string. There was a young
+lad at the other end. The dog didn't seem to go exactly willing."
+
+He also told us the lad and the dog had gone over Greenwich way. So we
+went down, not quite so wretched in our insides, because now it seemed
+that there was some chance, though we wondered the policeman _could_
+have let Pincher go when he saw he didn't want to, but he said it wasn't
+his business. And now we asked every one if they'd seen a lad and a
+thoroughbred fox-terrier with a black patch, and cetera.
+
+And one or two people said they had, and we thought it must be the same
+the policeman had seen, because they said, too, that the dog didn't seem
+to care about going where he was going.
+
+So we went on and through the Park and past the Naval College, and we
+didn't even stop to look at that life-sized firm ship in the playground
+that the Naval Collegians have to learn about ropes and spars on, and
+Oswald would willingly give a year of his young life to have that ship
+for his very own.
+
+And we didn't go into the Painted Hall either, because our fond hearts
+were with Pincher, and we could not really have enjoyed looking at
+Nelson's remains, of the shipwrecks where the drowning people all look
+so dry, or even the pictures where young heroes are boarding pirates
+from Spain, just as Oswald would do if he had half a chance, with the
+pirates fighting in attitudes more twisted and Spanish than the pirates
+of any nation could manage even if they were not above it. It is an odd
+thing, but all those pictures are awfully bad weather--even the ones
+that are not shipwrecks. And yet in books the skies are usually a
+stainless blue and the sea is a liquid gem when you are engaged in the
+avocation of pirate-boarding.
+
+The author is sorry to see that he is not going on with the story.
+
+We walked through Greenwich Hospital and asked there if they have seen
+Pincher, because I heard Father say once that dogs are sometimes stolen
+and taken to hospitals and never seen again. It is wrong to steal, but I
+suppose the hospital doctors forget this because they are so sorry for
+the poor ill people, and like to give them dogs to play with them and
+amuse them on their beds of anguish. But no one had seen our Pincher,
+who seemed to be becoming more dear to our hearts every moment.
+
+When we got through the Hospital grounds--they are big and the buildings
+are big, and I like it all because there's so much room everywhere and
+nothing niggling--we got down to the terrace over the river, next to the
+Trafalgar Hotel. And there was a sailor leaning on the railings, and we
+asked him the usual question. It seems that he was asleep, but of course
+we did not know, or we would not have disturbed him. He was very angry,
+and he swore, and Oswald told the girls to come away; but Alice pulled
+away from Oswald and said,
+
+"Oh, don't be so cross. Do tell us if you've seen our dog? He is----"
+and she recited Pincher's qualifications.
+
+"Ho yes," said the sailor--he had a red and angry face. "I see 'im a
+hour ago 'long of a Chinaman. 'E crossed the river in a open boat. You'd
+best look slippy arter 'im." He grinned and spat; he was a detestable
+character, I think. "Chinamen puts puppy-dogs in pies. If 'e catches you
+three young chaps 'e'll 'ave a pie as'll need a big crust to cover it.
+Get along with your cheek!"
+
+So we got along. Of course, we knew that the Chinese are not cannibals,
+so we were not frightened by that rot; but we knew, too, that the
+Chinese do really eat dogs, as well as rats and birds' nests and other
+disgraceful forms of eating.
+
+[Illustration: IT SEEMS THE SAILOR WAS ASLEEP, BUT OF COURSE WE DID NOT
+KNOW, OR WE SHOULD NOT HAVE DISTURBED HIM.]
+
+H.O. was very tired, and he said his boots hurt him; and Noel was
+beginning to look like a young throstle--all eyes and beak. He always
+does when he is tired. The others were tired too, but their proud
+spirits would never have owned it. So we went round to the Trafalgar
+Hotel's boathouse, and there was a man in slippers, and we said could we
+have a boat, and he said he would send a boatman, and would we walk in?
+
+We did, and we went through a dark room piled up to the ceiling with
+boats and out on to a sort of thing half like a balcony and half like a
+pier. And there were boats there too, far more than you would think any
+one could want; and then a boy came. We said we wanted to go across the
+river, and he said, "Where to?"
+
+"To where the Chinamen live," said Alice.
+
+"You can go to Millwall if you want to," he said, beginning to put oars
+into the boat.
+
+"Are there any Chinese people there?" Alice asked.
+
+And the boy replied, "I dunno." He added that he supposed we could pay
+for the boat.
+
+By a fortunate accident--I think Father had rather wanted to make up to
+us for our martyr-like enduring when our cousin was with us--we were
+fairly flush of chink. Oswald and Dicky were proudly able to produce
+handfuls of money; it was mostly copper, but it did not fail of its
+effect.
+
+The boy seemed not to dislike us quite so much as before, and he helped
+the girls into the boat, which was now in the water at the edge of a
+sort of floating, unsteady raft, with openings in it that you could see
+the water through. The water was very rough, just like real sea, and not
+like a river at all. And the boy rowed; he wouldn't let us, although I
+can, quite well. The boat tumbled and tossed just like a sea-boat. When
+we were about half-way over, Noel pulled Alice's sleeve and said--
+
+"Do I look very green?"
+
+"You do rather, dear," she said kindly.
+
+"I feel much greener than I look," said Noel. And later on he was not at
+all well.
+
+The boy laughed, but we pretended not to notice. I wish I could tell you
+half the things we saw as our boat was pulled along through the
+swishing, lumpy water that turned into great waves after every steamer
+that went by. Oswald was quite fit, but some of the others were very
+silent. Dicky says he saw everything that Oswald saw, but I am not sure.
+There were wharves and engines, and great rusty cranes swinging giant's
+handfuls of iron rails about in the air, and once we passed a ship that
+was being broken up. All the wood was gone, and they were taking away
+her plates, and the red rust was running from her and colouring the
+water all round; it looked as though she was bleeding to death. I
+suppose it was silly to feel sorry for her, but I did. I thought how
+beastly it was that she would never go to sea again, where the waves are
+clean and green, even if no rougher than the black waves now raging
+around our staunch little bark. I never knew before what lots of kinds
+of ships there can be, and I think I could have gone on and on for ever
+and ever looking at the shapes of things and the colours they were, and
+dreaming about being a pirate, and things like that, but we had come
+some way; and now Alice said--
+
+"Oswald, I think Noel will die if we don't make land soon."
+
+And indeed he had been rather bad for some time, only I thought it was
+kinder to take no notice.
+
+So our ship was steered among other pirate craft, and moored at a
+landing-place where there were steps up.
+
+Noel was now so ill that we felt we could not take him on a Chinese
+hunt, and H.O. had sneaked his boots off in the boat, and he said they
+hurt him too much to put them on again; so it was arranged that those
+two should sit on a dry corner of the steps and wait, and Dora said she
+would stay with them.
+
+"I think we ought to go home," she said. "I'm quite sure Father wouldn't
+like us being in these wild, savage places. The police ought to find
+Pincher."
+
+But the others weren't going to surrender like that, especially as Dora
+had actually had the sense to bring a bag of biscuits, which all, except
+Noel, were now eating.
+
+"Perhaps they ought, but they _won't_," said Dicky. "I'm boiling hot.
+I'll leave you my overcoat in case you're cold."
+
+Oswald had been just about to make the same manly proposal, though he
+was not extra warm. So they left their coats, and, with Alice, who would
+come though told not to, they climbed the steps, and went along a narrow
+passage and started boldly on the Chinese hunt. It was a strange sort of
+place over the river; all the streets were narrow, and the houses and
+the pavements and the people's clothes and the mud in the road all
+seemed the same sort of dull colour--a sort of brown-grey it was.
+
+All the house doors were open, and you could see that the insides of the
+houses were the same colour as the outsides. Some of the women had blue,
+or violet or red shawls, and they sat on the doorsteps and combed their
+children's hair, and shouted things to each other across the street.
+They seemed very much struck by the appearance of the three travellers,
+and some of the things they said were not pretty.
+
+That was the day when Oswald found out a thing that has often been of
+use to him in after-life. However rudely poor people stare at you they
+become all right instantly if you ask them something. I think they don't
+hate you so much when they've done something for you, if it's only to
+tell you the time or the way.
+
+[Illustration: WE WENT ROUND A CORNER RATHER FAST, AND CAME SLAP INTO
+THE LARGEST WOMAN I HAVE EVER SEEN.]
+
+So we got on very well, but it does not make me comfortable to see
+people so poor and we have such a jolly house. People in books feel
+this, and I know it is right to feel it, but I hate the feeling all the
+same. And it is worse when the people are nice to you.
+
+And we asked and asked and asked, but nobody had seen a dog or a
+Chinaman, and I began to think all was indeed lost, and you can't go on
+biscuits all day, when we went round a corner rather fast, and came slap
+into the largest woman I have ever seen. She must have been yards and
+yards round, and before she had time to be in the rage that we saw she
+was getting into, Alice said--
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon! I _am_ so sorry, but we really didn't mean to! I
+_do_ so hope we didn't hurt you!"
+
+We saw the growing rage fade away, and she said, as soon as she got her
+fat breath--
+
+"No 'arm done, my little dear. An' w'ere are you off to in such a
+'urry?"
+
+So we told her all about it. She was quite friendly, although so stout,
+and she said we oughtn't to be gallivanting about all on our own. We
+told her we were all right, though I own Oswald was glad that in the
+hurry of departing Alice hadn't had time to find anything
+smarter-looking to wear than her garden coat and grey Tam, which had
+been regretted by some earlier in the day.
+
+"Well," said the woman, "if you go along this 'ere turning as far as
+ever you can go, and then take the first to the right and bear round to
+the left, and take the second to the right again, and go down the alley
+between the stumps, you'll come to Rose Gardens. There's often Chinamen
+about there. And if you come along this way as you come back, keep your
+eye open for me, and I'll arks some young chaps as I know as is
+interested like in dogs, and perhaps I'll have news for you."
+
+"Thank you very much," Alice said, and the woman asked her to give her a
+kiss. Everybody is always wanting to kiss Alice. I can't think why. And
+we got her to tell us the way again, and we noticed the name of the
+street, and it was Nightingale Street, and the stairs where we had left
+the others was Bullamy's Causeway, because we have the true explorer's
+instincts, and when you can't blaze your way on trees with your axe, or
+lay crossed twigs like the gypsies do, it is best to remember the names
+of streets.
+
+So we said goodbye, and went on through the grey-brown streets with
+hardly any shops, and those only very small and common, and we got to
+the alley all right. It was a narrow place between high blank brown-grey
+walls. I think by the smell it was gasworks and tanneries. There was
+hardly any one there, but when we got into it we heard feet running
+ahead of us, and Oswald said--
+
+"Hullo, suppose that's some one with Pincher, and they've recognized his
+long-lost masters and they're making a bolt for it?"
+
+And we all started running as hard as ever we could. There was a turn in
+the passage, and when we got round it we saw that the running was
+stopping. There were four or five boys in a little crowd round some one
+in blue--blue looked such a change after the muddy colour of everything
+in that dead Eastern domain--and when we got up, the person the blue was
+on was a very wrinkled old man, with a yellow wrinkled face and a soft
+felt hat and blue blouse-like coat, and I see that I ought not to
+conceal any longer from the discerning reader that it was exactly what
+we had been looking for. It was indeed a Celestial Chinaman in deep
+difficulties with these boys who were, as Alice said afterwards, truly
+fiends in mortal shape. They were laughing at the old Chinaman, and
+shouting to each other, and their language was of that kind that I was
+sorry we had got Alice with us. But she told Oswald afterwards that she
+was so angry she did not know what they were saying.
+
+"Pull his bloomin' pigtail," said one of these outcasts from decent
+conduct.
+
+The old man was trying to keep them off with both hands, but the hands
+were very wrinkled and trembly.
+
+Oswald is grateful to his good Father who taught him and Dicky the
+proper way to put their hands up. If it had not been for that, Oswald
+does not know what on earth would have happened, for the outcasts were
+five to our two, because no one could have expected Alice to do what
+she did.
+
+[Illustration: IT WAS INDEED A CELESTIAL CHINAMAN IN DEEP DIFFICULTIES.]
+
+Before Oswald had even got his hands into the position required by the
+noble art of self-defence, she had slapped the largest boy on the face
+as hard as ever she could--and she can slap pretty hard, as Oswald knows
+but too well--and she had taken the second-sized boy and was shaking him
+before Dicky could get his left in on the eye of the slapped assailant
+of the aged denizen of the Flowery East. The other three went for
+Oswald, but three to one is nothing to one who has hopes of being a
+pirate in his spare time when he grows up.
+
+In an instant the five were on us. Dicky and I got in some good ones,
+and though Oswald cannot approve of my sister being in a street fight,
+he must own she was very quick and useful in pulling ears and twisting
+arms and slapping and pinching. But she had quite forgotten how to hit
+out from the shoulder like I have often shown her.
+
+The battle raged, and Alice often turned the tide of it by a well-timed
+shove or nip. The aged Eastern leaned against the wall, panting and
+holding his blue heart with his yellow hand. Oswald had got a boy down,
+and was kneeling on him, and Alice was trying to pull off two other boys
+who had fallen on top of the fray, while Dicky was letting the fifth
+have it, when there was a flash of blue and another Chinaman dashed into
+the tournament. Fortunately this one was not old, and with a few
+well-directed, if foreign looking, blows he finished the work so ably
+begun by the brave Bastables, and next moment the five loathsome and
+youthful aggressors were bolting down the passage. Oswald and Dicky were
+trying to get their breath and find out exactly where they were hurt and
+how much, and Alice had burst out crying and was howling as though she
+would never stop. That is the worst of girls--they never can keep
+anything up. Any brave act they may suddenly do, when for a moment they
+forget that they have not the honour to be boys, is almost instantly
+made into contemptibility by a sudden attack of crybabyishness. But I
+will say no more: for she did strike the first blow, after all, and it
+did turn out that the boys had scratched her wrist and kicked her shins.
+These things make girls cry.
+
+The venerable stranger from distant shores said a good deal to the other
+in what I suppose was the language used in China. It all sounded like
+"hung" and "li" and "chi," and then the other turned to us and said--
+
+"Nicee lilly girlee, same piecee flowelee, you takee my head to walkee
+on. This is alle samee my father first chop ancestor. Dirty white devils
+makee him hurt. You come alongee fightee ploper. Me likee you welly
+muchee."
+
+Alice was crying too much to answer, especially as she could not find
+her handkerchief. I gave her mine, and then she was able to say that
+she did not want to walk on anybody's head, and she wanted to go home.
+
+"This not nicee place for lillee whitee girlee," said the young
+Chinaman. His pigtail was thicker than his father's and black right up
+to the top. The old man's was grey at the beginning, but lower down it
+was black, because that part of it was not hair at all, but black
+threads and ribbons and odds and ends of trimmings, and towards the end
+both pigtails were greenish.
+
+"Me lun backee takee him safee," the younger of the Eastern adventurers
+went on, pointing to his father. "Then me makee walkee all alonk you,
+takee you back same placee you comee from. Little white devils waitee
+for you on ce load. You comee with? Not? Lillee girlee not cly. John
+givee her one piecee pletty-pletty. Come makee talkee with the House
+Lady."
+
+I believe this is about what he said, and we understood that he wanted
+us to come and see his mother, and that he would give Alice something
+pretty, and then see us safe out of the horrible brown-grey country.
+
+So we agreed to go with them, for we knew those five boys would be
+waiting for us on the way back, most likely with strong reinforcements.
+Alice stopped crying the minute she could--I must say she is better than
+Dora in that way--and we followed the Chinamen, who walked in single
+file like Indians, so we did the same, and talked to each other over our
+shoulders. Our grateful Oriental friends led us through a good many
+streets, and suddenly opened a door with a key, pulled us in, and shut
+the door. Dick thought of the kidnapping of Florence Dombey and good
+Mrs. Brown, but Oswald had no such unnoble thoughts.
+
+[Illustration: ON THE SIDEBOARD WAS A BLUEY-WHITE CROCKERY IMAGE.]
+
+The room was small, and very, very odd. It was very dirty too, but
+perhaps it is not polite to say that. There was a sort of sideboard at
+one end of the room, with an embroidered dirty cloth on it, and on the
+cloth a bluey-white crockery image over a foot high. It was very fat and
+army and leggy, and I think it was an idol. The minute we got inside the
+young man lighted little brown sticks, and set them to burn in front of
+it. I suppose it was incense. There was a sort of long, wide, low sofa,
+without any arms or legs, and a table that was like a box, with another
+box in front of it for you to sit down on when you worked, and on the
+table were all sorts of tiny little tools--awls and brads they looked
+like--and pipe-stems and broken bowls of pipes and mouthpieces, for our
+rescued Chinaman was a pipe-mender by trade. There wasn't much else in
+the room except the smell, and that seemed to fill it choke-full. The
+smell seemed to have all sorts of things in it--glue and gunpowder, and
+white garden lilies and burnt fat, and it was not so easy to breathe as
+plain air.
+
+Then a Chinese lady came in. She had green-grey trousers, shiny like
+varnish, and a blue gown, and her hair was pulled back very tight, and
+twisted into a little knob at the back.
+
+She wanted to go down on the floor before Alice, but we wouldn't let
+her. Then she said a great many things that we feel sure were very nice,
+only they were in Chinese, so we could not tell what they were.
+
+And the Chinaman said that his mother also wanted Alice to walk on her
+head--not Alice's own, of course, but the mother's.
+
+I wished we had stayed longer, and tried harder to understand what they
+said, because it was an adventure, take it how you like, that we're not
+likely to look upon the like of again. Only we were too flustered to see
+this.
+
+We said, "Don't mention it," and things like that; and when Dicky said,
+"I think we ought to be going," Oswald said so too.
+
+Then they all began talking Chinese like mad, and the Chinese lady came
+back and suddenly gave Alice a parrot.
+
+It was red and green, with a very long tail, and as tame as any pet fawn
+I ever read about. It walked up her arm and round her neck, and stroked
+her face with its beak. And it did not bite Oswald or Alice, or even
+Dicky, though they could not be sure at first that it was not going to.
+
+We said all the polite things we could, and the old lady made thousands
+of hurried Chinese replies, and repeated many times, "All litey, John,"
+which seemed to be all the English she knew.
+
+We never had so much fuss made over us in all our lives. I think it was
+that that upset our calmness, and seemed to put us into a sort of silly
+dream that made us not see what idiots we were to hurry off from scenes
+we should never again behold. So we went. And the youthful Celestial saw
+us safely to the top of Bullamy's Stairs, and left us there with the
+parrot and floods of words that seemed all to end in double "e."
+
+We wanted to show him to the others, but he would not come, so we
+rejoined our anxious relations without him.
+
+The scene of rejoinder was painful, at first because they were most
+frightfully sick at us having been such an age away; but when we let
+them look at the parrot, and told them about the fight, they agreed that
+it was not our fault, and we really had been unavoidably detained.
+
+But Dora said, "Well, you may say I'm always preaching, but I _don't_
+think Father would like Alice to be fighting street boys in Millwall."
+
+"I suppose _you'd_ have run away and let the old man be killed," said
+Dicky, and peace was not restored till we were nearly at Greenwich
+again.
+
+We took the tram to Greenwich Station, and then we took a cab home (and
+well worth the money, which was all we now had got, except
+fourpence-halfpenny), for we were all dog-tired.
+
+And dog-tired reminds me that we hadn't found Pincher, in spite of all
+our trouble.
+
+Miss Blake, who is our housekeeper, was angrier than I have ever seen
+her. She had been so anxious that she had sent the police to look for
+us. But, of course, they had not found us. You ought to make allowances
+for what people do when they are anxious, so I forgive her everything,
+even what she said about Oswald being a disgrace to a respectable house.
+He owns we were rather muddy, owing to the fight.
+
+And when the jaw was over and we were having tea--and there was meat to
+it, because we were as near starving as I ever wish to be--we all ate
+lots. Even the thought of Pincher could not thwart our bold appetites,
+though we kept saying, "Poor old Pincher!" "I do wish we'd found him,"
+and things like that. The parrot walked about among the tea-things as
+tame as tame. And just as Alice was saying how we'd go out again
+to-morrow and have another try for our faithful hound there was a
+scratching at the door, and we rushed--and there was Pincher, perfectly
+well and mad with joy to see us.
+
+H.O. turned an abrupt beetroot colour.
+
+"Oh!" he said.
+
+We said, "What? Out with it."
+
+And though he would much rather have kept it a secret buried in his
+breast, we made him own that he had shut Pincher up yesterday in the
+empty rabbit-hutch when he was playing Zoological Gardens and forgotten
+all about it in the pleasures of our cousin having left us.
+
+So we need not have gone over the water at all. But though Oswald pities
+all dumb animals, especially those helplessly shut in rabbit-hutches at
+the bottoms of gardens, he cannot be sorry that we had such a Celestial
+adventure and got hold of such a parrot. For Alice says that Oswald and
+Dicky and she shall have the parrot between them.
+
+She is tremendously straight. I often wonder why she was made a girl.
+She's a jolly sight more of a gentleman than half the boys at our
+school.
+
+
+
+
+_THE YOUNG ANTIQUARIES_
+
+
+THIS really happened before Christmas, but many authors go back to
+bygone years for whole chapters, and I don't see why I shouldn't.
+
+It was one Sunday--the Somethingth Sunday in Advent, I think--and Denny
+and Daisy and their father and Albert's uncle came to dinner, which is
+in the middle of the day on that day of rest and the same things to eat
+for grown-ups and us. It is nearly always roast beef and Yorkshire, but
+the puddings and vegetables are brightly variegated and never the same
+two Sundays running.
+
+At dinner some one said something about the coat-of-arms that is on the
+silver tankards which once, when we were poor and honest, used to stay
+at the shop having the dents slowly taken out of them for months and
+months. But now they are always at home and are put at the four corners
+of the table every day, and any grown-up who likes can drink beer out of
+them.
+
+After some talk of the sort you don't listen to, in which bends and
+lioncels and gules and things played a promising part, Albert's uncle
+said that Mr. Turnbull had told him something about that coat-of-arms
+being carved on a bridge somewhere in Cambridgeshire, and again the
+conversation wandered into things like Albert's uncle had talked about
+to the Maidstone Antiquarian Society the day they came over to see his
+old house in the country and we arranged the time-honoured Roman remains
+for them to dig up. So, hearing the words king-post and mullion and
+moulding and underpin, Oswald said might we go; and we went, and took
+our dessert with us and had it in our own common-room, where you can
+roast chestnuts with a free heart and never mind what your fingers get
+like.
+
+When first we knew Daisy we used to call her the White Mouse, and her
+brother had all the appearance of being one too, but you know how
+untruthful appearances are, or else it was that we taught him happier
+things, for he certainly turned out quite different in the end; and she
+was not a bad sort of kid, though we never could quite cure her of
+wanting to be "ladylike"--that is the beastliest word there is, I think,
+and Albert's uncle says so, too. He says if a girl can't be a lady it's
+not worth while to be only like one--she'd better let it alone and be a
+free and happy bounder.
+
+But all this is not what I was going to say, only the author does think
+of so many things besides the story, and sometimes he puts them in. This
+is the case with Thackeray and the Religious Tract Society and other
+authors, as well as Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Only I don't suppose you have
+ever heard of her, though she writes books that some people like very
+much. But perhaps they are her friends. I did not like the one I read
+about the Baronet. It was on a wet Sunday at the seaside, and nothing
+else in the house but Bradshaw and "Elsie; or like a----" or I shouldn't
+have. But what really happened to us before Christmas is strictly the
+following narrative.
+
+"I say," remarked Denny, when he had burned his fingers with a chestnut
+that turned out a bad one after all--and such is life--and he had
+finished sucking his fingers and getting rid of the chestnut, "about
+these antiquaries?"
+
+"Well, what about them?" said Oswald. He always tries to be gentle and
+kind to Denny, because he knows he helped to make a man of the young
+Mouse.
+
+"I shouldn't think," said Denny, "that it was so very difficult to be
+one."
+
+"I don't know," said Dicky. "You have to read very dull books and an
+awful lot of them, and remember what you read, what's more."
+
+"I don't think so," said Alice. "That girl who came with the
+antiquities--the one Albert's uncle said was upholstered in red plush
+like furniture--_she_ hadn't read anything, you bet."
+
+Dora said, "You ought not to bet, especially on Sunday," and Alice
+altered it to "You may be sure."
+
+"Well, but what then?" Oswald asked Denny. "Out with it," for he saw
+that his youthful friend had got an idea and couldn't get it out. You
+should always listen patiently to the ideas of others, no matter how
+silly you expect them to be.
+
+"I do wish you wouldn't hurry me so," said Denny, snapping his fingers
+anxiously. And we tried to be patient.
+
+"Why shouldn't we _be_ them?" Denny said at last.
+
+"He means antiquaries," said Oswald to the bewildered others. "But
+there's nowhere to go and nothing to do when we get there."
+
+The Dentist (so-called for short, his real name being Denis) got red and
+white, and drew Oswald aside to the window for a secret discussion.
+Oswald listened as carefully as he could, but Denny always buzzes so
+when he whispers.
+
+"Right oh," he remarked, when the confidings of the Dentist had got so
+that you could understand what he was driving at. "Though you're being
+shy with us now, after all we went through together in the summer, is
+simply skittles."
+
+Then he turned to the polite and attentive others and said--
+
+[Illustration: OSWALD LISTENED AS CAREFULLY AS HE COULD, BUT DENNY
+ALWAYS BUZZES SO WHEN HE WHISPERS.]
+
+"You remember that day we went to Bexley Heath with Albert's uncle?
+Well, there was a house, and Albert's uncle said a clever writer lived
+there, and in more ancient years that chap in history--Sir Thomas What's
+his name; and Denny thinks he might let us be antiquaries there. It
+looks a ripping place from the railway."
+
+It really does. It's a fine big house, and splendid gardens, and a lawn
+with a sundial, and the tallest trees anywhere about here.
+
+"But what could we _do_?" said Dicky. "I don't suppose _he'd_ give _us_
+tea," though such, indeed, had been our hospitable conduct to the
+antiquaries who came to see Albert's uncle.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Alice. "We might dress up for it, and wear
+spectacles, and we could all read papers. It would be lovely--something
+to fill up the Christmas holidays--the part before the wedding, I mean.
+Do let's."
+
+"All right, I don't mind. I suppose it would be improving," said Dora.
+"We should have to read a lot of history. You can settle it. I'm going
+to show Daisy our bridesmaids' dresses."
+
+It was, alas! too true. Albert's uncle was to be married but shortly
+after, and it was partly our faults, though that does not come into this
+story.
+
+So the two D.'s went to look at the clothes--girls like this--but Alice,
+who wishes she had never consented to be born a girl, stayed with us,
+and we had a long and earnest council about it.
+
+"One thing," said Oswald, "it can't possibly be wrong--so perhaps it
+won't be amusing."
+
+"Oh, Oswald!" said Alice, and she spoke rather like Dora.
+
+"I don't mean what you mean," said Oswald in lofty scorn. "What I mean
+to say is that when a thing is quite sure to be right, it's not
+so--well--I mean to say there it is, don't you know; and if it might be
+wrong, and isn't, it's a score to you; and if it might be wrong, and
+is--as so often happens--well, you know yourself, adventures sometimes
+turn out wrong that you didn't think were going to, but seldom, or
+never, the uninteresting kind, and----"
+
+Dicky told Oswald to dry up--which, of course, no one stands from a
+younger brother, but though Oswald explained this at the time, he felt
+in his heart that he has sometimes said what he meant with more
+clearness. When Oswald and Dicky had finished, we went on and arranged
+everything.
+
+Every one was to write a paper--and read it.
+
+"If the papers are too long to read while we're there," said Noel, "we
+can read them in the long winter evenings when we are grouped along the
+household hearthrug. I shall do my paper in poetry--about Agincourt."
+
+Some of us thought Agincourt wasn't fair, because no one could be sure
+about any knight who took part in that well-known conflict having lived
+in the Red House; but Alice got us to agree, because she said it would
+be precious dull if we all wrote about nothing but Sir Thomas
+Whatdoyoucallhim--whose real name in history Oswald said he would find
+out, and then write his paper on that world-renowned person, who is a
+household word in all families. Denny said he would write about Charles
+the First, because they were just doing that part at his school.
+
+"I shall write about what happened in 1066," said H.O. "I know that."
+
+Alice said, "If I write a paper it will be about Mary Queen of Scots."
+
+Dora and Daisy came in just as she said this, and it transpired that
+this ill-fated but good-looking lady was the only one they either of
+them wanted to write about. So Alice gave it up to them and settled to
+do Magna Charta, and they could settle something between themselves for
+the one who would have to give up Mary Queen of Scots in the end. We all
+agreed that the story of that lamented wearer of pearls and black velvet
+would not make enough for two papers.
+
+Everything was beautifully arranged, when suddenly H.O. said--
+
+"Supposing he doesn't let us?"
+
+"Who doesn't let us what?"
+
+"The Red House man--read papers at his Red House."
+
+This was, indeed, what nobody had thought of--and even now we did not
+think any one could be so lost to proper hospitableness as to say no.
+Yet none of us liked to write and ask. So we tossed up for it, only Dora
+had feelings about tossing up on Sunday, so we did it with a hymn-book
+instead of a penny.
+
+We all won except Noel, who lost, so he said he would do it on Albert's
+uncle's typewriter, which was on a visit to us at the time, waiting for
+Mr. Remington to fetch it away to mend the "M." We think it was broken
+through Albert's uncle writing "Margaret" so often, because it is the
+name of the lady he was doomed to be married by.
+
+The girls had got the letter the Maidstone Antiquarian Society and Field
+Clubs Secretary had sent to Albert's uncle--H.O. said they kept it for a
+momentum of the day--and we altered the dates and names in blue chalk
+and put in a piece about might we skate on the moat, and gave it to
+Noel, who had already begun to make up his poetry about Agincourt, and
+so had to be shaken before he would attend. And that evening, when
+Father and our Indian uncle and Albert's uncle were seeing the others on
+the way to Forest Hill, Noel's poetry and pencil were taken away from
+him and he was shut up in Father's room with the Remington typewriter,
+which we had never been forbidden to touch. And I don't think he hurt
+it much, except quite at the beginning, when he jammed the "S" and the
+"J" and the thing that means per cent. so that they stuck--and Dicky
+soon put that right with a screwdriver.
+
+He did not get on very well, but kept on writing MOR7E HOAS5 or MORD6M
+HOVCE on new pieces of paper and then beginning again, till the floor
+was strewn with his remains; so we left him at it, and went and played
+Celebrated Painters--a game even Dora cannot say anything about on
+Sunday, considering the Bible kind of pictures most of them painted. And
+much later, the library door having banged once and the front door
+twice, Noel came in and said he had posted it, and already he was deep
+in poetry again, and had to be roused when requisite for bed.
+
+It was not till next day that he owned that the typewriter had been a
+fiend in disguise, and that the letter had come out so odd that he could
+hardly read it himself.
+
+"The hateful engine of destruction wouldn't answer to the bit in the
+least," he said, "and I'd used nearly a wastepaper basket of Father's
+best paper, and I thought he might come in and say something, so I just
+finished it as well as I could, and I corrected it with the blue
+chalk--because you'd bagged that B.B. of mine--and I didn't notice what
+name I'd signed till after I'd licked the stamp."
+
+The hearts of his kind brothers and sisters sank low. But they kept
+them up as well as they could, and said--
+
+[Illustration: IT WAS NOT TILL NEXT DAY THAT HE OWNED THAT THE
+TYPEWRITER HAD BEEN A FIEND IN DISGUISE.]
+
+"What name _did_ you sign?"
+
+And Noel said, "Why, Edward Turnbull, of course--like at the end of the
+real letter. You never crossed it out like you did his address."
+
+"No," said Oswald witheringly. "You see, I did think, whatever else you
+didn't know, I did think you knew your own silly name."
+
+Then Alice said Oswald was unkind, though you see he was not, and she
+kissed Noel and said she and he would take turns to watch for the
+postman, so as to get the answer (which of course would be subscribed on
+the envelope with the name of Turnbull instead of Bastable) before the
+servant could tell the postman that the name was a stranger to her.
+
+And next evening it came, and it was very polite and grown-up--and said
+we should be welcome, and that we might read our papers and skate on the
+moat. The Red House has a moat, like the Moat House in the country, but
+not so wild and dangerous. Only we never skated on it because the frost
+gave out the minute we had got leave to. Such is life, as the sparks fly
+upwards. (The last above is called a moral reflection.)
+
+So now, having got leave from Mr. Red House (I won't give his name
+because he is a writer of worldly fame and he might not like it), we set
+about writing our papers. It was not bad fun, only rather difficult
+because Dora said she never knew which Encyclo. volume she might be
+wanting, as she was using Edinburgh, Mary, Scotland, Bothwell, Holywell,
+and France, and many others, and Oswald never knew which he might want,
+owing to his not being able exactly to remember the distinguished and
+deathless other appellation of Sir Thomas Thingummy, who had lived in
+the Red House.
+
+Noel was up to the ears in Agincourt, yet that made but little
+difference to our destiny. He is always plunged in poetry of one sort or
+another, and if it hadn't been that, it would have been something else.
+This, at least, we insisted on having kept a secret, so he could not
+read it to us.
+
+H.O. got very inky the first half-holiday, and then he got some
+sealing-wax and a big envelope from Father, and put something in and
+fastened it up, and said he had done his.
+
+Dicky would not tell us what his paper was going to be about, but he
+said it would not be like ours, and he let H.O. help him by looking on
+while he invented more patent screws for ships.
+
+The spectacles were difficult. We got three pairs of the uncle's, and
+one that had belonged to the housekeeper's grandfather, but nine pairs
+were needed, because Albert-next-door mouched in one half-holiday and
+wanted to join, and said if we'd let him he'd write a paper on the
+Constitutions of Clarendon, and we thought he couldn't do it, so we let
+him. And then, after all, he did.
+
+So at last Alice went down to Bennett's in the village, that we are such
+good customers of, because when our watches stop we take them there, and
+he lent us a lot of empty frames on the instinctive understanding that
+we would pay for them if we broke them or let them get rusty.
+
+And so all was ready. And the fatal day approached; and it was the
+holidays. For us, that is, but not for Father, for his business never
+seems to rest by day and night, except at Christmas and times like that.
+So we did not need to ask him if we might go. Oswald thought it would be
+more amusing for Father if we told it all to him in the form of an
+entertaining anecdote, afterwards.
+
+Denny and Daisy and Albert came to spend the day.
+
+We told Mrs. Blake Mr. Red House had asked us, and she let the girls put
+on their second-best things, which are coats with capes and red
+Tam-o'shanters. These capacious coats are very good for playing
+highwaymen in.
+
+We made ourselves quite clean and tidy. At the very last we found that
+H.O. had been making marks on his face with burnt matches, to imitate
+wrinkles, but really it only imitated dirt, so we made him wash it off.
+Then he wanted to paint himself red like a clown, but we had decided
+that the spectacles were to be our only disguise, and even those were
+not to be assumed till Oswald gave the word.
+
+[Illustration: THE STATIONMASTER AND PORTER LOOKED RESPECTFULLY AT US.]
+
+No casuist observer could have thought that the nine apparently
+light-headed and careless party who now wended their way to Blackheath
+Station, looking as if they were not up to anything in particular, were
+really an Antiquarian Society of the deepest dye. We got an empty
+carriage to ourselves, and halfway between Blackheath and the other
+station Oswald gave the word, and we all put on the spectacles. We had
+our antiquarian papers of lore and researched history in exercise-books,
+rolled up and tied with string.
+
+The stationmaster and porter, of each of which the station boasted but
+one specimen, looked respectfully at us as we got out of the train, and
+we went straight out of the station, under the railway arch, and down to
+the green gate of the Red House. It has a lodge, but there is no one in
+it. We peeped in at the window, and there was nothing in the room but an
+old beehive and a broken leather strap.
+
+We waited in the front for a bit, so that Mr. Red House could come out
+and welcome us like Albert's uncle did the other antiquaries, but no one
+came, so we went round the garden. It was very brown and wet, but full
+of things you didn't see every day. Furze summer-houses, for instance,
+and a red wall all round it, with holes in it that you might have
+walled heretics up in in the olden times. Some of the holes were quite
+big enough to have taken a very small heretic. There was a broken swing,
+and a fish-pond--but we were on business, and Oswald insisted on reading
+the papers.
+
+He said, "Let's go to the sundial. It looks dryer there, my feet are
+like ice-houses."
+
+It was dryer because there was a soaking wet green lawn round it, and
+round that a sloping path made of little squares of red and white
+marble. This was quite waterless, and the sun shone on it, so that it
+was warm to the hands, though not to the feet, because of boots. Oswald
+called on Albert to read first. Albert is not a clever boy. He is not
+one of us, and Oswald wanted to get over the Constitutions. For Albert
+is hardly ever amusing, even in fun, and when he tries to show off it is
+sometimes hard to bear. He read--
+
+                 "THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON.
+
+          "Clarendon (sometimes called Clarence) had only
+          one constitution. It must have been a very bad
+          one, because he was killed by a butt of Malmsey.
+          If he had had more constitutions or better ones he
+          would have lived to be very old. This is a warning
+          to everybody."
+
+To this day none of us know how he could, and whether his uncle helped
+him.
+
+We clapped, of course, but not with our hearts, which were hissing
+inside us, and then Oswald began to read his paper. He had not had a
+chance to ask Albert's uncle what the other name of the world-famous Sir
+Thomas was, so he had to put him in as Sir Thomas Blank, and make it up
+by being very strong on scenes that could be better imagined than
+described, and, as we knew that the garden was five hundred years old,
+of course he could bring in any eventful things since the year 1400.
+
+He was just reading the part about the sundial, which he had noticed
+from the train when we went to Bexley Heath. It was rather a nice piece,
+I think.
+
+"Most likely this sundial told the time when Charles the First was
+beheaded, and recorded the death-devouring progress of the Great Plague
+and the Fire of London. There is no doubt that the sun often shone even
+in these devastating occasions, so that we may picture Sir Thomas Blank
+telling the time here and remarking--O crikey!"
+
+These last words are what Oswald himself remarked. Of course a person in
+history would never have said them.
+
+The reader of the paper had suddenly heard a fierce, woodeny sound, like
+giant singlesticks, terrifyingly close behind him, and looking hastily
+round, he saw a most angry lady, in a bright blue dress with fur on it,
+like a picture, and very large wooden shoes, which had made the
+singlestick noise. Her eyes were very fierce, and her mouth tight
+shut. She did not look hideous, but more like an avenging sprite or
+angel, though of course we knew she was only mortal, so we took off our
+caps. A gentleman also bounded towards us over some vegetables, and
+acted as reserve support to the lady.
+
+[Illustration: HER VOICE WHEN SHE TOLD US WE WERE TRESPASSING WAS NOT SO
+FURIOUS.]
+
+Her voice when she told us we were trespassing and it was a private
+garden was not so furious as Oswald had expected from her face, but it
+_was_ angry. H.O. at once said it wasn't her garden, was it? But, of
+course, we could see it _was_, because of her not having any hat or
+jacket or gloves, and wearing those wooden shoes to keep her feet dry,
+which no one would do in the street.
+
+So then Oswald said we had leave, and showed her Mr. Red House's letter.
+
+"But that was written to Mr. Turnbull," said she, "and how did _you_ get
+it?"
+
+Then Mr. Red House wearily begged us to explain, so Oswald did, in that
+clear, straightforward way some people think he has, and that no one can
+suspect for an instant. And he ended by saying how far from comfortable
+it would be to have Mr. Turnbull coming with his thin mouth and his
+tight legs, and that we were Bastables, and much nicer than the
+tight-legged one, whatever she might think.
+
+And she listened, and then she quite suddenly gave a most jolly grin and
+asked us to go on reading our papers.
+
+It was plain that all disagreeableness was at an end, and, to show this
+even to the stupidest, she instantly asked us to lunch. Before we could
+politely accept H.O. shoved his oar in as usual and said _he_ would stop
+no matter how little there was for lunch because he liked her very much.
+
+So she laughed, and Mr. Red House laughed, and she said they wouldn't
+interfere with the papers, and they went away and left us.
+
+Of course Oswald and Dicky insisted on going on with the papers; though
+the girls wanted to talk about Mrs. Red House, and how nice she was, and
+the way her dress was made. Oswald finished his paper, but later he was
+sorry he had been in such a hurry, because after a bit Mrs. Red House
+came out, and said she wanted to play too. She pretended to be a very
+ancient antiquary, and was most jolly, so that the others read their
+papers to her, and Oswald knows she would have liked his paper best,
+because it _was_ the best, though I say it.
+
+Dicky's turned out to be all about that patent screw, and how Nelson
+would not have been killed if his ship had been built with one.
+
+Daisy's paper was about Lady Jane Grey, and hers and Dora's were exactly
+alike, the dullest by far, because they had got theirs out of books.
+
+Alice had not written hers because she had been helping Noel to copy
+his.
+
+Denny's was about King Charles, and he was very grown-up and fervent
+about this ill-fated monarch and white roses.
+
+Mrs. Red House took us into the summer-houses, where it was warmer, and
+such is the wonderful architecture of the Red House gardens that there
+was a fresh summer-house for each paper, except Noel's and H.O.'s, which
+were read in the stable. There were no horses there.
+
+Noel's was very long, and it began--
+
+          "This is the story of Agincourt.
+           If you don't know it you jolly well ought.
+           It was a famous battle fair,
+           And all your ancestors fought there
+           That is if you come of a family old.
+           The Bastables do; they were always very bold.
+                    And at Agincourt
+                              They fought
+                    As they ought;
+                    So we have been taught."
+
+And so on and so on, till some of us wondered why poetry was ever
+invented. But Mrs. Red House said she liked it awfully, so Noel said--
+
+"You may have it to keep. I've got another one of it at home."
+
+"I'll put it next my heart, Noel," she said. And she did, under the blue
+stuff and fur.
+
+H.O.'s was last, but when we let him read it he wouldn't, so Dora opened
+his envelope and it was thick inside with blotting-paper, and in the
+middle there was a page with
+
+                     "1066 WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR,"
+
+and nothing else.
+
+"Well," he said, "I said I'd write all I knew about 1066, and that's it.
+I can't write more than I know, can I?" The girls said he couldn't, but
+Oswald thought he might have tried.
+
+"It wasn't worth blacking your face all over just for that," he said.
+But Mrs. Red House laughed very much and said it was a lovely paper, and
+told _her_ all she wanted to know about 1066.
+
+Then we went into the garden again and ran races, and Mrs. Red House
+held all our spectacles for us and cheered us on. She said she was the
+Patent Automatic Cheering Winning-post. We do like her.
+
+Lunch was the glorious end of the Morden House Antiquarian Society and
+Field Club's Field Day. But after lunch was the beginning of a real
+adventure such as real antiquarians hardly ever get. This will be
+unrolled later. I will finish with some French out of a newspaper.
+Albert's uncle told it me, so I know it is right. Any of your own
+grown-ups will tell you what it means.
+
+_Au prochain numero je vous promets des emotions._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PS.--In case your grown-ups can't be bothered, "_emotions_" mean
+sensation, I believe.
+
+
+
+
+_THE INTREPID EXPLORER AND HIS LIEUTENANT_
+
+
+WE had spectacles to play antiquaries in, and the rims were vaselined to
+prevent rust, and it came off on our faces with other kinds of dirt, and
+when the antiquary game was over, Mrs. Red House helped us to wash it
+off with all the thoroughness of aunts, and far more gentleness.
+
+Then, clean and with our hairs brushed, we were led from the bath-room
+to the banqueting hall or dining-room.
+
+It is a very beautiful house. The girls thought it was bare, but Oswald
+likes bareness because it leaves more room for games. All the furniture
+was of agreeable shapes and colours, and so were all the things on the
+table--glasses and dishes and everything. Oswald politely said how nice
+everything was.
+
+The lunch was a blissful dream of perfect A.1.-ness. Tongue, and nuts,
+and apples, and oranges, and candied fruits, and ginger-wine in tiny
+glasses that Noel said were fairy goblets. Everybody drank everybody
+else's health--and Noel told Mrs. Red House just how lovely she was,
+and he would have paper and pencil and write her a poem for her very
+own. I will not put it in here, because Mr. Red House is an author
+himself, and he might want to use it in some of his books. And the
+writer of these pages has been taught to think of others, and besides I
+expect you are jolly well sick of Noel's poetry.
+
+[Illustration: THE LUNCH WAS A BLISSFUL DREAM OF A.1.-NESS.]
+
+There was no restrainingness about that lunch. As far as a married lady
+can possibly be a regular brick, Mrs. Red House is one. And Mr. Red
+House is not half bad, and knows how to talk about interesting things
+like sieges, and cricket, and foreign postage stamps.
+
+Even poets think of things sometimes, and it was Noel who said directly
+he had finished his poetry,
+
+"Have you got a secret staircase? And have you explored your house
+properly?"
+
+"Yes--we have," said that well-behaved and unusual lady--Mrs. Red House,
+"but _you_ haven't. You may if you like. Go anywhere," she added with
+the unexpected magnificence of a really noble heart. "Look at
+everything--only don't make hay. Off with you!" or words to that effect.
+
+And the whole of us, with proper thanks, offed with us instantly, in
+case she should change her mind.
+
+I will not describe the Red House to you--because perhaps you do not
+care about a house having three staircases and more cupboards and odd
+corners than we'd ever seen before, and great attics with beams, and
+enormous drawers on rollers, let into the wall--and half the rooms not
+furnished, and those that were all with old-looking, interesting
+furniture. There was something about that furniture that even the
+present author can't describe--as though any of it might have secret
+drawers or panels--even the chairs. It was all beautiful, and mysterious
+in the deepest degree.
+
+When we had been all over the house several times, we thought about the
+cellars. There was only one servant in the kitchen (so we saw Mr. and
+Mrs. Red House must be poor but honest, like we used to be), and we said
+to her--
+
+"How do you do? We've got leave to go wherever we like, and please where
+are the cellars, and may we go in?"
+
+She was quite nice, though she seemed to think there was an awful lot of
+us. People often think this. She said:
+
+"Lor, love a duck--yes, I suppose so," in not ungentle tones, and showed
+us.
+
+I don't think we should ever have found the way from the house into the
+cellar by ourselves. There was a wide shelf in the scullery with a row
+of gentlemanly boots on it that had been cleaned, and on the floor in
+front a piece of wood. The general servant--for such indeed she proved
+to be--lifted up the wood and opened a little door under the shelf. And
+there was the beginning of steps, and the entrance to them was half
+trap-door, and half the upright kind--a thing none of us had seen
+before.
+
+She gave us a candle-end, and we pressed forward to the dark unknown.
+The stair was of stone, arched overhead like churches--and it twisted
+most unlike other cellar stairs. And when we got down it was all arched
+like vaults, very cobwebby.
+
+"Just the place for crimes," said Dicky. There was a beer cellar, and a
+wine cellar with bins, and a keeping cellar with hooks in the ceiling
+and stone shelves--just right for venison pasties and haunches of the
+same swift animal.
+
+Then we opened a door and there was a cellar with a well in it.
+
+"To throw bodies down, no doubt," Oswald explained.
+
+They were cellars full of glory, and passages leading from one to the
+other like the Inquisition, and I wish ours at home were like them.
+
+There was a pile of beer barrels in the largest cellar, and it was H.O.
+who said, "Why not play 'King of the Castle?'"
+
+So we did. We had a most refreshing game. It was exactly like Denny to
+be the one who slipped down behind the barrels, and did not break a
+single one of all his legs or arms.
+
+"No," he cried, in answer to our anxious inquiries. "I'm not hurt a
+bit, but the wall here feels soft--at least not soft--but it doesn't
+scratch your nails like stone does, so perhaps it's the door of a secret
+dungeon or something like that."
+
+"Good old Dentist!" replied Oswald, who always likes Denny to have ideas
+of his own, because it was us who taught him the folly of
+white-mousishness.
+
+"It might be," he went on, "but these barrels are as heavy as lead, and
+much more awkward to collar hold of."
+
+"Couldn't we get in some other way?" Alice said. "There ought to be a
+subterranean passage. I expect there is if we only knew."
+
+Oswald has an enormous geographical bump in his head. He said--
+
+"Look here! That far cellar, where the wall doesn't go quite up to the
+roof--that space we made out was under the dining-room--I could creep
+under there. I believe it leads into behind this door."
+
+"Get me out! Oh do, do get me out, and let me come!" shouted the
+barrel-imprisoned Dentist from the unseen regions near the door.
+
+So we got him out by Oswald lying flat on his front on the top barrel,
+and the Dentist clawed himself up by Oswald's hands while the others
+kept hold of the boots of the representative of the house of Bastable,
+which, of course, Oswald is, whenever Father is not there.
+
+"Come on," cried Oswald, when Denny was at last able to appear, very
+cobwebby and black. "Give us what's left of the matches!"
+
+The others agreed to stand by the barrels and answer our knocking on the
+door if we ever got there.
+
+"But I daresay we shall perish on the way," said Oswald hopefully.
+
+So we started. The other cellar was easily found by the ingenious and
+geography-bump-headed Oswald. It opened straight on to the moat, and we
+think it was a boathouse in middle-aged times.
+
+Denny made a back for Oswald, who led the way, and then he turned round
+and hauled up his inexperienced, but rapidly improving, follower on to
+the top of the wall that did not go quite up to the roof.
+
+"It is like coal mines," he said, beginning to crawl on hands and knees
+over what felt like very prickly beach, "only we've no picks or
+shovels."
+
+"And no Sir Humphry Davy safety lamps," said Denny in sadness.
+
+"They wouldn't be any good," said Oswald; "they're only to protect the
+hard-working mining men against fire-damp and choke-damp. And there's
+none of those kinds here."
+
+"No," said Denny, "the damp here is only just the common kind."
+
+"Well, then," said Oswald, and they crawled a bit further still on
+their furtive and unassuming stomachs.
+
+"This is a very glorious adventure. It is, isn't it?" inquired the
+Dentist in breathlessness, when the young stomachs of the young
+explorers had bitten the dust for some yards further.
+
+"Yes," said Oswald, encouraging the boy, "and it's _your_ find, too," he
+added, with admirable fairness and justice, unusual in one so young. "I
+only hope we shan't find a mouldering skeleton buried alive behind that
+door when we get to it. Come on. What are you stopping for now?" he
+added kindly.
+
+"It's--it's only cobwebs in my throat," Denny remarked, and he came on,
+though slower than before.
+
+Oswald, with his customary intrepid caution, was leading the way, and he
+paused every now and then to strike a match because it was pitch dark,
+and at any moment the courageous leader might have tumbled into a well
+or a dungeon, or knocked his dauntless nose against something in the
+dark.
+
+"It's all right for you," he said to Denny, when he had happened to kick
+his follower in the eye. "You've nothing to fear except my boots, and
+whatever they do is accidental, and so it doesn't count, but _I_ may be
+going straight into some trap that has been yawning for me for countless
+ages."
+
+"I won't come on so fast, thank you," said the Dentist. "I don't think
+you've kicked my eye out yet."
+
+So they went on and on, crampedly crawling on what I have mentioned
+before, and at last Oswald did not strike the next match carefully
+enough, and with the suddenness of a falling star his hands, which, with
+his knees, he was crawling on, went over the edge into infinite space,
+and his chest alone, catching sharply on the edge of the precipice,
+saved him from being hurled to the bottom of it.
+
+"Halt!" he cried, as soon as he had any breath again. But, alas! it was
+too late! The Dentist's nose had been too rapid, and had caught up the
+boot-heel of the daring leader. This was very annoying to Oswald, and
+was not in the least his fault.
+
+"Do keep your nose off my boots half a sec.," he remarked, but not
+crossly. "I'll strike a match."
+
+And he did, and by its weird and unscrutatious light looked down into
+the precipice.
+
+Its bottom transpired to be not much more than six feet below, so Oswald
+turned the other end of himself first, hung by his hands, and dropped
+with fearless promptness, uninjured, in another cellar. He then helped
+Denny down. The cornery thing Denny happened to fall on could not have
+hurt him so much as he said.
+
+The light of the torch, I mean match, now revealed to the two bold and
+youthful youths another cellar, with _things_ in it--very dirty
+indeed, but of thrilling interest and unusual shapes, but the match went
+out before we could see exactly what the things were.
+
+[Illustration: OSWALD DID NOT STRIKE THE NEXT MATCH CAREFULLY ENOUGH.]
+
+The next match was the last but one, but Oswald was undismayed, whatever
+Denny may have been. He lighted it and looked hastily round. There was a
+door.
+
+"Bang on that door--over there, silly!" he cried, in cheering accents,
+to his trusty lieutenant; "behind that thing that looks like a _chevaux
+de frize_."
+
+Denny had never been to Woolwich, and while Oswald was explaining what a
+_chevaux de frize_ is, the match burnt his fingers almost to the bone,
+and he had to feel his way to the door and hammer on it yourself.
+
+The blows of the others from the other side were deafening.
+
+All was saved.
+
+It was the right door.
+
+"Go and ask for candles and matches," shouted the brave Oswald. "Tell
+them there are all sorts of things in here--a _chevaux de frize_ of
+chair-legs, and----"
+
+"A shovel of _what_?" asked Dicky's voice hollowly from the other side
+of the door.
+
+"Freeze," shouted Denny. "I don't know what it means, but do get a
+candle and make them unbarricade the door. I don't want to go back the
+way we came." He said something about Oswald's boots that he was sorry
+for afterwards, so I will not repeat it, and I don't think the others
+heard, because of the noise the barrels made while they were being
+climbed over.
+
+This noise, however, was like balmy zephyrs compared to the noise the
+barrels insisted on making when Dicky had collected some grown-ups and
+the barrels were being rolled away. During this thunder-like interval
+Denny and Oswald were all the time in the pitch dark. They had lighted
+their last match, and by its flickering gleam we saw a long, large
+mangle.
+
+"It's like a double coffin," said Oswald, as the match went out. "You
+can take my arm if you like, Dentist."
+
+The Dentist did--and then afterwards he said he only did it because he
+thought Oswald was frightened of the dark.
+
+"It's only for a little while," said Oswald in the pauses of the
+barrel-thunder, "and I once read about two brothers confined for life in
+a cage so constructed that the unfortunate prisoners could neither sit,
+lie, nor stand in comfort. We can do all those things."
+
+"Yes," said Denny; "but I'd rather keep on standing if it's the same to
+you, Oswald. I don't like spiders--not much, that is."
+
+"You are right," said Oswald with affable gentleness; "and there might
+be toads perhaps in a vault like this--or serpents guarding the treasure
+like in the Cold Lairs. But of course they couldn't have cobras in
+England. They'd have to put up with vipers, I suppose."
+
+Denny shivered, and Oswald could feel him stand first on one leg and
+then on the other.
+
+"I wish I could stand on neither of my legs for a bit," he said, but
+Oswald answered firmly that this could not be.
+
+And then the door opened with a crack-crash, and we saw lights and faces
+through it, and something fell from the top of the door that Oswald
+really did think for one awful instant was a hideous mass of writhing
+serpents put there to guard the entrance.
+
+"Like a sort of live booby-trap," he explained; "just the sort of thing
+a magician or a witch would have thought of doing."
+
+But it was only dust and cobwebs--a thick, damp mat of them.
+
+Then the others surged in, in light-hearted misunderstanding of the
+perils Oswald had led Denny into--I mean through, with Mr. Red House and
+another gentleman, and loud voices and candles that dripped all over
+everybody's hands, as well as their clothes, and the solitary
+confinement of the gallant Oswald was at an end. Denny's solitary
+confinement was at an end, too--and he was now able to stand on both
+legs and to let go the arm of his leader who was so full of fortitude.
+
+"This _is_ a find," said the pleased voice of Mr. Red House. "Do you
+know, we've been in this house six whole months and a bit, and _we_
+never thought of there being a door here."
+
+"Perhaps you don't often play 'King of the Castle,'" said Dora
+politely; "it _is_ rather a rough game, I always think."
+
+"Well, curiously enough, we never have," said Mr. Red House, beginning
+to lift out the chairs, in which avocation we all helped, of course.
+
+"Nansen is nothing to you! You ought to have a medal for daring
+explorations," said the other gentleman, but nobody gave us one, and, of
+course, we did not want any reward for doing our duty, however tight and
+cobwebby.
+
+The cellars proved to be well stocked with spiders and old furniture,
+but no toads or snakes, which few, if any, regretted. Snakes are
+outcasts from human affection. Oswald pities them, of course.
+
+There was a great lumpish thing in four parts that Mr. Red House said
+was a press, and a ripping settle--besides the chairs, and some carved
+wood that Mr. Red House and his friend made out to be part of an old
+four-post bed. There was also a wooden thing like a box with another box
+on it at one end, and H.O. said--
+
+"You could make a ripping rabbit-hutch out of that."
+
+Oswald thought so himself. But Mr. Red House said he had other uses for
+it, and would bring it up later.
+
+It took us all that was left of the afternoon to get the things up the
+stairs into the kitchen. It was hard work, but we know all about the
+dignity of labour. The general hated the things we had so enterprisingly
+discovered. I suppose she knew who would have to clean them, but Mrs.
+Red House was awfully pleased and said we were dears.
+
+We were not very clean dears by the time our work was done, and when the
+other gentleman said, "Won't you all take a dish of tea under my humble
+roof?" the words "Like this?" were formed by more than one youthful
+voice.
+
+"Well, if you would be happier in a partially cleansed state?" said Mr.
+Red House. And Mrs. Red House, who is my idea of a feudal lady in a
+castle, said, "Oh, come along, let's go and partially clean ourselves.
+I'm dirtier than anybody, though I haven't explored a bit. I've often
+noticed that the more you admire things the more they come off on you!"
+
+So we all washed as much as we cared to, and went to tea at the
+gentleman's house, which was only a cottage, but very beautiful. He had
+been a war correspondent, and he knew a great many things, besides
+having books and books of pictures.
+
+It was a splendid party.
+
+We thanked Mrs. R.H. and everybody when it was time to go, and she
+kissed the girls and the little boys, and then she put her head on one
+side and looked at Oswald and said, "I suppose you're too old?"
+
+Oswald did not like to say he was not. If kissed at all he would prefer
+it being for some other reason than his being not too old for it. So he
+did not know what to say. But Noel chipped in with--
+
+"_You'll_ never be too old for it," to Mrs. Red House--which seemed to
+Oswald most silly and unmeaning, because she was already much too old to
+be kissed by people unless she chose to begin it. But every one seemed
+to think Noel had said something clever. And Oswald felt like a young
+ass. But Mrs. R.H. looked at him so kindly and held out her hand so
+queenily that, before he knew he meant to, he had kissed it like you do
+the Queen's. Then, of course, Denny and Dicky went and did the same.
+Oswald wishes that the word "kiss" might never be spoken again in this
+world. Not that he minded kissing Mrs. Red House's hand in the least,
+especially as she seemed to think it was nice of him to--but the whole
+thing is such contemptible piffle.
+
+We were seen home by the gentleman who wasn't Mr. Red House, and he
+stood a glorious cab with a white horse who had a rolling eye, from
+Blackheath Station, and so ended one of the most adventuring times we
+ever got out of a play-beginning.
+
+The _time_ ended as the author has pointed out, but not its
+resultingness. Thus we ever find it in life--the most unharmful things,
+thoroughly approved even by grown-ups, but too often lead to something
+quite different, and that no one can possibly approve of, not even
+yourself when you come to think it over afterwards, like Noel and H.O.
+had to.
+
+It was but natural that the hearts of the young explorers should have
+dwelt fondly on everything underground, even drains, which was what made
+us read a book by Mr. Hugo, all the next day. It is called "The
+Miserables," in French, and the man in it, who is a splendid hero,
+though a convict and a robber and various other professions, escapes
+into a drain with great rats in it, and is miraculously restored to the
+light of day, unharmed by the kindly rodents. (N.B.--Rodents mean rats.)
+
+When we had finished all the part about drains it was nearly
+dinner-time, and Noel said quite suddenly in the middle of a bite of
+mutton--
+
+"The Red House isn't nearly so red as ours is outside. Why should the
+cellars be so much cellarier? Shut up H.O.!" For H.O. was trying to
+speak.
+
+Dora explained to him how we don't all have exactly the same blessings,
+but he didn't seem to see it.
+
+"It doesn't seem like the way things happen in books," he said, "In
+Walter Scott it wouldn't be like that, nor yet in Anthony Hope. I should
+think the rule would be the redder the cellarier. If I was putting it
+into poetry I should make our cellars have something much wonderfuller
+in them than just wooden things. H.O., if you don't shut up I'll never
+let you be in anything again."
+
+"There's that door you go down steps to," said Dicky; "we've never been
+in there. If Dora and I weren't going with Miss Blake to be fitted for
+boots we might try that."
+
+"That's just what I was coming to. (Stow it, H.O.!) I felt just like
+cellars to-day, while you other chaps were washing your hands for
+din.--and it was very cold; but I made H.O. feel the same, and we went
+down, and--that door _isn't shut now_."
+
+The intelligible reader may easily guess that we finished our dinner as
+quickly as we could, and we put on our outers, sympathising with Dicky
+and Dora, who, owing to boots, were out of it, and we went into the
+garden. There are five steps down to that door. They were red brick when
+they began, but now they are green with age and mysteriousness and not
+being walked on. And at the bottom of them the door was, as Noel said,
+not fastened. We went in.
+
+"It isn't beery, winey cellars at all," Alice said; "it's more like a
+robber's store-house. Look there."
+
+We had got to the inner cellar, and there were heaps of carrots and
+other vegetables.
+
+"Halt, my men!" cried Oswald, "advance not an inch further! The bandits
+may lurk not a yard from you!"
+
+"Suppose they jump out on us?" said H.O.
+
+"They will not rashly leap into the light," said the discerning Oswald.
+And he went to fetch a new dark-lantern of his that he had not had any
+chance of really using before. But some one had taken Oswald's secret
+matches, and then the beastly lantern wouldn't light for ever so long.
+But he thought it didn't matter his being rather a long time gone,
+because the others could pass the time in wondering whether anything
+would jump out on them, and if so, what and when.
+
+So when he got back to the red steps and the open door and flashed his
+glorious bull's-eye round it was rather an annoying thing for there not
+to be a single other eye for it to flash into. Every one had vanished.
+
+"Hallo!" cried Oswald, and if his gallant voice trembled he is not
+ashamed of it, because he knows about wells in cellars, and, for an
+instant, even he did not know what had happened.
+
+But an answering hullo came from beyond, and he hastened after the
+others.
+
+"Look out," said Alice; "don't tumble over that heap of bones."
+
+Oswald did look out--of course, he would not wish to walk on any one's
+bones. But he did not jump back with a scream, whatever Noel may say
+when he is in a temper.
+
+The heap really did look very like bones, partly covered with earth.
+Oswald was glad to learn that they were only parsnips.
+
+"We waited as long as we could," said Alice, "but we thought perhaps
+you'd been collared for some little thing you'd forgotten all about
+doing, and wouldn't be able to come back, but we found Noel had,
+fortunately, got your matches. I'm so glad you weren't collared, Oswald
+dear."
+
+Some boys would have let Noel know about the matches, but Oswald didn't.
+The heaps of carrots and turnips and parsnips and things were not very
+interesting when you knew that they were not bleeding warriors' or
+pilgrims' bones, and it was too cold to pretend for long with any
+comfort to the young Pretenders. So Oswald said--
+
+"Let's go out on the Heath and play something warm. You can't warm
+yourself with matches, even if they're not your own."
+
+That was all he said. A great hero would not stoop to argue about
+matches.
+
+And Alice said, "All right," and she and Oswald went out and played
+pretending golf with some walking-sticks of Father's. But Noel and H.O.
+preferred to sit stuffily over the common-room fire. So that Oswald and
+Alice, as well as Dora and Dicky, who were being measured for boots,
+were entirely out of the rest of what happened, and the author can only
+imagine the events that now occurred.
+
+When Noel and H.O. had roasted their legs by the fire till they were so
+hot that their stockings quite hurt them, one of them must have said to
+the other--I never knew which:
+
+"Let's go and have another look at that cellar."
+
+The other--whoever it was--foolishly consented. So they went, and they
+took Oswald's dark-lantern in his absence and without his leave.
+
+They found a hitherto unnoticed door behind the other one, and Noel says
+he said, "We'd better not go in." H.O. says he said so too. But any way,
+they _did_ go in.
+
+They found themselves in a small vaulted place that we found out
+afterwards had been used for mushrooms. But it was long since any fair
+bud of a mushroom had blossomed in that dark retreat. The place had been
+cleaned and new shelves put up, and when Noel and H.O. saw what was on
+these shelves the author is sure they turned pale, though they say not.
+
+For what they saw was coils, and pots, and wires; and one of them said,
+in a voice that must have trembled--
+
+"It is dynamite, I am certain of it; what shall we do?"
+
+I am certain the other said, "This is to blow up Father because he took
+part in the Lewisham Election, and his side won."
+
+The reply no doubt was, "There is no time for delay; we must act. We
+must cut the fuse--all the fuses; there are dozens."
+
+Oswald thinks it was not half bad business, those two kids--for Noel is
+little more than one, owing to his poetry and his bronchitis--standing
+in the abode of dynamite and not screeching, or running off to tell Miss
+Blake, or the servants, or any one--but just doing _the right thing_
+without any fuss.
+
+[Illustration: WITH SCISSORS AND GAS PLIERS THEY CUT EVERY FUSE.]
+
+I need hardly say it did not prove to be the right thing--but they
+thought it was. And Oswald cannot think that you are really doing wrong
+if you really think you are doing right. I hope you will understand
+this.
+
+I believe the kids tried cutting the fuses with Dick's pocket-knife that
+was in the pocket of his other clothes. But the fuses would not--no
+matter how little you trembled when you touched them.
+
+But at last, with scissors and the gas pliers, they cut every fuse. The
+fuses were long, twisty, wire things covered with green wool, like
+blind-cords.
+
+Then Noel and H.O. (and Oswald for one thinks it showed a goodish bit of
+pluck, and policemen have been made heroes for less) got cans and cans
+of water from the tap by the greenhouse and poured sluicing showers of
+the icy fluid in among the internal machinery of the dynamite
+arrangement--for so they believed it to be.
+
+Then, very wet, but feeling that they had saved their Father and the
+house, they went and changed their clothes. I think they were a little
+stuck-up about it, believing it to be an act unrivalled in devotedness,
+and they were most tiresome all the afternoon, talking about their
+secret, and not letting us know what it was.
+
+But when Father came home, early, as it happened, those swollen-headed,
+but, in Oswald's opinion, quite-to-be-excused, kiddies learned the
+terrible truth.
+
+Of course Oswald and Dicky would have known at once; if Noel and H.O.
+hadn't been so cocky about not telling us, we could have exposed the
+truth to them in all its uninteresting nature.
+
+I hope the reader will now prepare himself for a shock. In a wild whirl
+of darkness, and the gas being cut off, and not being able to get any
+light, and Father saying all sorts of things, it all came out.
+
+Those coils and jars and wires in that cellar were not an infernal
+machine at all. It was--I know you will be very much surprised--it was
+the electric lights and bells that Father had had put in while we were
+at the Red House the day before.
+
+H.O. and Noel caught it very fully; and Oswald thinks this was one of
+the few occasions when my Father was not as just as he meant to be. My
+uncle was not just either, but then it is much longer since he was a
+boy, so we must make excuses for him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We sent Mrs. Red House a Christmas card each. In spite of the trouble
+that her cellars had lured him into, Noel sent her a homemade one with
+an endless piece of his everlasting poetry on it, and next May she wrote
+and asked us to come and see her. _We_ try to be just, and we saw that
+it was not really her fault that Noel and H.O. had cut those electric
+wires, so we all went; but we did not take Albert Morrison, because he
+was fortunately away with an aged god-parent of his mother's who writes
+tracts at Tunbridge Wells.
+
+The garden was all flowery and green, and Mr. and Mrs. Red House were
+nice and jolly, and we had a distinguished and first-class time.
+
+But would you believe it?--that boxish thing in the cellar, that H.O.
+wanted them to make a rabbit-hutch of--well, Mr. Red House had cleaned
+it and mended it, and Mrs. Red House took us up to the room where it
+was, to let us look at it again. And, unbelievable to relate, it turned
+out to have rockers, and some one in dark, bygone ages seems, for
+reasons unknown to the present writer, to have wasted no end of
+carpentry and carving on it, just to make it into a _Cradle_. And what
+is more, since we were there last Mr. and Mrs. Red House had succeeded
+in obtaining a small but quite alive baby to put in it.
+
+I suppose they thought it was wilful waste to have a cradle and no baby
+to use it. But it could so easily have been used for something else. It
+would have made a ripping rabbit-hutch, and babies are far more trouble
+than rabbits to keep, and not nearly so profitable, I believe.
+
+
+
+
+_THE TURK IN CHAINS; OR, RICHARD'S REVENGE_
+
+
+THE morning dawned in cloudless splendour. The sky was a pale cobalt
+colour, as in pictures of Swiss scenery. The sun shone brightly, and all
+the green things in the garden sparkled in the bewitching rays of the
+monarch of the skies.
+
+The author of this does not like to read much about the weather in
+books, but he is obliged to put this piece in because it is true; and it
+is a thing that does not very often happen in the middle of January. In
+fact, I never remember the weather being at all like that in the winter
+except on that one day.
+
+Of course we all went into the garden directly after brekker. (PS.--I
+have said green things: perhaps you think that is a _lapsus lazuli_, or
+slip of the tongue, and that there are not any green things in the
+winter. But there are. And not just evergreens either. Wallflowers and
+pansies and snapdragons and primroses, and lots of things, keep green
+all the year unless it's too frosty. Live and learn.)
+
+And it was so warm we were able to sit in the summer-house. The birds
+were singing like mad. Perhaps they thought it was springtime. Or
+perhaps they always sing when they see the sun, without paying attention
+to dates.
+
+And now, when all his brothers and sisters were sitting on the rustic
+seats in the summer-house, the far-sighted Oswald suddenly saw that now
+was the moment for him to hold that council he had been wanting to hold
+for some time.
+
+So he stood in the door of the summer-house, in case any of the others
+should suddenly remember that they wanted to be in some other place. And
+he said--
+
+"I say. About that council I want to hold."
+
+And Dicky replied: "Well, what about it?"
+
+So then Oswald explained all over again that we had been Treasure
+Seekers, and we had been Would-be-Goods, and he thought it was time we
+were something else.
+
+"Being something else makes you think of things," he said at the end of
+all the other things he said.
+
+"Yes," said H.O., yawning, without putting up his hand, which is not
+manners, and we told him so. "But _I_ can think of things without being
+other things. Look how I thought about being a clown, and going to
+Rome."
+
+"I shouldn't think you would want us to remember _that_," said Dora. And
+indeed Father had not been pleased with H.O. about that affair. But
+Oswald never encourages Dora to nag, so he said patiently--
+
+"Yes, you think of things you'd much better not have thought of. Now my
+idea is let's each say what sort of a society we shall make ourselves
+into--like we did when we were Treasure Seekers--about the different
+ways to look for it, I mean. Let's hold our tongues (no, not with your
+dirty fingers, H.O., old chap; hold it with your teeth if you must hold
+it with something)--let's hold our tongues for a bit, and then all say
+what we've thought of--in ages," the thoughtful boy added hastily, so
+that every one should not speak at once when we had done holding our
+tongues.
+
+So we were all silent, and the birds sang industriously among the
+leafless trees of our large sunny garden in beautiful Blackheath. (The
+author is sorry to see he is getting poetical. It shall not happen
+again, and it _was_ an extra fine day, really, and the birds did sing, a
+fair treat.)
+
+When three long minutes had elapsed themselves by the hands of Oswald's
+watch, which always keeps perfect time for three or four days after he
+has had it mended, he closed the watch and observed--
+
+"Time! Go ahead, Dora."
+
+Dora went ahead in the following remarks:
+
+"I've thought as hard as I can, and nothing will come into my head
+except--
+
+          "'Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.'
+
+Don't you think we might try to find some new ways to be good in?"
+
+"No, you don't!" "I bar that!" came at once from the mouths of Dicky and
+Oswald.
+
+"You don't come that over us twice," Dicky added. And Oswald eloquently
+said, "No more Would-be-Goods, thank you, Dora."
+
+Dora said, well, she couldn't think of anything else. And she didn't
+expect Oswald had thought of anything better.
+
+"Yes, I have," replied her brother. "What I think is that we don't
+_know_ half enough."
+
+"If you mean extra swat," said Alice; "I've more homers than I care for
+already, thank you."
+
+"I do not mean swat," rejoined the experienced Oswald. "I want to know
+all about real things, not booky things. If you kids had known about
+electric bells you wouldn't have----" Oswald stopped, and then said, "I
+won't say any more, because Father says a gentleman does not support his
+arguments with personal illusions to other people's faults and follies."
+
+"Faults and follies yourself," said H.O. The girls restored peace, and
+Oswald went on--
+
+"Let us seek to grow wiser, and to teach each other."
+
+"_I_ bar that," said H.O. "I don't want Oswald and Dicky always on to me
+and call it teaching."
+
+"We might call the society the Would-be-Wisers," said Oswald hastily.
+
+"It's not so dusty," said Dicky; "let's go on to the others before we
+decide."
+
+"You're next yourself," said Alice.
+
+"Oh, so I am," remarked Dicky, trying to look surprised. "Well, my idea
+is let's be a sort of Industrious Society of Beavers, and make a solemn
+vow and covenant to make something every day. We might call it the
+Would-be-Clevers."
+
+"It would be the Too-clever-by-half's before we'd done with it," said
+Oswald.
+
+And Alice said, "We couldn't always make things that would be any good,
+and then we should have to do something that wasn't any good, and that
+would be rot. Yes, I know it's my turn--H.O., you'll kick the table to
+pieces if you go on like that. Do, for goodness' sake, keep your feet
+still. The only thing I can think of is a society called the
+Would-be-Boys."
+
+"With you and Dora for members."
+
+"And Noel--poets aren't boys exactly," said H.O.
+
+"If you don't shut up you shan't be in it at all," said Alice, putting
+her arm round Noel. "No; I meant us all to be in it--only you boys are
+not to keep saying we're only girls, and let us do everything the same
+as you boys do."
+
+"I don't want to be a boy, thank you," said Dora, "not when I see how
+they behave. H.O., _do_ stop sniffing and use your handkerchief. Well,
+take mine, then."
+
+It was now Noel's turn to disclose his idea, which proved most awful.
+
+"Let's be Would-be-Poets," he said, "and solemnly vow and convenient to
+write one piece of poetry a day as long as we live."
+
+Most of us were dumb at the dreadful thought. But Alice said--
+
+"That would never do, Noel dear, because you're the only one of us who's
+clever enough to do it."
+
+So Noel's detestable and degrading idea was shelved without Oswald
+having to say anything that would have made the youthful poet weep.
+
+"I suppose you don't mean me to say what I thought of," said H.O., "but
+I shall. I think you ought all to be in a Would-be-Kind Society, and vow
+solemn convents and things not to be down on your younger brother."
+
+We explained to him at once that _he_ couldn't be in that, because he
+hadn't got a younger brother.
+
+"And you may think yourself lucky you haven't," Dicky added.
+
+The ingenious and felicitous Oswald was just going to begin about the
+council all over again, when the portable form of our Indian uncle came
+stoutly stumping down the garden path under the cedars.
+
+"Hi, brigands!" he cried in his cheerful unclish manner. "Who's on for
+the Hippodrome this bright day?"
+
+And instantly we all were. Even Oswald--because after all you can have
+a council any day, but Hippodromes are not like that.
+
+[Illustration: "HI, BRIGANDS!" HE CRIED.]
+
+We got ready like the whirlwind of the desert for quickness, and started
+off with our kind uncle, who has lived so long in India that he is much
+more warm-hearted than you would think to look at him.
+
+Half-way to the station Dicky remembered his patent screw for working
+ships with. He had been messing with it in the bath while he was waiting
+for Oswald to have done plunging cleanly in the basin. And in the
+desert-whirlwinding he had forgotten to take it out. So now he ran back,
+because he knew how its cardboardiness would turn to pulp if it was
+left.
+
+"I'll catch you up," he cried.
+
+The uncle took the tickets and the train came in and still Dicky had not
+caught us up.
+
+"Tiresome boy!" said the uncle; "you don't want to miss the
+beginning--eh, what? Ah, here he comes!" The uncle got in, and so did
+we, but Dicky did not see the uncle's newspaper which Oswald waved, and
+he went running up and down the train looking for us instead of just
+getting in anywhere sensibly, as Oswald would have done. When the train
+began to move he did try to open a carriage door but it stuck, and the
+train went faster, and just as he got it open a large heavy porter
+caught him by the collar and pulled him off the train, saying--
+
+"Now, young shaver, no susansides on this ere line, if _you_ please."
+
+Dicky hit the porter, but his fury was vain. Next moment the train had
+passed away, and us in it. Dicky had no money, and the uncle had all the
+tickets in the pocket of his fur coat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am not going to tell you anything about the Hippodrome because the
+author feels that it was a trifle beastly of us to have enjoyed it as
+much as we did considering Dicky. We tried not to talk about it before
+him when we got home, but it was very difficult--especially the
+elephants.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I suppose he spent an afternoon of bitter thoughts after he had told
+that porter what he thought of him, which took some time, and the
+station-master interfered in the end.
+
+When we got home he was all right with us. He had had time to see it was
+not our faults, whatever he thought at the time.
+
+He refused to talk about it. Only he said--
+
+"I'm going to take it out of that porter. You leave me alone. I shall
+think of something presently."
+
+"Revenge is very wrong," said Dora; but even Alice asked her kindly to
+dry up. We all felt that it was simply piffle to talk copy-book to one
+so disappointed as our unfortunate brother.
+
+"It _is_ wrong, though," said Dora.
+
+"Wrong be blowed!" said Dicky, snorting; "who began it I should like to
+know! The station's a beastly awkward place to take it out of any one
+in. I wish I knew where he lived."
+
+"_I_ know _that_," said Noel. "I've known it a long time--before
+Christmas, when we were going to the Moat House."
+
+"Well, what is it, then?" asked Dicky savagely.
+
+"Don't bite his head off," remarked Alice. "Tell us about it, Noel. How
+do you know?"
+
+"It was when you were weighing yourselves on the weighing machine. I
+didn't because my weight isn't worth being weighed for. And there was a
+heap of hampers and turkeys and hares and things, and there was a label
+on a turkey and brown-paper parcel; and that porter that you hate so
+said to the other porter----"
+
+"Oh, hurry up, do!" said Dicky.
+
+"I won't tell you at all if you bully me," said Noel, and Alice had to
+coax him before he would go on.
+
+"Well, he looked at the label and said, 'Little mistake here,
+Bill--wrong address; ought to be 3, Abel Place, eh?'
+
+"And the other one looked, and he said, 'Yes; it's got your name right
+enough. Fine turkey, too, and his chains in the parcel. Pity they ain't
+more careful about addressing things, eh?' So when they had done
+laughing about it I looked at the label and it said, 'James Johnson, 8,
+Granville Park.' So I knew it was 3, Abel Place, he lived at, and his
+name was James Johnson."
+
+"Good old Sherlock Holmes!" said Oswald.
+
+"You won't really _hurt_ him," said Noel, "will you? Not Corsican
+revenge with knives, or poisoned bowls? I wouldn't do more than a good
+booby-trap, if I was you."
+
+When Noel said the word "booby-trap," we all saw a strange, happy look
+come over Dicky's face. It is called a far-away look, I believe, and you
+can see it in the picture of a woman cuddling a photograph-album with
+her hair down, that is in all the shops, and they call it "The Soul's
+Awakening."
+
+Directly Dicky's soul had finished waking up he shut his teeth together
+with a click. Then he said, "I've got it."
+
+Of course we all knew that.
+
+"Any one who thinks revenge is wrong is asked to leave _now_."
+
+Dora said he was very unkind, and did he really want to turn her out?
+
+"There's a jolly good fire in Father's study," he said. "No, I'm not
+waxy with you, but I'm going to have my revenge, and I don't want you to
+do anything you thought wrong. You'd only make no end of a fuss
+afterwards."
+
+"Well, it _is_ wrong, so I'll go," said Dora. "Don't say I didn't warn
+you, that's all!"
+
+And she went.
+
+Then Dicky said, "Now, any more conscious objectors?"
+
+And when no one replied he went on: "It was you saying 'Booby-trap' gave
+me the idea. His name's James Johnson, is it? And he said the things
+were addressed wrong, did he? Well, _I'll_ send him a Turkey-and-chains."
+
+"A Turk in chains," said Noel, growing owley-eyed at the thought--"a
+_live_ Turk--or--no, not a dead one, Dicky?"
+
+"The Turk I'm going to send won't be a live one nor yet a dead one."
+
+"How horrible! _Half_ dead. That's worse than anything," and Noel became
+so green in the face that Alice told Dicky to stop playing the goat, and
+tell us what his idea really was.
+
+"Don't you see _yet_?" he cried; "_I_ saw it directly."
+
+"I daresay," said Oswald; "it's easy to see your own idea. Drive ahead."
+
+"Well, I'm going to get a hamper and pack it full of parcels and put a
+list of them on the top--beginning Turk-and-chains, and send it to
+Mister James Johnson, and when he opens the parcels there'll be nothing
+inside."
+
+"There must be something, you know," said H.O., "or the parcels won't be
+any shape except flatness."
+
+"Oh, there'll be _something_ right enough," was the bitter reply of the
+one who had not been to the Hippodrome, "but it won't be the sort of
+something he'll expect it to be. Let's do it now. I'll get a hamper."
+
+[Illustration: IT WAS RATHER DIFFICULT TO GET ANYTHING THE SHAPE OF A
+TURKEY.]
+
+He got a big one out of the cellar and four empty bottles with their
+straw cases. We filled the bottles with black ink and water, and red
+ink and water, and soapy water, and water plain. And we put them down on
+the list--
+
+          1 bottle of port wine.
+          1 bottle of sherry wine.
+          1 bottle of sparkling champagne.
+          1 bottle of rum.
+
+The rest of the things we put on the list were--
+
+          1 turkey-and-chains.
+          2 pounds of chains.
+          1 plum-pudding.
+          4 pounds of mince-pies.
+          2 pounds of almonds and raisins.
+          1 box of figs.
+          1 bottle of French plums.
+          1 large cake.
+
+And we made up parcels to look outside as if their inside was full of
+the delicious attributes described in the list. It was rather difficult
+to get anything the shape of a turkey but with coals and crushed
+newspapers and firewood we did it, and when it was done up with lots of
+string and the paper artfully squeezed tight to the firewood to look
+like the Turk's legs it really was almost lifelike in its deceivingness.
+The chains, or sausages, we did with dusters--and not clean ones--rolled
+tight, and the paper moulded gently to their forms. The plum-pudding was
+a newspaper ball. The mince-pies were newspapers too, and so were the
+almonds and raisins. The box of figs was a real fig-box with cinders
+and ashes in it damped to keep them from rattling about. The French-plum
+bottle was real too. It had newspaper soaked in ink in it, and the cake
+was half a muff-box of Dora's done up very carefully and put at the
+bottom of the hamper. Inside the muff-box we put a paper with--
+
+"Revenge is not wrong when the other people begin. It was you began, and
+now you are jolly well served out."
+
+We packed all the bottles and parcels into the hamper, and put the list
+on the very top, pinned to the paper that covered the false breast of
+the imitation Turk.
+
+Dicky wanted to write--"From an unknown friend," but we did not think
+that was fair, considering how Dicky felt.
+
+So at last we put--"From one who does not wish to sign his name."
+
+And that was true, at any rate.
+
+Dicky and Oswald lugged the hamper down to the shop that has Carter
+Paterson's board outside.
+
+"I vote we don't pay the carriage," said Dicky, but that was perhaps
+because he was still so very angry about being pulled off the train.
+Oswald had not had it done to him, so he said that we ought to pay the
+carriage. And he was jolly glad afterwards that this honourable feeling
+had arisen in his young bosom, and that he had jolly well made Dicky let
+it rise in his.
+
+We paid the carriage. It was one-and-five-pence, but Dicky said it was
+cheap for a high-class revenge like this, and after all it was his money
+the carriage was paid with.
+
+So then we went home and had another go in of grub--because tea had been
+rather upset by Dicky's revenge.
+
+The people where we left the hamper told us that it would be delivered
+next day. So next morning we gloated over the thought of the sell that
+porter was in for, and Dicky was more deeply gloating than any one.
+
+"I expect it's got there by now," he said at dinner-time; "it's a first
+class booby-trap; what a sell for him! He'll read the list and then
+he'll take out one parcel after another till he comes to the cake. It
+_was_ a ripping idea! I'm glad I thought of it!"
+
+"I'm not," said Noel suddenly. "I wish you hadn't--I wish we hadn't. I
+know just exactly what he feels like now. He feels as if he'd like to
+_kill_ you for it, and I daresay he would if you hadn't been a craven,
+white-feathered skulker and not signed your name."
+
+It was a thunderbolt in our midst Noel behaving like this. It made
+Oswald feel a sick inside feeling that perhaps Dora had been right. She
+sometimes is--and Oswald hates this feeling.
+
+Dicky was so surprised at the unheard-of cheek of his young brother that
+for a moment he was speechless, and before he got over his
+speechlessness Noel was crying and wouldn't have any more dinner. Alice
+spoke in the eloquent language of the human eye and begged Dicky to look
+over it this once. And he replied by means of the same useful organ that
+he didn't care what a silly kid thought. So no more was said. When Noel
+had done crying he began to write a piece of poetry and kept at it all
+the afternoon. Oswald only saw just the beginning. It was called
+
+                 "THE DISAPPOINTED PORTER'S FURY
+             _Supposed to be by the Porter himself_,"
+
+and it began:--
+
+          "When first I opened the hamper fair
+           And saw the parcel inside there
+           My heart rejoiced like dry gardens when
+           It rains--but soon I changed and then
+           I seized my trusty knife and bowl
+           Of poison, and said 'Upon the whole
+           I will have the life of the man
+           Or woman who thought of this wicked plan
+           To deceive a trusting porter so.
+           No noble heart would have thought of it. No.'"
+
+There were pages and pages of it. Of course it was all nonsense--the
+poetry, I mean. And yet . . . . . . (I have seen that put in books when
+the author does not want to let out all he thought at the time.)
+
+That evening at tea-time Jane came and said--
+
+"Master Dicky, there's an old aged man at the door inquiring if you live
+here."
+
+So Dicky thought it was the bootmaker perhaps; so he went out, and
+Oswald went with him, because he wanted to ask for a bit of cobbler's
+wax.
+
+But it was not the shoemaker. It was an old man, pale in the face and
+white in the hair, and he was so old that we asked him into Father's
+study by the fire, as soon as we had found out it was really Dicky he
+wanted to see.
+
+When we got him there he said--
+
+"Might I trouble you to shut the door?"
+
+This is the way a burglar or a murderer might behave, but we did not
+think he was one. He looked too old for these professions.
+
+When the door was shut, he said--
+
+"I ain't got much to say, young gemmen. It's only to ask was it you sent
+this?"
+
+He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, and it was our list.
+Oswald and Dicky looked at each other.
+
+"Did you send it?" said the old man again.
+
+So then Dicky shrugged his shoulders and said, "Yes."
+
+Oswald said, "How did you know and who are you?"
+
+The old man got whiter than ever. He pulled out a piece of paper--it was
+the greenish-grey piece we'd wrapped the Turk and chains in. And it had
+a label on it that we hadn't noticed, with Dicky's name and address on
+it. The new bat he got at Christmas had come in it.
+
+[Illustration: WHEN THE DOOR WAS SHUT HE SAID, "I AIN'T GOT MUCH TO SAY,
+YOUNG GEMMEN."]
+
+"That's how I know," said the old man. "Ah, be sure your sin will find
+you out."
+
+"But who are you, anyway!" asked Oswald again.
+
+"Oh, _I_ ain't nobody in particular," he said. "I'm only the father of
+the pore gell as you took in with your cruel, deceitful, lying tricks.
+Oh, you may look uppish, young sir, but I'm here to speak my mind, and
+I'll speak it if I die for it. So now!"
+
+"But we didn't send it to a girl," said Dicky. "We wouldn't do such a
+thing. We sent it for a--for a----" I think he tried to say for a joke,
+but he couldn't with the fiery way the old man looked at him--"for a
+sell, to pay a porter out for stopping me getting into a train when it
+was just starting, and I missed going to the Circus with the others."
+Oswald was glad Dicky was not too proud to explain to the old man. He
+was rather afraid he might be.
+
+"I never sent it to a girl," he said again.
+
+"Ho," said the aged one. "An' who told you that there porter was a
+single man? It was his wife--my pore gell--as opened your low parcel,
+and she sees your lying list written out so plain on top, and, sez she
+to me, 'Father,' says she, 'ere's a friend in need! All these good
+things for us, and no name signed, so that we can't even say thank you.
+I suppose it's some one knows how short we are just now, and hardly
+enough to eat with coals the price they are,' says she to me. 'I do call
+that kind and Christian,' says she, 'and I won't open not one of them
+lovely parcels till Jim comes 'ome,' she says, 'and we'll enjoy the
+pleasures of it together, all three of us,' says she. And when he came
+home--we opened of them lovely parcels. She's a cryin' her eyes out at
+home now, and Jim, he only swore once, and I don't blame him for that
+one--though never an evil speaker myself--and then he set himself down
+on a chair and puts his elbows on it to hide his face like--and 'Emmie,'
+says he, 'so help me. I didn't know I'd got an enemy in the world. I
+always thought we'd got nothing but good friends,' says he. An' I says
+nothing, but I picks up the paper, and comes here to your fine house to
+tell you what I think of you. It's a mean, low-down, dirty, nasty trick,
+and no gentleman wouldn't a-done it. So that's all--and it's off my
+chest, and good-night to you gentlemen both!"
+
+He turned to go out. I shall not tell you what Oswald felt, except that
+he did hope Dicky felt the same, and would behave accordingly. And Dicky
+did, and Oswald was both pleased and surprised.
+
+Dicky said--
+
+"Oh, I say, stop a minute. I didn't think of your poor girl."
+
+"And her youngest but a bare three weeks old," said the old man angrily.
+
+"I didn't, on my honour I didn't think of anything but paying the porter
+out."
+
+"He was only a doing of his duty," the old man said.
+
+"Well, I beg your pardon and his," said Dicky; "it was ungentlemanly,
+and I'm very sorry. And I'll try to make it up somehow. Please make it
+up. I can't do more than own I'm sorry. I wish I hadn't--there!"
+
+"Well," said the old man slowly, "we'll leave it at that. Next time
+p'r'aps you'll think a bit who it's going to be as'll get the benefit of
+your payings out."
+
+Dicky made him shake hands, and Oswald did the same.
+
+Then we had to go back to the others and tell them. It was hard. But it
+was ginger-ale and seed-cake compared to having to tell Father, which
+was what it came to in the end. For we all saw, though Noel happened to
+be the one to say it first, that the only way we could really make it up
+to James Johnson and his poor girl and his poor girl's father, and the
+baby that was only three weeks old, was to send them a hamper with all
+the things in it--_real_ things, that we had put on the list in the
+revengeful hamper. And as we had only six-and-sevenpence among us we had
+to tell Father. Besides, you feel better inside when you have. He talked
+to us about it a bit, but he is a good Father and does not jaw unduly.
+He advanced our pocket-money to buy a real large Turk-and-chains. And he
+gave us six bottles of port wine, because he thought that would be
+better for the poor girl who had the baby than rum or sherry or even
+sparkling champagne.
+
+We were afraid to send the hamper by Carter Pat. for fear they should
+think it was another Avenging Take-in. And that was one reason why we
+took it ourselves in a cab. The other reason was that we wanted to see
+them open the hamper, and another was that we wanted--at least Dicky
+wanted--to have it out man to man with the porter and his wife, and tell
+them himself how sorry he was.
+
+So we got our gardener to find out secretly when that porter was off
+duty, and when we knew the times we went to his house at one of them.
+
+Then Dicky got out of the cab and went in and said what he had to say.
+And then we took in the hamper.
+
+And the old man and his daughter and the porter were most awfully decent
+to us, and the porter's wife said, "Lor! let bygones be bygones is what
+_I_ say! Why, we wouldn't never have had this handsome present but for
+the other. Say no more about it, sir, and thank you kindly, I'm sure."
+
+And we have been friends with them ever since.
+
+We were short of pocket-money for some time, but Oswald does not
+complain, though the Turk was Dicky's idea entirely. Yet Oswald is just,
+and he owns that he helped as much as he could in packing the Hamper of
+the Avenger. Dora paid her share, too, though she wasn't in it. The
+author does not shrink from owning that this was very decent of Dora.
+
+This is all the story of--
+
+          THE TURK IN CHAINS; or,
+          RICHARD'S REVENGE.
+
+(His name is really Richard, the same as Father's. We only call him
+Dicky for short.)
+
+
+
+
+_THE GOLDEN GONDOLA_
+
+
+ALBERT'S uncle is tremendously clever, and he writes books. I have told
+how he fled to Southern shores with a lady who is rather nice. His
+having to marry her was partly our fault, but we did not mean to do it,
+and we were very sorry for what we had done. But afterwards we thought
+perhaps it was all for the best, because if left alone he might have
+married widows, or old German governesses, or Murdstone aunts, like
+Daisy and Denny have, instead of the fortunate lady that we were the
+cause of his being married by.
+
+The wedding was just before Christmas, and we were all there. And then
+they went to Rome for a period of time that is spoken of in books as the
+honeymoon. You know that H.O., my youngest brother, tried to go too,
+disguised as the contents of a dress-basket--but was betrayed and
+brought back.
+
+Conversation often takes place about the things you like, and we often
+spoke of Albert's uncle.
+
+One day we had a ripping game of
+hide-and-seek-all-over-the-house-and-all-the-lights-out, sometimes
+called devil-in-the-dark, and never to be played except when your father
+and uncle are out, because of the screams which the strongest cannot
+suppress when caught by "he" in unexpectedness and total darkness. The
+girls do not like this game so much as we do. But it is only fair for
+them to play it. We have more than once played doll's tea-parties to
+please them.
+
+Well, when the game was over we were panting like dogs on the hearthrug
+in front of the common-room fire, and H.O. said--
+
+"I wish Albert's uncle had been here; he does enjoy it so."
+
+Oswald has sometimes thought Albert's uncle only played to please us.
+But H.O. may be right.
+
+"I wonder if they often play it in Rome," H.O. went on. "That post-card
+he sent us with the Colly-whats-its-name-on--you know, the round place
+with the arches. They could have ripping games there----"
+
+"It's not much fun with only two," said Dicky.
+
+"Besides," Dora said, "when people are first married they always sit in
+balconies and look at the moon, or else at each other's eyes."
+
+"They ought to know what their eyes look like by this time," said Dicky.
+
+"I believe they sit and write poetry about their eyes all day, and only
+look at each other when they can't think of the rhymes," said Noel.
+
+"I don't believe she knows how, but I'm certain they read aloud to each
+other out of the poetry books we gave them for wedding presents," Alice
+said.
+
+"It would be beastly ungrateful if they didn't, especially with their
+backs all covered with gold like they are," said H.O.
+
+"About those books," said Oswald slowly, now for the first time joining
+in what was being said; "of course it was jolly decent of Father to get
+such ripping presents for us to give them. But I've sometimes wished
+we'd given Albert's uncle a really truly present that we'd chosen
+ourselves and bought with our own chink."
+
+"I wish we could have _done_ something for him," Noel said; "I'd have
+killed a dragon for him as soon as look at it, and Mrs. Albert's uncle
+could have been the Princess, and I would have let him have her."
+
+"Yes," said Dicky; "and we just gave rotten books. But it's no use
+grizzling over it now. It's all over, and he won't get married again
+while she's alive."
+
+This was true, for we live in England which is a morganatic empire where
+more than one wife at a time is not allowed. In the glorious East he
+might have married again and again and we could have made it all right
+about the wedding present.
+
+"I wish he was a Turk for some things," said Oswald, and explained why.
+
+"I don't think _she_ would like it," said Dora.
+
+Oswald explained that if he was a Turk, she would be a Turquoise (I
+think that is the feminine Turk), and so would be used to lots of wives
+and be lonely without them.
+
+And just then . . . You know what they say about talking of angels, and
+hearing their wings? (There is another way of saying this, but it is not
+polite, as the present author knows.)
+
+Well, just then the postman came, and of course we rushed out, and among
+Father's dull letters we found one addressed to "The Bastables Junior."
+It had an Italian stamp--not at all a rare one, and it was a poor
+specimen too, and the post-mark was _Roma_.
+
+That is what the Italians have got into the habit of calling Rome. I
+have been told that they put the "a" instead of the "e" because they
+like to open their mouths as much as possible in that sunny and
+agreeable climate.
+
+The letter was jolly--it was just like hearing him talk (I mean reading,
+not hearing, of course, but reading him talk is not grammar, and if you
+can't be both sensible and grammarical, it is better to be senseless).
+
+"Well, kiddies," it began, and it went on to tell us about things he had
+seen, not dull pictures and beastly old buildings, but amusing incidents
+of comic nature. The Italians must be extreme Jugginses for the kind of
+things he described to be of such everyday occurring. Indeed, Oswald
+could hardly believe about the soda-water label that the Italian
+translated for the English traveller so that it said, "To distrust of
+the Mineral Waters too fountain-like foaming. They spread the shape."
+
+Near the end of the letter came this:--
+
+"You remember the chapter of 'The Golden Gondola' that I wrote for the
+_People's Pageant_ just before I had the honour to lead to the altar,
+&c. I mean the one that ends in the subterranean passage, with
+Geraldine's hair down, and her last hope gone, and the three villains
+stealing upon her with Venetian subtlety in their hearts and Toledo
+daggers (specially imported) in their garters? I didn't care much for it
+myself, you remember. I think I must have been thinking of other things
+when I wrote it. But you, I recollect, consoled me by refusing to regard
+it as other than 'ripping.' 'Clinking' was, as I recall it, Oswald's
+consolatory epithet. You'll weep with me, I feel confident, when you
+hear that my Editor does not share your sentiments. He writes me that it
+is not up to my usual form. He fears that the public, &c., and he trusts
+that in the next chapter, &c. Let us hope that the public will, in this
+matter, take your views, and not his. Oh! for a really discerning
+public, just like you--you amiable critics! Albert's new aunt is
+leaning over my shoulder. I can't break her of the distracting habit.
+How on earth am I ever to write another line? Greetings to all from
+
+                                           "ALBERT'S UNCLE AND AUNT.
+
+"PS.--She insists on having her name put to this, but of course she
+didn't write it. I am trying to teach her to spell."
+
+"PSS.--Italian spelling, of course."
+
+"And now," cried Oswald, "I see it all!"
+
+The others didn't. They often don't when Oswald does.
+
+"Why, don't you see!" he patiently explained, for he knows that it is
+vain to be angry with people because they are not so clever as--as other
+people. "It's the direct aspiration of Fate. He wants it, does he? Well,
+he shall have it!"
+
+"What?" said everybody.
+
+"We'll be it."
+
+"_What?_" was the not very polite remark now repeated by all.
+
+"Why, his discerning public."
+
+And still they all remained quite blind to what was so clear to Oswald,
+the astute and discernful.
+
+"It will be much more useful than killing dragons," Oswald went on,
+"especially as there aren't any; and it will be a really truly wedding
+present--just what we were wishing we'd given him."
+
+The five others now fell on Oswald and rolled him under the table and
+sat on his head so that he had to speak loudly and plainly.
+
+[Illustration: THE FIVE OTHERS]
+
+"All right! I'll tell you--in words of one syllable if you like. Let go,
+I say!" And when he had rolled out with the others and the tablecloth
+that caught on H.O.'s boots and the books and Dora's workbox, and the
+glass of paint-water that came down with it, he said--
+
+"We will _be_ the public. We will all write to the editor of the
+_People's Pageant_ and tell him what we think about the Geraldine
+chapter. Do mop up that water, Dora; it's running all under where I'm
+sitting."
+
+"Don't you think," said Dora, devoting her handkerchief and Alice's in
+the obedient way she does not always use, "that six letters, all signed
+'Bastable,' and all coming from the same house, would be
+rather--rather----"
+
+"A bit too thick? Yes," said Alice; "but of course we'd have all
+different names and addresses."
+
+"We might as well do it thoroughly," said Dicky, "and send three or four
+different letters each."
+
+"And have them posted in different parts of London. Right oh!" remarked
+Oswald.
+
+"_I_ shall write a piece of poetry for mine," said Noel.
+
+"They ought all to be on different kinds of paper," said Oswald. "Let's
+go out and get the paper directly after tea."
+
+We did, but we could only get fifteen different kinds of paper and
+envelopes, though we went to every shop in the village.
+
+At the first shop, when we said, "Please we want a penn'orth of paper
+and envelopes of each of all the different kinds you keep," the lady of
+the shop looked at us thinly over blue-rimmed spectacles and said, "What
+for?"
+
+And H.O. said, "To write unonymous letters."
+
+"Anonymous letters are very wrong," the lady said, and she wouldn't sell
+us any paper at all.
+
+But at the other places we did not say what it was for, and they sold it
+us. There were bluey and yellowy and grey and white kinds, and some was
+violetish with violets on it, and some pink, with roses. The girls took
+the florivorous ones, which Oswald thinks are unmanly for any but girls,
+but you excuse their using it. It seems natural to them to mess about
+like that.
+
+We wrote the fifteen letters, disguising our handwritings as much as we
+could. It was not easy. Oswald tried to write one of them with his left
+hand, but the consequences were almost totally unreadable. Besides, if
+any one could have read it, they would only have thought it was written
+in an asylum for the insane, the writing was so delirious. So he chucked
+it.
+
+Noel was only allowed to write one poem. It began--
+
+          "Oh, Geraldine! Oh, Geraldine!
+           You are the loveliest heroine!
+           I never read about one before
+           That made me want to write more
+           Poetry. And your Venetian eyes,
+           They must have been an awful size;
+           And black and blue, and like your hair,
+           And your nose and chin were a perfect pair."
+
+and so on for ages.
+
+The other letters were all saying what a beautiful chapter "Beneath the
+Doge's Home" was, and how we liked it better than the other chapters
+before, and how we hoped the next would be like it. We found out when
+all too late that H.O. had called it the "Dog's Home." But we hoped this
+would pass unnoticed among all the others. We read the reviews of books
+in the old _Spectators_ and _Athenaeums_, and put in the words they say
+there about other people's books. We said we thought that chapter about
+Geraldine and the garters was "subtle" and "masterly" and
+"inevitable"--that it had an "old-world charm," and was "redolent of the
+soil." We said, too, that we had "read it with breathless interest from
+cover to cover," and that it had "poignant pathos and a convincing
+realism," and the "fine flower of delicate sentiment," besides much
+other rot that the author can't remember.
+
+When all the letters were done we addressed them and stamped them and
+licked them down, and then we got different people to post them. Our
+under-gardener, who lives in Greenwich, and the other under-gardener,
+who lives in Lewisham, and the servants on their evenings out, which
+they spend in distant spots like Plaistow and Grove Park--each had a
+letter to post. The piano-tuner was a great catch--he lived in Highgate;
+and the electric-bell man was Lambeth. So we got rid of all the letters,
+and watched the post for a reply. We watched for a week, but no answer
+came.
+
+You think, perhaps, that we were duffers to watch for a reply when we
+had signed all the letters with fancy names like Daisy Dolman, Everard
+St. Maur, and Sir Cholmondely Marjoribanks, and put fancy addresses on
+them, like Chatsworth House, Loampit Vale, and The Bungalow, Eaton
+Square. But we were not such idiots as you think, dear reader, and you
+are not so extra clever as you think, either. We had written _one_
+letter (it had the grandest _Spectator_ words in it) on our own
+letter-paper, with the address on the top and the uncle's coat-of-arms
+outside the envelope. Oswald's real own name was signed to this letter,
+and this was the one we looked for the answer to. See?
+
+But that answer did not come. And when three long days had passed away
+we all felt most awfully stale about it. Knowing the great good we had
+done for Albert's uncle made our interior feelings very little better,
+if at all.
+
+And on the fourth day Oswald spoke up and said what was in everybody's
+inside heart. He said--
+
+"This is futile rot. I vote we write and ask that editor why he doesn't
+answer letters."
+
+"He wouldn't answer that one any more than he did the other," said Noel.
+"Why should he? He knows you can't do anything to him for not."
+
+"Why shouldn't we go and ask him?" H.O. said. "He couldn't not answer us
+if we was all there, staring him in the face."
+
+"I don't suppose he'd see you," said Dora; "and it's 'were,' not 'was.'"
+
+"The other editor did when I got the guinea for my beautiful poems,"
+Noel reminded us.
+
+"Yes," said the thoughtful Oswald; "but then it doesn't matter how young
+you are when you're just a poetry-seller. But we're the discerning
+public now, and he'd think we ought to be grown up. I say, Dora, suppose
+you rigged yourself up in old Blakie's things. You'd look quite twenty
+or thirty."
+
+Dora looked frightened, and said she thought we'd better not.
+
+But Alice said, "Well, I will, then. I don't care. I'm as tall as Dora.
+But I won't go alone. Oswald, you'll have to dress up old and come too.
+It's not much to do for Albert's uncle's sake."
+
+"You know you'll enjoy it," said Dora, and she may have wished that she
+did not so often think that we had better not. However, the dye was now
+cast, and the remainder of this adventure was doomed to be coloured by
+the dye we now prepared. (This is an allegory. It means we had burned
+our boats. And that is another.)
+
+We decided to do the deed next day, and during the evening Dicky and
+Oswald went out and bought a grey beard and moustache, which was the
+only thing we could think of to disguise the manly and youthful form of
+the bold Oswald into the mature shape of a grown-up and discerning
+public character.
+
+Meanwhile, the girls made tiptoe and brigand-like excursions into Miss
+Blake's room (she is the housekeeper) and got several things. Among
+others, a sort of undecided thing like part of a wig, which Miss Blake
+wears on Sundays. Jane, our housemaid, says it is called a
+"transformation," and that duchesses wear them.
+
+We had to be very secret about the dressing-up that night, and to put
+Blakie's things all back when they had been tried on.
+
+Dora did Alice's hair. She twisted up what little hair Alice has got by
+natural means, and tied on a long tail of hair that was Miss Blake's
+too. Then she twisted that up, bun-like, with many hairpins. Then the
+wiglet, or transformation, was plastered over the front part, and Miss
+Blake's Sunday hat, which is of a very brisk character, with half a blue
+bird in it, was placed on top of everything. There were several
+petticoats used, and a brown dress and some stockings and hankies to
+stuff it out where it was too big. A black jacket and crimson tie
+completed the picture. We thought Alice would do.
+
+Then Oswald went out of the room and secretly assumed his dark disguise.
+But when he came in with the beard on, and a hat of Father's, the others
+were not struck with admiration and respect, like he meant them to be.
+They rolled about, roaring with laughter, and when he crept into Miss
+Blake's room and turned up the gas a bit, and looked in her long glass,
+he owned that they were right and that it was no go. He is tall for his
+age, but that beard made him look like some horrible dwarf; and his hair
+being so short added to everything. Any idiot could have seen that the
+beard had not originally flourished where it now was, but had been
+transplanted from some other place of growth.
+
+And when he laughed, which now became necessary, he really did look most
+awful. He has read of beards wagging, but he never saw it before.
+
+While he was looking at himself the girls had thought of a new idea.
+
+But Oswald had an inside presentiment that made it some time before he
+could even consent to listen to it. But at last, when the others
+reminded him that it was a noble act, and for the good of Albert's
+uncle, he let them explain the horrid scheme in all its lurid parts.
+
+It was this: That Oswald should consent to be disguised in women's
+raiments and go with Alice to see the Editor.
+
+No man ever wants to be a woman, and it was a bitter thing for Oswald's
+pride, but at last he consented. He is glad he is not a girl. You have
+no idea what it is like to wear petticoats, especially long ones. I
+wonder that ladies continue to endure their miserable existences. The
+top parts of the clothes, too, seemed to be too tight and too loose in
+the wrong places. Oswald's head, also, was terribly in the way. He had
+no wandering hairs to fasten transformations on to, even if Miss Blake
+had had another one, which was not the case. But the girls remembered a
+governess they had once witnessed whose hair was brief as any boy's, so
+they put a large hat, with a very tight elastic behind, on to Oswald's
+head, just as it was, and then with a tickly, pussyish, featherish thing
+round his neck, hanging wobblily down in long ends, he looked more
+young-lady-like than he will ever feel.
+
+Some courage was needed for the start next day. Things look so different
+in the daylight.
+
+"Remember Lord Nithsdale coming out of the Tower," said Alice. "Think of
+the great cause and be brave," and she tied his neck up.
+
+"I'm brave all right," said Oswald, "only I do feel such an ass."
+
+"I feel rather an ape myself," Alice owned, "but I've got
+three-penn'orth of peppermints to inspire us with bravery. It is called
+Dutch courage, I believe."
+
+Owing to our telling Jane we managed to get out unseen by Blakie.
+
+All the others would come, too, in their natural appearance, except that
+we made them wash their hands and faces. We happened to be flush of
+chink, so we let them come.
+
+"But if you do," Oswald said, "you must surround us in a hollow square
+of four."
+
+So they did. And we got down to the station all right. But in the train
+there were two ladies who stared, and porters and people like that came
+round the window far more than there could be any need for. Oswald's
+boots must have shown as he got in. He had forgotten to borrow a pair of
+Jane's, as he had meant to, and the ones he had on were his largest. His
+ears got hotter and hotter, and it got more and more difficult to manage
+his feet and hands. He failed to suck any courage, of any nation, from
+the peppermints.
+
+[Illustration: OSWALD SAW THE DRIVER WINK AS HE PUT HIS BOOT ON THE
+STEP, AND THE PORTER WHO WAS OPENING THE CAB DOOR WINKED BACK.]
+
+Owing to the state Oswald's ears were now in, we agreed to take a cab at
+Cannon Street. We all crammed in somehow, but Oswald saw the driver wink
+as he put his boot on the step, and the porter who was opening the cab
+door winked back, and I am sorry to say Oswald forgot that he was a
+high-born lady, and he told the porter that he had better jolly well
+stow his cheek. Then several bystanders began to try and be funny, and
+Oswald knew exactly what particular sort of fool he was being.
+
+But he bravely silenced the fierce warnings of his ears, and when we got
+to the Editor's address we sent Dick up with a large card that we had
+written on,
+
+                        "MISS DAISY DOLMAN
+                                and
+                     THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MISS
+                        ETHELTRUDA BUSTLER.
+                        On urgent business."
+
+and Oswald kept himself and Alice concealed in the cab till the return
+of the messenger.
+
+"All right; you're to go up," Dicky came back and said; "but the boy
+grinned who told me so. You'd better be jolly careful."
+
+We bolted like rabbits across the pavement and up the Editor's stairs.
+
+He was very polite. He asked us to sit down, and Oswald did. But first
+he tumbled over the front of his dress because it would get under his
+boots, and he was afraid to hold it up, not having practised doing this.
+
+"I think I have had letters from you?" said the Editor.
+
+[Illustration: HE LOOKED AT OSWALD'S BOOTS.]
+
+Alice, who looked terrible with the transformation leaning
+right-ear-ward, said yes, and that we had come to say what a fine,
+bold conception we thought the Doge's chapter was. This was what we
+had settled to say, but she needn't have burst out with it like that. I
+suppose she forgot herself. Oswald, in the agitation of his clothes,
+could say nothing. The elastic of the hat seemed to be very slowly
+slipping up the back of his head, and he knew that, if it once passed
+the bump that backs of heads are made with, the hat would spring from
+his head like an arrow from a bow. And all would be frustrated.
+
+"Yes," said the Editor; "that chapter seems to have had a great
+success--a wonderful success. I had no fewer than sixteen letters about
+it, all praising it in unmeasured terms." He looked at Oswald's boots,
+which Oswald had neglected to cover over with his petticoats. He now did
+this.
+
+"It _is_ a nice story, you know," said Alice timidly.
+
+"So it seems," the gentleman went on. "Fourteen of the sixteen letters
+bear the Blackheath postmark. The enthusiasm for the chapter would seem
+to be mainly local."
+
+Oswald would not look at Alice. He could not trust himself, with her
+looking like she did. He knew at once that only the piano-tuner and the
+electric bell man had been faithful to their trust. The others had all
+posted their letters in the pillar-box just outside our gate. They
+wanted to get rid of them as quickly as they could, I suppose.
+Selfishness is a vile quality.
+
+The author cannot deny that Oswald now wished he hadn't. The elastic was
+certainly moving, slowly, but too surely. Oswald tried to check its
+career by swelling out the bump on the back of his head, but he could
+not think of the right way to do this.
+
+"I am very pleased to see you," the Editor went on slowly, and there was
+something about the way he spoke that made Oswald think of a cat playing
+with a mouse. "Perhaps you can tell me. Are there many spiritualists in
+Blackheath? Many clairvoyants?"
+
+"Eh?" said Alice, forgetting that that is not the way to behave.
+
+"People who foretell the future?" he said.
+
+"I don't think so," said Alice. "Why?"
+
+His eye twinkled. Oswald saw he had wanted her to ask this.
+
+"Because," said the Editor, more slowly than ever, "I think there must
+be. How otherwise can we account for that chapter about the 'Doge's
+Home' being read and admired by sixteen different people before it is
+even printed. That chapter has not been printed, it has not been
+published; it will not be published till the May number of the _People's
+Pageant_. Yet in Blackheath sixteen people already appreciate its
+subtlety and its realism and all the rest of it. How do you account for
+this, Miss Daisy Dolman?"
+
+"I am the Right Honourable Etheltruda," said Alice. "At least--oh, it's
+no use going on. We are not what we seem."
+
+"Oddly enough, I inferred that at the very beginning of our interview,"
+said the Editor.
+
+Then the elastic finished slipping up Oswald's head at the back, and the
+hat leapt from his head exactly as he had known it would. He fielded it
+deftly, however, and it did not touch the ground.
+
+"Concealment," said Oswald, "is at an end."
+
+"So it appears," said the Editor. "Well, I hope next time the author of
+the 'Golden Gondola' will choose his instruments more carefully."
+
+"He didn't! We aren't!" cried Alice, and she instantly told the Editor
+everything.
+
+Concealment being at an end, Oswald was able to get at his trousers
+pocket--it did not matter now how many boots he showed--and to get out
+Albert's uncle's letter.
+
+Alice was quite eloquent, especially when the Editor had made her take
+off the hat with the blue bird, and the transformation and the tail, so
+that he could see what she really looked like. He was quite decent when
+he really understood how Albert's uncle's threatened marriage must have
+upset his brain while he was writing that chapter, and pondering on the
+dark future.
+
+He began to laugh then, and kept it up till the hour of parting.
+
+He advised Alice not to put on the transformation and the tail again to
+go home in, and she didn't.
+
+Then he said to me: "Are you in a finished state under Miss Daisy
+Dolman?" and when Oswald said, "Yes," the Editor helped him to take off
+all the womanly accoutrements, and to do them up in brown paper. And he
+lent him a cap to go home in.
+
+I never saw a man laugh more. He is an excellent sort.
+
+But no slow passage of years, however many, can ever weaken Oswald's
+memory of what those petticoats were like to walk in, and how ripping it
+was to get out of them, and have your own natural legs again.
+
+We parted from that Editor without a strain on anybody's character.
+
+He must have written to Albert's uncle, and told him all, for we got a
+letter next week. It said--
+
+          "MY DEAR KIDDIES,--Art cannot be forced. Nor can
+          Fame. May I beg you for the future to confine your
+          exertions to blowing my trumpet--or Fame's--with
+          your natural voices? Editors may be led, but they
+          won't be druv. The Right Honourable Miss
+          Etheltruda Bustler seems to have aroused a deep
+          pity for me in my Editor's heart. Let that
+          suffice. And for the future permit me, as firmly
+          as affectionately, to reiterate the assurance and
+          the advice which I have so often breathed in your
+          long young ears, '_I am not ungrateful; but I do
+          wish you would mind your own business._'"
+
+"That's just because we were found out," said Alice. "If we'd succeeded
+he'd have been sitting on the top of the pinnacle of Fame, and he would
+have owed it all to us. That would have been making him something like a
+wedding present."
+
+What we had really done was to make something very like----but the
+author is sure he has said enough.
+
+
+
+
+_THE FLYING LODGER_
+
+
+FATHER knows a man called Eustace Sandal. I do not know how to express
+his inside soul, but I have heard Father say he means well. He is a
+vegetarian and a Primitive Social Something, and an all-wooler, and
+things like that, and he is really as good as he can stick, only most
+awfully dull. I believe he eats bread and milk from choice. Well, he has
+great magnificent dreams about all the things you can do for other
+people, and he wants to distill cultivatedness into the sort of people
+who live in Model Workmen's Dwellings, and teach them to live up to
+better things. This is what he says. So he gives concerts in Camberwell,
+and places like that, and curates come from far and near, to sing about
+Bold Bandaleros and the Song of the Bow, and people who have escaped
+being curates give comic recitings, and he is sure that it does every
+one good, and "gives them glimpses of the Life Beautiful." He said that.
+Oswald heard him with his own trustworthy ears. Anyway the people enjoy
+the concerts no end, and that's the great thing.
+
+Well, he came one night, with a lot of tickets he wanted to sell, and
+Father bought some for the servants, and Dora happened to go in to get
+the gum for a kite we were making, and Mr. Sandal said, "Well, my little
+maiden, would you not like to come on Thursday evening, and share in the
+task of raising our poor brothers and sisters to the higher levels of
+culture?" So of course Dora said she would, very much. Then he explained
+about the concert, calling her "My little one," and "dear child," which
+Alice never would have borne, but Dora is not of a sensitive nature, and
+hardly minds what she is called, so long as it is not names, which she
+does not deem "dear child" and cetera to be, though Oswald would.
+
+Dora was quite excited about it, and the stranger so worked upon her
+feelings that she accepted the deep responsibility of selling tickets,
+and for a week there was no bearing her. I believe she did sell nine, to
+people in Lewisham and New Cross who knew no better. And Father bought
+tickets for all of us, and when the eventful evening dawned we went to
+Camberwell by train and tram _via_ Miss Blake (that means we shouldn't
+have been allowed to go without her).
+
+The tram ride was rather jolly, but when we got out and walked we felt
+like "Alone in London," or "Jessica's First Prayer," because Camberwell
+is a devastating region that makes you think of rickety attics with the
+wind whistling through them, or miserable cellars where forsaken
+children do wonders by pawning their relations' clothes and looking
+after the baby. It was a dampish night, and we walked on greasy mud. And
+as we walked along Alice kicked against something on the pavement, and
+it chinked, and when she picked it up it was five bob rolled up in
+newspaper.
+
+"I expect it's somebody's little all," said Alice, "and the cup was
+dashed from their lips just when they were going to joyfully spend it.
+We ought to give it to the police."
+
+But Miss Blake said no, and that we were late already, so we went on,
+and Alice held the packet in her muff throughout the concert which
+ensued. I will not tell you anything about the concert except that it
+was quite fairly jolly--you must have been to these Self-Raising
+Concerts in the course of your young lives.
+
+When it was over we reasoned with Miss Blake, and she let us go through
+the light blue paper door beside the stage and find Mr. Sandal. We
+thought he might happen to hear who had lost the five bob, and return it
+to its sorrowing family. He was in a great hurry, but he took the chink
+and said he'd let us know if anything happened. Then we went home very
+cheerful, singing bits of the comic songs a bishop's son had done in
+the concert, and little thinking what we were taking home with us.
+
+It was only a few days after this, or perhaps a week, that we all began
+to be rather cross. Alice, usually as near a brick as a girl can go, was
+the worst of the lot, and if you said what you thought of her she
+instantly began to snivel. And we all had awful colds, and our
+handkerchiefs gave out, and then our heads ached. Oswald's head was
+particularly hot, I remember, and he wanted to rest it on the backs of
+chairs or on tables--or anything steady.
+
+But why prolong the painful narrative? What we had brought home from
+Camberwell was the measles, and as soon as the grown-ups recognised the
+Grim Intruder for the fell disease it is we all went to bed, and there
+was an end of active adventure for some time.
+
+Of course, when you begin to get better there are grapes and other
+luxuries not of everyday occurrences, but while you're sniffling and
+fevering in bed, as red as a lobster and blazing hot, you are inclined
+to think it is a heavy price to pay for any concert, however raising.
+
+Mr. Sandal came to see Father the very day we all marched Bedward. He
+had found the owner of the five shillings. It was a doctor's fee, about
+to be paid by the parent of a thoroughly measly family. And if we had
+taken it to the police at once Alice would not have held it in her hand
+all through the concert--but I will not blame Blakie. She was a jolly
+good nurse, and read aloud to us with unfatiguable industry while we
+were getting better.
+
+Our having fallen victims to this disgusting complaint ended in our
+being sent to the seaside. Father could not take us himself, so we went
+to stay with a sister of Mr. Sandal's. She was like him, only more so in
+every way.
+
+The journey was very joyous. Father saw us off at Cannon Street, and we
+had a carriage to ourselves all the way, and we passed the station where
+Oswald would not like to be a porter. Rude boys at this station put
+their heads out of the window and shout, "Who's a duffer?" and things
+like that, and the porters _have_ to shout "I am!" because Higham is the
+name of the station, and porters have seldom any H's with which to
+protect themselves from this cruel joke.
+
+It was a glorious moment when the train swooped out of a tunnel and we
+looked over the downs and saw the grey-blue line that was the sea. We
+had not seen the sea since before Mother died. I believe we older ones
+all thought of that, and it made us quieter than the younger ones were.
+I do not want to forget anything, but it makes you feel empty and stupid
+when you remember some things.
+
+There was a good drive in a waggonette after we got to our station.
+There were primroses under some of the hedges, and lots of dog-violets.
+And at last we got to Miss Sandal's house. It is before you come to the
+village, and it is a little square white house. There is a big old
+windmill at the back of it. It is not used any more for grinding corn,
+but fishermen keep their nets in it.
+
+Miss Sandal came out of the green gate to meet us. She had a soft, drab
+dress and a long thin neck, and her hair was drab too, and it was
+screwed up tight.
+
+She said, "Welcome, one and all!" in a kind voice, but it was too much
+like Mr. Sandal's for me. And we went in. She showed us the
+sitting-rooms, and the rooms where we were to sleep, and then she left
+us to wash our hands and faces. When we were alone we burst open the
+doors of our rooms with one consent, and met on the landing with a rush
+like the great rivers of America.
+
+"_Well!_" said Oswald, and the others said the same.
+
+"Of all the rummy cribs!" remarked Dicky.
+
+"It's like a workhouse or a hospital," said Dora. "I think I like it."
+
+"It makes me think of bald-headed gentlemen," said H.O., "it is so
+bare."
+
+It was. All the walls were white plaster, the furniture was white
+deal--what there was of it, which was precious little. There were no
+carpets--only white matting. And there was not a single ornament in a
+single room! There was a clock on the dining-room mantel-piece, but that
+could not be counted as an ornament because of the useful side of its
+character. There were only about six pictures--all of a brownish colour.
+One was the blind girl sitting on an orange with a broken fiddle. It is
+called Hope.
+
+When we were clean Miss Sandal gave us tea. As we sat down she said,
+"The motto of our little household is 'Plain living and high thinking.'"
+
+And some of us feared for an instant that this might mean not enough to
+eat. But fortunately this was not the case. There was plenty, but all of
+a milky, bunny, fruity, vegetable sort. We soon got used to it, and
+liked it all right.
+
+Miss Sandal was very kind. She offered to read aloud to us after tea,
+and, exchanging glances of despair, some of us said that we should like
+it very much.
+
+It was Oswald who found the manly courage to say very politely--
+
+"Would it be all the same to you if we went and looked at the sea first?
+Because----"
+
+And she said, "Not at all," adding something about "Nature, the dear old
+nurse, taking somebody on her knee," and let us go.
+
+We asked her which way, and we tore up the road and through the village
+and on to the sea-wall, and then with six joyous bounds we leaped down
+on to the sand.
+
+The author will not bother you with a description of the mighty billows
+of ocean, which you must have read about, if not seen, but he will just
+say what perhaps you are not aware of--that seagulls eat clams and
+mussels and cockles, and crack the shells with their beaks. The author
+has seen this done.
+
+You also know, I suppose, that you can dig in the sand (if you have a
+spade) and make sand castles, and stay in them till the tide washes you
+out.
+
+I will say no more, except that when we gazed upon the sea and the sand
+we felt we did not care tuppence how highly Miss Sandal might think of
+us or how plainly she might make us live, so long as we had got the
+briny deep to go down to.
+
+It was too early in the year and too late in the day to bathe, but we
+paddled, which comes to much the same thing, and you almost always have
+to change everything afterwards.
+
+When it got dark we had to go back to the White House, and there was
+supper, and then we found that Miss Sandal did not keep a servant, so of
+course we offered to help wash up. H.O. only broke two plates.
+
+Nothing worth telling about happened till we had been there over a week,
+and had got to know the coastguards and a lot of the village people
+quite well. I do like coastguards. They seem to know everything you want
+to hear about. Miss Sandal used to read to us out of poetry books, and
+about a chap called Thoreau, who could tickle fish, and they liked it,
+and let him. She was kind, but rather like her house--there was
+something bare and bald about her inside mind, I believe. She was very,
+very calm, and said that people who lost their tempers were not living
+the higher life. But one day a telegram came, and then she was not calm
+at all. She got quite like other people, and quite shoved H.O. for
+getting in her way when she was looking for her purse to pay for the
+answer to the telegram.
+
+Then she said to Dora--and she was pale and her eyes red, just like
+people who live the lower or ordinary life--"My dears, it's dreadful! My
+poor brother! He's had a fall. I must go to him at _once_." And she sent
+Oswald to order the fly from the Old Ship Hotel, and the girls to see if
+Mrs. Beale would come and take care of us while she was away. Then she
+kissed us all and went off very unhappy. We heard afterwards that poor,
+worthy Mr. Sandal had climbed a scaffolding to give a workman a tract
+about drink, and he didn't know the proper part of the scaffolding to
+stand on (the workman did, of course) so he fetched down half a dozen
+planks and the workman, and if a dust-cart hadn't happened to be passing
+just under so that they fell into it their lives would not have been
+spared. As it was Mr. Sandal broke his arm and his head. The workman
+escaped unscathed but furious. The workman was a teetotaler.
+
+Mrs. Beale came, and the first thing she did was to buy a leg of mutton
+and cook it. It was the first meat we had had since arriving at
+Lymchurch.
+
+[Illustration: HE FETCHED DOWN HALF A DOZEN PLANKS AND THE WORKMAN.]
+
+"I 'spect she can't afford good butcher's meat," said Mrs. Beale; "but
+your pa, I expect he pays for you, and I lay he'd like you to have your
+fill of something as'll lay acrost your chesties." So she made a
+Yorkshire pudding as well. It was good.
+
+After dinner we sat on the sea-wall, feeling more like after dinner than
+we had felt for days, and Dora said--
+
+"Poor Miss Sandal! I never thought about her being hard-up, somehow. I
+wish we could do something to help her."
+
+"We might go out street-singing," Noel said. But that was no good,
+because there is only one street in the village, and the people there
+are much too poor for one to be able to ask them for anything. And all
+round it is fields with only sheep, who have nothing to give except
+their wool, and when it comes to taking that, they are never asked.
+
+Dora thought we might get Father to give her money, but Oswald knew this
+would never do.
+
+Then suddenly a thought struck some one--I will not say who--and that
+some one said--
+
+"She ought to let lodgings, like all the other people do in Lymchurch."
+
+That was the beginning of it. The end--for that day--was our getting the
+top of a cardboard box and printing on it the following lines in as
+many different coloured chalks as we happened to have with us.
+
+                     LODGINGS TO LET.
+
+                     ENQUIRE INSIDE.
+
+We ruled spaces for the letters to go in, and did it very neatly. When
+we went to bed we stuck it in our bedroom window with stamp-paper.
+
+In the morning when Oswald drew up his blind there was quite a crowd of
+kids looking at the card. Mrs. Beale came out and shoo-ed them away as
+if they were hens. And we did not have to explain the card to her at
+all. She never said anything about it. I never knew such a woman as Mrs.
+Beale for minding her own business. She said afterwards she supposed
+Miss Sandal had told us to put up the card.
+
+Well, two or three days went by, and nothing happened, only we had a
+letter from Miss Sandal, telling us how the poor sufferer was groaning,
+and one from Father telling us to be good children, and not get into
+scrapes. And people who drove by used to look at the card and laugh.
+
+And then one day a carriage came driving up with a gentleman in it, and
+he saw the rainbow beauty of our chalked card, and he got out and came
+up the path. He had a pale face, and white hair and very bright eyes
+that moved about quickly like a bird's, and he was dressed in a quite
+new tweed suit that did not fit him very well.
+
+Dora and Alice answered the door before any one had time to knock, and
+the author has reason to believe their hearts were beating wildly.
+
+"How much?" said the gentleman shortly.
+
+Alice and Dora were so surprised by his suddenness that they could only
+reply--
+
+"Er--er----"
+
+"Just so," said the gentleman briskly as Oswald stepped modestly forward
+and said--
+
+"Won't you come inside?"
+
+"The very thing," said he, and came in.
+
+We showed him into the dining-room and asked him to excuse us a minute,
+and then held a breathless council outside the door.
+
+"It depends how many rooms he wants," said Dora.
+
+"Let's say so much a room," said Dicky, "and extra if he wants Mrs.
+Beale to wait on him."
+
+So we decided to do this. We thought a pound a room seemed fair.
+
+And we went back.
+
+"How many rooms do you want?" Oswald asked.
+
+"All the room there is," said the gentleman.
+
+"They are a pound each," said Oswald, "and extra for Mrs. Beale."
+
+"How much altogether?"
+
+Oswald thought a minute and then said "Nine rooms is nine pounds, and
+two pounds a week for Mrs. Beale, because she is a widow."
+
+[Illustration: "HOW MUCH?" SAID THE GENTLEMAN SHORTLY.]
+
+"Done!" said the gentleman. "I'll go and fetch my portmanteaus."
+
+He bounced up and out and got into his carriage and drove away. It was
+not till he was finally gone quite beyond recall that Alice suddenly
+said--
+
+"But if he has all the rooms where are _we_ to sleep?"
+
+"He must be awfully rich," said H.O., "wanting all those rooms."
+
+"Well, he can't sleep in more than one at once," said Dicky, "however
+rich he is. We might wait till he was bedded down and then sleep in the
+rooms he didn't want."
+
+But Oswald was firm. He knew that if the man paid for the rooms he must
+have them to himself.
+
+"He won't sleep in the kitchen," said Dora; "couldn't we sleep there?"
+
+But we all said we couldn't and wouldn't.
+
+Then Alice suddenly said--
+
+"I know! The Mill. There are heaps and heaps of fishing-nets there, and
+we could each take a blanket like Indians and creep over under cover of
+the night after the Beale has gone, and get back before she comes in the
+morning."
+
+It seemed a sporting thing to do, and we agreed. Only Dora said she
+thought it would be draughty.
+
+Of course we went over to the Mill at once to lay our plans and prepare
+for the silent watches of the night.
+
+There are three stories to a windmill, besides the ground-floor. The
+first floor is pretty empty; the next is nearly full of millstones and
+machinery, and the one above is where the corn runs down from on to the
+millstones.
+
+We settled to let the girls have the first floor, which was covered with
+heaps of nets, and we would pig in with the millstones on the floor
+above.
+
+We had just secretly got out the last of the six blankets from the house
+and got it into the Mill disguised in a clothes-basket, when we heard
+wheels, and there was the gentleman back again. He had only got one
+portmanteau after all, and that was a very little one.
+
+Mrs. Beale was bobbing at him in the doorway when we got up. Of course
+we had told her he had rented rooms, but we had not said how many, for
+fear she should ask where we were going to sleep, and we had a feeling
+that but few grown-ups would like our sleeping in a mill, however much
+we were living the higher life by sacrificing ourselves to get money for
+Miss Sandal.
+
+The gentleman ordered sheep's-head and trotters for dinner, and when he
+found he could not have that he said--
+
+"Gammon and spinach!"
+
+But there was not any spinach in the village, so he had to fall back on
+eggs and bacon. Mrs. Beale cooked it, and when he had fallen back on it
+she washed up and went home. And we were left. We could hear the
+gentleman singing to himself, something about woulding he was a bird
+that he might fly to thee.
+
+Then we got the lanterns that you take when you go "up street" on a dark
+night, and we crept over to the Mill. It was much darker than we
+expected.
+
+We decided to keep our clothes on, partly for warmness and partly in
+case of any sudden alarm or the fishermen wanting their nets in the
+middle of the night, which sometimes happens if the tide is favourable.
+
+We let the girls keep the lantern, and we went up with a bit of candle
+Dicky had saved, and tried to get comfortable among the millstones and
+machinery, but it was not easy, and Oswald, for one, was not sorry when
+he heard the voice of Dora calling in trembling tones from the floor
+below.
+
+"Oswald! Dicky!" said the voice, "I wish one of you would come down a
+sec."
+
+Oswald flew to the assistance of his distressed sister.
+
+"It's only that we're a little bit uncomfortable," she whispered. "I
+didn't want to yell it out because of Noel and H.O. I don't want to
+frighten them, but I can't help feeling that if anything popped out of
+the dark at us I should die. Can't you all come down here? The nets are
+quite comfortable, and I do wish you would."
+
+Alice said she was not frightened, but suppose there were rats, which
+are said to infest old buildings, especially mills?
+
+So we consented to come down, and we told Noel and H.O. to come down
+because it was more comfy, and it is easier to settle yourself for the
+night among fishing-nets than among machinery. There _was_ a rustling
+now and then among the heap of broken chairs and jack-planes and baskets
+and spades and hoes and bits of the spars of ships at the far end of our
+sleeping apartment, but Dicky and Oswald resolutely said it was the wind
+or else jackdaws making their nests, though, of course, they knew this
+is not done at night.
+
+Sleeping in a mill was not nearly the fun we had thought it would
+be--somehow. For one thing, it was horrid not having a pillow, and the
+fishing-nets were so stiff you could not bunch them up properly to make
+one. And unless you have been born and bred a Red Indian you do not know
+how to manage your blanket so as to make it keep out the draughts. And
+when we had put out the light Oswald more than once felt as though
+earwigs and spiders were walking on his face in the dark, but when we
+struck a match there was nothing there.
+
+And empty mills do creak and rustle and move about in a very odd way.
+Oswald was not afraid, but he did think we might as well have slept in
+the kitchen, because the gentleman could not have wanted to use that
+when he was asleep. You see, we thought then that he would sleep all
+night like other people.
+
+We got to sleep at last, and in the night the girls edged up to their
+bold brothers, so that when the morning sun "shone in bars of dusty gold
+through the chinks of the aged edifice" and woke us up we were all lying
+in a snuggly heap like a litter of puppies.
+
+"Oh, I _am_ so stiff!" said Alice, stretching. "I never slept in my
+clothes before. It makes me feel as if I had been starched and ironed
+like a boy's collar."
+
+We all felt pretty much the same. And our faces were tired too, and
+stiff, which was rum, and the author cannot account for it, unless it
+really was spiders that walked on us. I believe the ancient Greeks
+considered them to be venomous, and perhaps that's how their venom
+influences their victims.
+
+"I think mills are merely beastly," remarked H.O. when we had woke him
+up. "You can't wash yourself or brush your hair or anything."
+
+"You aren't always so jolly particular about your hair," said Dicky.
+
+"Don't be so disagreeable," said Dora.
+
+And Dicky rejoined, "Disagreeable yourself!"
+
+There is certainly something about sleeping in your clothes that makes
+you feel not so kind and polite as usual. I expect this is why tramps
+are so fierce and knock people down in lonely roads and kick them.
+Oswald knows he felt just like kicking any one if they had happened to
+cheek him the least little bit. But by a fortunate accident nobody did.
+
+The author believes there is a picture called "Hopeless Dawn." We felt
+exactly like that. Nothing seemed the least bit of good.
+
+It was a pitiful band with hands and faces dirtier than any one would
+believe who had not slept in a mill or witnessed others who had done so,
+that crossed the wet, green grass between the Mill and the white house.
+
+"I shan't ever put morning dew into my poetry again," Noel said; "it is
+not nearly so poetical as people make out, and it is as cold as ice,
+right through your boots."
+
+We felt rather better when we had had a good splash in the brick-paved
+back kitchen that Miss Sandal calls the bath-room. And Alice made a fire
+and boiled a kettle and we had some tea and eggs. Then we looked at the
+clock and it was half-past five. So we hastened to get into another part
+of the house before Mrs. Beale came.
+
+"I wish we'd tried to live the higher life some less beastly way," said
+Dicky as we went along the passage.
+
+"Living the higher life always hurts at the beginning," Alice said. "I
+expect it's like new boots, only when you've got used to it you're glad
+you bore it at first. Let's listen at the doors till we find out where
+he isn't sleeping."
+
+So we listened at all the bedroom doors, but not a snore was heard.
+
+"Perhaps he was a burglar," said H.O., "and only pretended to want
+lodgings so as to get in and bone all the valuables."
+
+"There aren't any valuables," said Noel, and this was quite true, for
+Miss Sandal had no silver or jewellery except a brooch of pewter, and
+the very teaspoons were of wood--very hard to keep clean and having to
+be scraped.
+
+"Perhaps he sleeps without snoring," said Oswald, "some people do."
+
+"Not old gentlemen," said Noel; "think of our Indian uncle--H.O. used to
+think it was bears at first."
+
+"Perhaps he rises with the lark," said Alice, "and is wondering why
+brekker isn't ready."
+
+So then we listened at the sitting-room doors, and through the keyhole
+of the parlour we heard a noise of some one moving, and then in a soft
+whistle the tune of the "Would I were a bird" song.
+
+So then we went into the dining-room to sit down. But when we opened the
+door we almost fell in a heap on the matting, and no one had breath for
+a word--not even for "Krikey," which was what we all thought.
+
+I have read of people who could not believe their eyes; and I have
+always thought it such rot of them, but now, as the author gazed on the
+scene, he really could not be quite sure that he was not in a dream, and
+that the gentleman and the night in the Mill weren't dreams too.
+
+"Pull back the curtains," Alice said, and we did. I wish I could make
+the reader feel as astonished as we did.
+
+The last time we had seen the room the walls had been bare and white.
+Now they were covered with the most splendid drawings you can think of,
+all done in coloured chalk--I don't mean mixed up, like we do with our
+chalks--but one picture was done in green, and another in brown, and
+another in red, and so on. And the chalk must have been of some fat
+radiant kind quite unknown to us, for some of the lines were over an
+inch thick.
+
+"How perfectly _lovely_!" Alice said; "he must have sat up all night to
+do it. He _is_ good. I expect he's trying to live the higher life,
+too--just going about doing secretly, and spending his time making other
+people's houses pretty."
+
+"I wonder what he'd have done if the room had had a large pattern of
+brown roses on it, like Mrs. Beale's," said Noel. "I say, _look_ at that
+angel! Isn't it poetical? It makes me feel I must write something about
+it."
+
+It _was_ a good angel--all drawn in grey, that was--with very wide wings
+going right across the room, and a whole bundle of lilies in his arms.
+Then there were seagulls and ravens, and butterflies, and ballet girls
+with butterflies' wings, and a man with artificial wings being fastened
+on, and you could see he was just going to jump off a rock. And there
+were fairies, and bats, and flying-foxes, and flying-fish. And one
+glorious winged horse done in red chalk--and his wings went from one
+side of the room to the other, and crossed the angel's. There were
+dozens and dozens of birds--all done in just a few lines--but exactly
+right. You couldn't make any mistake about what anything was meant for.
+
+And all the things, whatever they were, had wings to them. How Oswald
+wishes that those pictures had been done in his house!
+
+While we stood gazing, the door of the other room opened, and the
+gentleman stood before us, more covered with different-coloured chalks
+than I should have thought he could have got, even with all those
+drawings, and he had a thing made of wire and paper in his hand, and he
+said--
+
+"Wouldn't you like to fly?"
+
+"Yes," said every one.
+
+"Well then," he said, "I've got a nice little flying-machine here. I'll
+fit it on to one of you, and then you jump out of the attic window. You
+don't know what it's like to fly."
+
+We said we would rather not.
+
+"But I insist," said the gentleman. "I have your real interest at heart,
+my children--I can't allow you in your ignorance to reject the chance of
+a lifetime."
+
+We still said "No, thank you," and we began to feel very uncomfy, for
+the gentleman's eyes were now rolling wildly.
+
+"Then I'll _make_ you!" he said, catching hold of Oswald.
+
+[Illustration: "THEN I'LL _MAKE_ YOU!" HE SAID, CATCHING HOLD OF
+OSWALD.]
+
+"You jolly well won't," cried Dicky, catching hold of the arm of the
+gentleman.
+
+Then Dora said very primly and speaking rather slowly, and she was very
+pale--
+
+"I think it would be lovely to fly. Will you just show me how the
+flying-machine looks when it is unfolded?"
+
+The gentleman dropped Oswald, and Dora made "Go! go" with her lips
+without speaking, while he began to unfold the flying-machine. We others
+went, Oswald lingering last, and then in an instant Dora had nipped out
+of the room and banged the door and locked it.
+
+"To the Mill!" she cried, and we ran like mad, and got in and barred the
+big door, and went up to the first floor, and looked out of the big
+window to warn off Mrs. Beale.
+
+And we thumped Dora on the back, and Dicky called her a Sherlock Holmes,
+and Noel said she was a heroine.
+
+"It wasn't anything," Dora said, just before she began to cry, "only I
+remember reading that you must pretend to humour them, and then get
+away, for of course I saw at once he was a lunatic. Oh, how awful it
+might have been! He could have made us all jump out of the attic window,
+and there would have been no one left to tell Father. Oh! oh!" and then
+the crying began.
+
+But we were proud of Dora, and I am sorry we make fun of her sometimes,
+but it is difficult not to.
+
+We decided to signal the first person that passed, and we got Alice to
+take off her red flannel petticoat for a signal.
+
+The first people who came were two men in a dog-cart. We waved the
+signalising petticoat and they pulled up, and one got out and came up to
+the Mill.
+
+We explained about the lunatic and the wanting us to jump out of the
+windows.
+
+"Right oh!" cried the man to the one still in the cart; "got him." And
+the other hitched the horse to the gate and came over, and the other
+went to the house.
+
+"Come along down, young ladies and gentlemen," said the second man when
+he had been told. "He's as gentle as a lamb. He does not think it hurts
+to jump out of windows. He thinks it really is flying. He'll be like an
+angel when he sees the doctor."
+
+We asked if he had been mad before, because we had thought he might have
+suddenly gone so.
+
+"Certainly he has!" replied the man; "he has never been, so to say,
+himself since tumbling out of a flying-machine he went up in with a
+friend. He was an artist previous to that--an excellent one, I believe.
+But now he only draws objects with wings--and now and then he wants to
+make people fly--perfect strangers sometimes, like yourselves. Yes,
+miss, I am his attendant, and his pictures often amuse me by the
+half-hours together, poor gentleman."
+
+"How did he get away?" Alice asked.
+
+"Well, miss, the poor gentleman's brother got hurt and Mr.
+Sidney--that's him inside--seemed wonderfully put out and hung over the
+body in a way pitiful to see. But really he was extracting the cash from
+the sufferer's pockets. Then, while all of us were occupied with Mr.
+Eustace, Mr. Sidney just packs his portmanteau and out he goes by the
+back door. When we missed him we sent for Dr. Baker, but by the time he
+came it was too late to get here. Dr. Baker said at once he'd revert to
+his boyhood's home. And the doctor has proved correct."
+
+We had all come out of the Mill, and with this polite person we went to
+the gate, and saw the lunatic get into the carriage, very gentle and
+gay.
+
+"But, Doctor," Oswald said, "he did say he'd give nine pounds a week for
+the rooms. Oughtn't he to pay?"
+
+"You might have known he was mad to say that," said the doctor. "No. Why
+should he, when it's his own sister's house? Gee up!"
+
+And he left us.
+
+It was sad to find the gentleman was not a Higher Life after all, but
+only mad. And I was more sorry than ever for poor Miss Sandal. As Oswald
+pointed out to the girls they are much more blessed in their brothers
+than Miss Sandal is, and they ought to be more grateful than they are.
+
+
+
+
+_THE SMUGGLER'S REVENGE_
+
+
+THE days went on and Miss Sandal did not return. We went on being very
+sorry about Miss Sandal being so poor, and it was not our fault that
+when we tried to let the house in lodgings, the first lodger proved to
+be a lunatic of the deepest dye. Miss Sandal must have been a fairly
+decent sort, because she seems not to have written to Father about it.
+At any rate he didn't give it us in any of our letters, about our good
+intentions and their ending in a maniac.
+
+Oswald does not like giving up a thing just because it has once been
+muffed. The muffage of a plan is a thing that often happens at first to
+heroes--like Bruce and the spider, and other great characters. Beside,
+grown-ups always say--
+
+          "If at first you don't succeed,
+           Try, try, try again!"
+
+And if this is the rule for Euclid and rule-of-three and all the things
+you would rather not do, think how much more it must be the rule when
+what you are after is your own idea, and not just the rotten notion of
+that beast Euclid, or the unknown but equally unnecessary author who
+composed the multiplication table. So we often talked about what we
+could do to make Miss Sandal rich. It gave us something to jaw about
+when we happened to want to sit down for a bit, in between all the
+glorious wet sandy games that happen by the sea.
+
+Of course if we wanted real improving conversation we used to go up to
+the boat-house and talk to the coastguards. I do think coastguards are
+A1. They are just the same as sailors, having been so in their youth,
+and you can get at them to talk to, which is not the case with sailors
+who are at sea (or even in harbours) on ships. Even if you had the luck
+to get on to a man-of-war, you would very likely not be able to climb to
+the top-gallants to talk to the man there. Though in books the young
+hero always seems able to climb to the mast-head the moment he is told
+to. The coastguards told us tales of Southern ports, and of shipwrecks,
+and officers they had _not_ cottoned to, and messmates that they _had_,
+but when we asked them about smuggling they said there wasn't any to
+speak of nowadays.
+
+"I expect they think they oughtn't to talk about such dark crimes before
+innocent kids like us," said Dicky afterwards, and he grinned as he said
+it.
+
+"Yes," said Alice; "they don't know how much we know about smugglers,
+and bandits, and highwaymen, and burglars, and coiners," and she sighed,
+and we all felt sad to think that we had not now any chance to play at
+being these things.
+
+"We might play smugglers," said Oswald.
+
+But he did not speak hopefully. The worst of growing up is that you seem
+to want more and more to have a bit of the real thing in your games.
+Oswald could not now be content to play at bandits and just capture
+Albert next door, as once, in happier days, he was pleased and proud to
+do.
+
+It was not a coastguard that told us about the smugglers. It was a very
+old man that we met two or three miles along the beach. He was leaning
+against a boat that was wrong way up on the shingle, and smoking the
+strongest tobacco Oswald's young nose has ever met. I think it must have
+been Black Jack. We said, "How do you do?" and Alice said, "Do you mind
+if we sit down near you?"
+
+"Not me," replied the aged seafarer. We could see directly that he was
+this by his jersey and his sea-boots.
+
+The girls sat down on the beach, but we boys leaned against the boat
+like the seafaring one. We hoped he would join in conversation, but at
+first he seemed too proud. And there was something dignified about him,
+bearded and like a Viking, that made it hard for us to begin.
+
+At last he took his pipe out of his mouth and said--
+
+"Here's a precious Quakers' meeting! You didn't set down here just for
+to look at me?"
+
+"I'm sure you look very nice," Dora said.
+
+"Same to you, miss, I'm sure," was the polite reply.
+
+"We want to talk to you awfully," said Alice, "if you don't mind?"
+
+"Talk away," said he.
+
+And then, as so often happens, no one could think of anything to say.
+
+Suddenly Noel said, "_I_ think you look nice too, but I think you look
+as though you had a secret history. Have you?"
+
+"Not me," replied the Viking-looking stranger. "I ain't got no history,
+nor jog-graphy neither. They didn't give us that much schooling when I
+was a lad."
+
+"Oh!" replied Noel; "but what I really meant was, were you ever a pirate
+or anything?"
+
+"Never in all my born," replied the stranger, now thoroughly roused;
+"I'd scorn the haction. I was in the navy, I was, till I lost the sight
+of my eye, looking too close at gunpowder. Pirates is snakes, and they
+ought to be killed as such."
+
+We felt rather sorry, for though of course it is very wrong to be a
+pirate, it is very interesting too. Things are often like this. That is
+one of the reasons why it is so hard to be truly good.
+
+Dora was the only one who was pleased. She said--
+
+"Yes, pirates _are_ very wrong. And so are highwaymen and smugglers."
+
+"I don't know about highwaymen," the old man replied; "they went out
+afore my time, worse luck; but my father's great-uncle by the mother's
+side, he see one hanged once. A fine upstanding fellow he was, and made
+a speech while they was a-fitting of the rope. All the women was
+snivelling and sniffing and throwing bokays at him."
+
+"Did any of the bouquets reach him?" asked the interested Alice.
+
+"Not likely," said the old man. "Women can't never shy straight. But I
+shouldn't wonder but what them posies heartened the chap up a bit. An
+afterwards they was all a-fightin' to get a bit of the rope he was hung
+with, for luck."
+
+"Do tell us some more about him," said all of us but Dora.
+
+"I don't know no more about him. He was just hung--that's all. They was
+precious fond o' hangin' in them old far-away times."
+
+"Did you ever know a smuggler?" asked H.O.--"to speak to, I mean?"
+
+"Ah, that's tellings," said the old man, and he winked at us all.
+
+So then we instantly knew that the coastguards had been mistaken when
+they said there were no more smugglers now, and that this brave old man
+would not betray his comrades, even to friendly strangers like us. But
+of course he could not know exactly how friendly we were. So we told
+him.
+
+Oswald said--
+
+"We _love_ smugglers. We wouldn't even tell a word about it if you would
+only tell us."
+
+"There used to be lots of smuggling on these here coasts when my father
+was a boy," he said; "my own father's cousin, his father took to the
+smuggling, and he was a doin' so well at it, that what does he do, but
+goes and gets married, and the Preventives they goes and nabs him on his
+wedding-day, and walks him straight off from the church door, and claps
+him in Dover Jail."
+
+"Oh, his poor wife," said Alice, "whatever did she do?"
+
+"_She_ didn't do nothing," said the old man. "It's a woman's place not
+to do nothing till she's told to. He'd done so well at the smuggling,
+he'd saved enough by his honest toil to take a little public. So she
+sets there awaitin' and attendin' to customers--for well she knowed him,
+as he wasn't the chap to let a bit of a jail stand in the way of his
+station in life. Well, it was three weeks to a day after the wedding,
+there comes a dusty chap to the 'Peal of Bells' door. That was the sign
+over the public, you understand."
+
+We said we did, and breathlessly added, "Go on!"
+
+"A dusty chap he was; got a beard and a patch over one eye, and he come
+of a afternoon when there was no one about the place but her.
+
+"'Hullo, missis,' says he; 'got a room for a quiet chap?'
+
+"'I don't take in no men-folks,' says she; 'can't be bothered with 'em.'
+
+"'You'll be bothered with _me_, if I'm not mistaken,' says he.
+
+"'Bothered if I will,' says she.
+
+"'Bothered if you won't,' says he, and with that he ups with his hand
+and off comes the black patch, and he pulls off the beard and gives her
+a kiss and a smack on the shoulder. She always said she nearly died when
+she see it was her new-made bridegroom under the beard.
+
+"So she took her own man in as a lodger, and he went to work up at
+Upton's Farm with his beard on, and of nights he kept up the smuggling
+business. And for a year or more no one knowd as it was him. But they
+got him at last."
+
+"What became of him?" We all asked it.
+
+"He's dead," said the old man. "But, Lord love you, so's everybody as
+lived in them far-off old ancient days--all dead--Preventives too--and
+smugglers and gentry: all gone under the daisies."
+
+We felt quite sad. Oswald hastily asked if there wasn't any smuggling
+now.
+
+"Not hereabouts," the old man answered, rather quickly for him. "Don't
+you go for to think it. But I did know a young chap--quite young he is
+with blue eyes--up Sunderland way it was. He'd got a goodish bit o'
+baccy and stuff done up in a ole shirt. And as he was a-goin' up off of
+the beach a coastguard jumps out at him, and he says to himself, 'All u.
+p. this time,' says he. But out loud he says, 'Hullo, Jack, that you? I
+thought you was a tramp,' says he.
+
+"'What you got in that bundle?' says the coastguard.
+
+"'My washing,' says he, 'and a couple pairs of old boots.'
+
+"Then the coastguard he says, 'Shall I give you a lift with it?'
+thinking in himself the other chap wouldn't part if it was anything it
+oughtn't to be. But that young chap was too sharp. He says to himself,
+'If I don't he'll nail me, and if I do--well, there's just a chance.'
+
+"So he hands over the bundle, and the coastguard he thinks it must be
+all right, and he carries it all the way up to his mother's for him,
+feeling sorry for the mean suspicions he'd had about the poor old chap.
+But that didn't happen near here. No, no."
+
+I think Dora was going to say, "_Old_ chap--but I thought he was young
+with blue eyes?" but just at that minute a coastguard came along and
+ordered us quite harshly not to lean on the boat. He was quite
+disagreeable about it--how different from our own coastguards! He was
+from a different station to theirs. The old man got off very slowly.
+And all the time he was arranging his long legs so as to stand on them,
+the coastguard went on being disagreeable as hard as he could, in a loud
+voice.
+
+[Illustration: A COASTGUARD ORDERED US QUITE HARSHLY NOT TO LEAN ON THE
+BOAT.]
+
+When our old man had told the coastguard that no one ever lost anything
+by keeping a civil tongue in his head, we all went away feeling very
+angry.
+
+Alice took the old man's hand as we went back to the village, and asked
+him why the coastguard was so horrid.
+
+"They gets notions into their heads," replied the old man; "the most
+innocentest people they comes to think things about. It's along of there
+being no smuggling in these ere parts now. The coastguards ain't got
+nothing to do except think things about honest people."
+
+We parted from the old man very warmly, all shaking hands. He lives at a
+cottage not quite in the village, and keeps pigs. We did not say goodbye
+till we had seen all the pigs.
+
+I daresay we should not have gone on disliking that disagreeable
+coastguard so much if he had not come along one day when we were talking
+to our own coastguards, and asked why they allowed a pack of young
+shavers in the boat-house. We went away in silent dignity, but we did
+not forget, and when we were in bed that night Oswald said--
+
+"Don't you think it would be a good thing if the coastguards had
+something to do?"
+
+Dicky yawned and said he didn't know.
+
+"I should like to be a smuggler," said Oswald. "Oh, yes, go to sleep if
+you like; but I've got an idea, and if you'd rather be out of it I'll
+have Alice instead."
+
+"Fire away!" said Dicky, now full of attention, and leaning on his
+elbow.
+
+"Well, then," said Oswald, "I think we _might_ be smugglers."
+
+"We've played all those things so jolly often," said Dicky.
+
+"But I don't mean play," said Oswald. "I mean the real thing. Of course
+we should have to begin in quite a small way. But we should get on in
+time. And we might make quite a lot for poor Miss Sandal."
+
+"Things that you smuggle are expensive," said Dicky.
+
+"Well, we've got the chink the Indian uncle sent us on Saturday. I'm
+certain we could do it. We'd get some one to take us out at night in one
+of the fishing-boats--just tear across to France and buy a keg or a bale
+or something, and rush back."
+
+"Yes, and get nabbed and put in prison. Not me," said Dicky. "Besides,
+who'd take us?"
+
+"That old Viking man would," said Oswald; "but of course, if you funk
+it!"
+
+"I don't funk anything," said Dicky, "bar making an ape of myself. Keep
+your hair on, Oswald. Look here. Suppose we get a keg with nothing in
+it--or just water. We should have all the fun, and if we _were_ collared
+we should have the laugh of that coastguard brute."
+
+Oswald agreed, but he made it a condition that we should call it the keg
+of brandy, whatever was in it, and Dicky consented.
+
+Smuggling is a manly sport, and girls are not fitted for it by nature.
+At least Dora is not; and if we had told Alice she would have insisted
+on dressing as a boy and going too, and we knew Father would not like
+this. And we thought Noel and H.O. were too young to be smugglers with
+any hope of success. So Dicky and I kept the idea to ourselves.
+
+We went to see the Viking man the next day. It took us some time to make
+him understand what we wanted, but when he did understand he slapped his
+leg many times, and very hard, and declared that we were chips of the
+old block.
+
+"But I can't go for to let you," he said; "if you was nailed it's the
+stone jug, bless your hearts."
+
+So then we explained about the keg really having only water in, and he
+slapped his leg again harder than ever, so that it would really have
+been painful to any but the hardened leg of an old sea-dog. But the
+water made his refusals weaker, and at last he said--
+
+"Well, see here, Benenden, him as owns the _Mary Sarah_, he's often took
+out a youngster or two for the night's fishing, when their pa's and ma's
+hadn't no objection. You write your pa, and ask if you mayn't go for
+the night's fishing, or you get Mr. Charteris to write. He knows it's
+all right, and often done by visitors' kids, if boys. And if your pa
+says yes, I'll make it all right with Benenden. But mind, it's just a
+night's fishing. No need to name no kegs. That's just betwixt
+ourselves."
+
+So we did exactly as he said. Mr. Charteris is the clergyman. He was
+quite nice about it, and wrote for us, and Father said "Yes, but be very
+careful, and don't take the girls or the little ones."
+
+We showed the girls the letter, and that removed the trifling
+ill-feeling that had grown up through Dick and me having so much secret
+talk about kegs and not telling the others what was up.
+
+Of course we never breathed a word about kegs in public, and only to
+each other in bated breaths.
+
+What Father said about not taking the girls or the little ones of course
+settled any wild ideas Alice might have had of going as a cabin-girl.
+
+The old Viking man, now completely interested in our scheme, laid all
+the plans in the deepest-laid way you can think. He chose a very dark
+night--fortunately there was one just coming on. He chose the right time
+of the tide for starting, and just in the greyness of the evening when
+the sun is gone down, and the sea somehow looks wetter than at any other
+time, we put on our thick undershirts, and then our thickest suits and
+football jerseys over everything, because we had been told it would be
+very cold. Then we said goodbye to our sisters and the little ones, and
+it was exactly like a picture of the "Tar's Farewell," because we had
+bundles, with things to eat tied up in blue checked handkerchiefs, and
+we said goodbye to them at the gate, and they would kiss us.
+
+Dora said, "Goodbye, I _know_ you'll be drowned. I hope you'll enjoy
+yourselves, I'm sure!"
+
+Alice said, "I do think it's perfectly beastly. You might just as well
+have asked for me to go with you; or you might let us come and see you
+start."
+
+"Men must work, and women must weep," replied Oswald with grim sadness,
+"and the Viking said he wouldn't have us at all unless we could get on
+board in a concealed manner, like stowaways. He said a lot of others
+would want to go too if they saw us."
+
+We made our way to the beach, and we tried to conceal ourselves as much
+as possible, but several people did see us.
+
+When we got to the boat we found she was manned by our Viking and
+Benenden, and a boy with red hair, and they were running her down to the
+beach on rollers. Of course Dicky and I lent a hand, shoving at the
+stern of the boat when the men said, "Yo, ho! Heave ho, my merry boys
+all!" It wasn't exactly that that they said, but it meant the same
+thing, and we heaved like anything.
+
+It was a proud moment when her nose touched the water, and prouder still
+when only a small part of her stern remained on the beach and Mr.
+Benenden remarked--
+
+"All aboard!"
+
+The red boy gave a "leg up" to Dicky and me and clambered up himself.
+Then the two men gave the last shoves to the boat, already cradled
+almost entirely on the bosom of the deep, and as the very end of the
+keel grated off the pebbles into the water, they leaped for the gunwale
+and hung on it with their high sea-boots waving in the evening air.
+
+By the time they had brought their legs on board and coiled a rope or
+two, we chanced to look back, and already the beach seemed quite a long
+way off.
+
+We were really afloat. Our smuggling expedition was no longer a dream,
+but a real realness. Oswald felt almost too excited at first to be able
+to enjoy himself. I hope you will understand this and not think the
+author is trying to express, by roundabout means, that the sea did not
+agree with Oswald. This is not the case. He was perfectly well the whole
+time. It was Dicky who was not. But he said it was the smell of the
+cabin, and not the sea, and I am sure he thought what he said was true.
+
+In fact, that cabin was a bit stiff altogether, and was almost the means
+of upsetting even Oswald.
+
+It was about six feet square, with bunks and an oil stove, and heaps of
+old coats and tarpaulins and sou'-westers and things, and it smelt of
+tar, and fish, and paraffin-smoke, and machinery oil, and of rooms where
+no one ever opens the window.
+
+Oswald just put his nose in, and that was all. He had to go down later,
+when some fish was cooked and eaten, but by that time he had got what
+they call your sea-legs; but Oswald felt more as if he had got a
+sea-waistcoat, rather as if he had got rid of a land-waistcoat that was
+too heavy and too tight.
+
+I will not weary the reader by telling about how the nets are paid out
+and dragged in, or about the tumbling, shining heaps of fish that come
+up all alive over the side of the boat, and it tips up with their weight
+till you think it is going over. It was a very good catch that night,
+and Oswald is glad he saw it, for it was very glorious. Dicky was asleep
+in the cabin at the time and missed it. It was deemed best not to rouse
+him to fresh sufferings.
+
+It was getting latish, and Oswald, though thrilled in every marrow, was
+getting rather sleepy, when old Benenden said, "There she is!"
+
+Oswald could see nothing at first, but presently he saw a dark form on
+the smooth sea. It turned out to be another boat.
+
+She crept quietly up till she was alongside ours, and then a keg was
+hastily hoisted from her to us.
+
+A few words in low voices were exchanged. Oswald only heard--
+
+"Sure you ain't give us the wrong un?"
+
+And several people laughed hoarsely.
+
+On first going on board Oswald and Dicky had mentioned kegs, and had
+been ordered to "Stow that!" so that Oswald had begun to fear that after
+all it _was_ only a night's fishing, and that his glorious idea had been
+abandoned.
+
+But now he saw the keg his trembling heart was reassured.
+
+It got colder and colder. Dicky, in the cabin, was covered with several
+coats richly scented with fish, and Oswald was glad to accept an oilskin
+and sou'-wester, and to sit down on some spare nets.
+
+Until you are out on the sea at night you can never have any idea how
+big the world really is. The sky looks higher up, and the stars look
+further off, and even if you know it is only the English Channel, yet it
+is just as good for feeling small on as the most trackless Atlantic or
+Pacific. Even the fish help to show the largeness of the world, because
+you think of the deep deepness of the dark sea they come up out of in
+such rich profusion. The hold was full of fish after the second haul.
+
+Oswald sat leaning against the precious keg, and perhaps the bigness and
+quietness of everything had really rendered him unconscious. But he did
+not know he was asleep until the Viking man woke him up by kindly
+shaking him and saying--
+
+"Here, look alive! Was ye thinking to beach her with that there precious
+keg of yours all above board, and crying out to be broached?"
+
+So then Oswald roused himself, and the keg was rolled on to the fish
+where they lay filling the hold, and armfuls of fish thrown over it.
+
+"Is it _really_ only water?" asked Oswald. "There's an awfully odd
+smell." And indeed, in spite of the many different smells that are
+natural to a fishing-boat, Oswald began to notice a strong scent of
+railway refreshment-rooms.
+
+"In course it's only water," said the Viking. "What else would it be
+likely to be?" and Oswald thinks he winked in the dark.
+
+Perhaps Oswald fell asleep again after this. It was either that or deep
+thought. Any way, he was aroused from it by a bump, and a soft grating
+sound, and he thought at first the boat was being wrecked on a coral
+reef or something.
+
+But almost directly he knew that the boat had merely come ashore in the
+proper manner, so he jumped up.
+
+You cannot push a boat out of the water like you push it in. It has to
+be hauled up by a capstan. If you don't know what that is the author is
+unable to explain, but there is a picture of one.
+
+When the boat was hauled up we got out, and it was very odd to stretch
+your legs on land again. It felt shakier than being on sea. The
+red-haired boy went off to get a cart to take the shining fish to
+market, and Oswald decided to face the mixed-up smells of that cabin and
+wake Dicky.
+
+Dicky was not grateful to Oswald for his thoughtful kindness in letting
+him sleep through the perils of the deep and his own uncomfortableness.
+
+He said, "I do think you might have waked a chap. I've simply been out
+of everything."
+
+Oswald did not answer back. His is a proud and self-restraining nature.
+He just said--
+
+"Well, hurry up, now, and see them cart the fish away."
+
+So we hurried up, and as Oswald came out of the cabin he heard strange
+voices, and his heart leaped up like the persons who "behold a rainbow
+in the sky," for one of the voices was the voice of that inferior and
+unsailorlike coastguard from Longbeach, who had gone out of his way to
+be disagreeable to Oswald and his brothers and sisters on at least two
+occasions. And now Oswald felt almost sure that his disagreeablenesses,
+though not exactly curses, were coming home to roost just as though they
+had been.
+
+"You're missing your beauty sleep, Stokes," we heard our Viking remark.
+
+"I'm not missing anything else, though," replied the coastguard.
+
+"Like half a dozen mackerel for your breakfast?" inquired Mr. Benenden
+in kindly accents.
+
+"I've no stomach for fish, thank you all the same," replied Mr. Stokes
+coldly.
+
+He walked up and down on the beach, clapping his arms to keep himself
+warm.
+
+"Going to see us unload her?" asked Mr. Benenden.
+
+"If it's all the same to you," answered the disagreeable coastguard.
+
+He had to wait a long time, for the cart did not come, and did not come,
+and kept on not coming for ages and ages. When it did the men unloaded
+the boat, carrying the fish by basketfuls to the cart.
+
+Every one played up jolly well. They took the fish from the side of the
+hold where the keg wasn't till there was quite a deep hole there, and
+the other side, where the keg really was, looked like a mountain in
+comparison.
+
+This could be plainly seen by the detested coastguard, and by three of
+his companions who had now joined him.
+
+It was beginning to be light, not daylight, but a sort of ghost-light
+that you could hardly believe was the beginning of sunshine, and the sky
+being blue again instead of black.
+
+The hated coastguard got impatient. He said--
+
+"You'd best own up. It'll be the better for you. It's bound to come out,
+along of the fish. I know it's there. We've had private information up
+at the station. The game's up this time, so don't you make no mistake."
+
+Mr. Benenden and the Viking and the boy looked at each other.
+
+"An' what might your precious private information have been about?"
+asked Mr. Benenden.
+
+"Brandy," replied the coastguard Stokes, and he went and got on to the
+gunwale. "And what's more, I can smell it from here."
+
+Oswald and Dicky drew near, and the refreshment-room smell was stronger
+than ever. And a brown corner of the keg was peeping out.
+
+"There you are!" cried the Loathed One. "Let's have that gentleman out,
+if you please, and then you'll all just come alonger me."
+
+Remarking, with a shrug of the shoulders, that he supposed it was all
+up, our Viking scattered the fish that hid the barrel, and hoisted it
+out from its scaly bed.
+
+"That's about the size of it," said the coastguard we did not like.
+"Where's the rest?"
+
+"That's all," said Mr. Benenden. "We're poor men, and we has to act
+according to our means."
+
+"We'll see the boat clear to her last timber, if you've no objections,"
+said the Detestable One.
+
+I could see that our gallant crew were prepared to go through with the
+business. More and more of the coastguards were collecting, and I
+understood that what the crew wanted was to go up to the coastguard
+station with that keg of pretending brandy, and involve the whole of the
+coastguards of Longbeach in one complete and perfect sell.
+
+But Dicky was sick of the entire business. He really has not the proper
+soul for adventures, and what soul he has had been damped by what he had
+gone through.
+
+So he said, "Look here, there's nothing in that keg but water."
+
+Oswald could have kicked him, though he is his brother.
+
+"Huh!" replied the Unloved One, "d'you think I haven't got a nose? Why,
+it's oozing out of the bunghole now as strong as Samson."
+
+"Open it and see," said Dicky, disregarding Oswald's whispered
+instructions to him to shut up. "It _is_ water."
+
+"What do you suppose I suppose you want to get water from the other side
+for, you young duffer!" replied the brutal official. "There's plenty
+water and to spare this side."
+
+"It's--it's _French_ water," replied Dicky madly; "it's ours, my
+brother's and mine. We asked these sailors to get it for us."
+
+"Sailors, indeed!" said the hateful coastguard. "You come along with
+me."
+
+And our Viking said he was something or othered. But Benenden whispered
+to him in a low voice that it was all right--time was up. No one heard
+this but me and the Viking.
+
+"I want to go home," said Dicky. "I don't want to come along with you."
+
+"What did you want water for?" was asked. "To try it?"
+
+"To stand you a drink next time you ordered us off your beastly boat,"
+said Dicky. And Oswald rejoiced to hear the roar of laughter that
+responded to this fortunate piece of cheek.
+
+I suppose Dicky's face was so angel-like, innocent-looking, like
+stowaways in books, that they _had_ to believe him. Oswald told him so
+afterwards, and Dicky hit out.
+
+Any way, the keg was broached, and sure enough it was water, and
+sea-water at that, as the Unamiable One said when he had tasted it out
+of a tin cup, for nothing else would convince him. "But I smell brandy
+still," he said, wiping his mouth after the sea-water.
+
+Our Viking slowly drew a good-sized flat labelled bottle out of the
+front of his jersey.
+
+"From the 'Old Ship,'" he said gently. "I may have spilt a drop or two
+here or there over the keg, my hand not being very steady, as is well
+known, owing to spells of marsh fever as comes over me every six weeks
+to the day."
+
+The coastguard that we never could bear said, "Marsh fever be something
+or othered," and his comrades said the same. But they all blamed _him_,
+and we were glad.
+
+We went home sleepy, but rejoicing. The whole thing was as complete a
+sell as ever I wish to see.
+
+[Illustration: SURE ENOUGH IT WAS SEA-WATER, AS THE UNAMIABLE ONE SAID
+WHEN HE HAD TASTED IT.]
+
+Of course we told our own dear and respected Lymchurch coastguards, and
+I think they may be trusted not to let it down on the Longbeach
+coastguards for many a good day. If their memories get bad I think there
+will always be plenty of people along that coast to remind them!
+
+So _that's_ all right.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When we had told the girls all, and borne their reproaches for not
+telling them before, we decided to give the Viking five bob for the game
+way he had played up.
+
+So we did. He would not take it at first, but when we said, "Do--you
+might buy a pig with it, and call it Stokes after that coastguard," he
+could no longer resist, and accepted our friendly gift.
+
+We talked with him for a bit, and when we were going we thanked him for
+being so jolly, and helping us to plant out the repulsive coastguard so
+thoroughly.
+
+Then he said, "Don't mention it. Did you tell your little gells what you
+was up to?"
+
+"No," said Oswald, "not till afterwards."
+
+"Then you _can_ hold your tongues. Well, since you've acted so handsome
+about that there pig, what's to be named for Stokes, I don't mind if I
+tells you something. Only mum's the word."
+
+We said we were quite sure it was.
+
+"Well, then," said he, leaning over the pig-stye wall, and rubbing the
+spotted pig's back with his stick. "It's an ill wind that blows no good
+to nobody. You see, that night there was a little bird went an'
+whispered to 'em up at Longbeach about our little bit of a keg. So when
+we landed they was there."
+
+"Of course," said Oswald.
+
+"Well, if they was there they couldn't be somewheres else, could they?"
+
+We owned they could not.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder," he went on, "but what a bit of a cargo was run
+that night further up the beach: something as _wasn't_ sea-water. I
+don't say it was so, mind--and mind you don't go for to say it."
+
+Then we understood that there is a little smuggling done still, and that
+we had helped in it, though quite without knowing.
+
+We were jolly glad. Afterwards, when we had had that talk with Father,
+when he told us that the laws are made by the English people, and it is
+dishonourable for an Englishman not to stick to them, we saw that
+smuggling must be wrong.
+
+But we have never been able to feel really sorry. I do not know why this
+is.
+
+
+
+
+_ZAIDA, THE MYSTERIOUS PROPHETESS OF THE GOLDEN ORIENT_
+
+
+THIS is the story of how we were gipsies and wandering minstrels. And,
+like everything else we did about that time, it was done to make money
+for Miss Sandal, whose poorness kept on, making our kind hearts ache.
+
+It is rather difficult to get up any good game in a house like Miss
+Sandal's, where there is nothing lying about, except your own things,
+and where everything is so neat and necessary. Your own clothes are
+seldom interesting, and even if you change hats with your sisters it is
+not a complete disguise.
+
+The idea of being gipsies was due to Alice. She had not at all liked
+being entirely out of the smuggling affray, though Oswald explained to
+her that it was her own fault for having been born a girl. And, of
+course, after the event, Dicky and I had some things to talk about that
+the girls hadn't, and we had a couple of wet days.
+
+You have no idea how dull you can be in a house like that, unless you
+happen to know the sort of house I mean. A house that is meant for
+plain living and high thinking, like Miss Sandal told us, may be very
+nice for the high thinkers, but if you are not accustomed to thinking
+high there is only the plain living left, and it is like boiled rice for
+every meal to any young mind, however much beef and Yorkshire there may
+be for the young insides. Mrs. Beale saw to our having plenty of nice
+things to eat, but, alas! it is not always dinner-time, and in between
+meals the cold rice-pudding feeling is very chilling. Of course we had
+the splendid drawings of winged things made by our Flying Lodger, but
+you cannot look at pictures all day long, however many coloured chalks
+they are drawn with, and however fond you may be of them.
+
+Miss Sandal's was the kind of house that makes you wander all round it
+and say, "What shall we do next?" And when it rains the little ones get
+cross.
+
+It was the second wet day when we were wandering round the house to the
+sad music of our boots on the clean, bare boards that Alice said--
+
+"Mrs. Beale has got a book at her house called 'Napoleon's book of
+Fate.' You might ask her to let you go and get it, Oswald. She likes you
+best."
+
+Oswald is as modest as any one I know, but the truth is the truth.
+
+"We could tell our fortunes, and read the dark future," Alice went on.
+"It would be better than high thinking without anything particular to
+think about."
+
+So Oswald went down to Mrs. Beale and said--
+
+"I say, Bealie dear, you've got a book up at your place. I wish you'd
+lend it to us to read."
+
+"If it's the Holy Book you mean, sir," replied Mrs. Beale, going on with
+peeling the potatoes that were to be a radiant vision later on, all
+brown and crisp in company with a leg of mutton--"if it's the Holy Book
+you want there's one up on Miss Sandal's chest of drawerses."
+
+"I know," said Oswald. He knew every book in the house. The backs of
+them were beautiful--leather and gold--but inside they were like whited
+sepulchres, full of poetry and improving reading. "No--we didn't want
+that book just now. It is a book called 'Napoleon's book of Fate.' Would
+you mind if I ran up to your place and got it?"
+
+"There's no one at home," said Mrs. Beale; "wait a bit till I go along
+to the bakus with the meat, and I'll fetch it along."
+
+"You might let me go," said Oswald, whose high spirit is always
+ill-attuned to waiting a bit. "I wouldn't touch anything else, and I
+know where you keep the key."
+
+"There's precious little as ye don't know, it seems to me," said Mrs.
+Beale. "There, run along do. It's on top of the mantelshelf alongside
+the picture tea-tin. It's a red book. Don't go taking the 'Wesleyan
+Conference Reports' by mistake, the two is both together on the mantel."
+
+[Illustration: "I SAY, BEALIE DEAR, YOU'VE GOT A BOOK UP AT YOUR
+PLACE."]
+
+Oswald in his macker splashed through the mud to Mrs. Beale's, found the
+key under the loose tile behind the water-butt, and got the book without
+adventure. He had promised not to touch anything else, so he could not
+make even the gentlest booby-trap as a little surprise for Mrs. Beale
+when she got back.
+
+And most of that day we were telling our fortunes by the ingenious means
+invented by the great Emperor, or by cards, which it is hard to remember
+the rules for, or by our dreams. The only blights were that the others
+all wanted to have the book all the time, and that Noel's dreams were so
+long and mixed that we got tired of hearing about them before he did.
+But he said he was quite sure he had dreamed every single bit of every
+one of them. And the author hopes this was the truth.
+
+We all went to bed hoping we should dream something that we could look
+up in the dream book, but none of us did.
+
+And in the morning it was still raining and Alice said--
+
+"Look here, if it ever clears up again let's dress up and be gipsies. We
+can go about in the distant villages telling people's fortunes. If
+you'll let me have the book all to-day I can learn up quite enough to
+tell them mysteriously and darkly. And gipsies always get their hands
+crossed with silver."
+
+Dicky said that was one way of keeping the book to herself, but Oswald
+said--
+
+"Let her try. She shall have it for an hour, and then we'll have an
+exam. to see how much she knows."
+
+This was done, but while she was swatting the thing up with her fingers
+in her ears we began to talk about how gipsies should be dressed.
+
+And when we all went out of the room to see if we could find anything in
+that tidy house to dress up in, she came after us to see what was up. So
+there was no exam.
+
+We peeped into the cupboards and drawers in Miss Sandal's room, but
+everything was grey or brown, not at all the sort of thing to dress up
+for children of the Sunny South in. The plain living was shown in all
+her clothes; and besides, grey shows every little spot you may happen to
+get on it.
+
+We were almost in despair. We looked in all the drawers in all the
+rooms, but found only sheets and tablecloths and more grey and brown
+clothing.
+
+We tried the attic, with fainting hearts. Servants' clothes are always
+good for dressing-up with; they have so many different colours. But Miss
+Sandal had no servant. Still, she might have had one once, and the
+servant might have left something behind her. Dora suggested this and
+added--
+
+"If you don't find anything in the attic you'll know it's Fate, and
+you're not to do it. Besides, I'm almost sure you can be put in prison
+for telling fortunes."
+
+"Not if you're a gipsy you can't," said Noel; "they have licences to
+tell fortunes, I believe, and judges can't do anything to them."
+
+So we went up to the attic. And it was as bare and tidy as the rest of
+the house. But there were some boxes and we looked in them. The smallest
+was full of old letters, so we shut it again at once. Another had books
+in it, and the last had a clean towel spread over what was inside. So we
+took off the towel, and then every one said "Oh!"
+
+In right on the top was a scarlet thing, embroidered heavily with gold.
+It proved, on unfolding, to be a sort of coat, like a Chinaman's. We
+lifted it out and laid it on the towel on the floor. And then the full
+glories of that box were revealed. There were cloaks and dresses and
+skirts and scarves, of all the colours of a well-chosen rainbow, and all
+made of the most beautiful silks and stuffs, with things worked on them
+with silk, as well as chains of beads and many lovely ornaments. We
+think Miss Sandal must have been very fond of pretty things when she was
+young, or when she was better off.
+
+"Well, there won't be any gipsies near by to come up to _us_," said
+Oswald joyously.
+
+"Do you think we ought to take them, without asking?" said Dora.
+
+"Of course not," said Oswald witheringly; "we ought to write to her and
+say, 'Please, Miss Sandal, we know how poor you are, and may we borrow
+your things to be gipsies in so as we get money for you---- All right!
+You go and write the letter, Dora."
+
+"I only just asked," said Dora.
+
+We tried the things on. Some of them were so ladylike that they were no
+good--evening dresses, and things like that. But there were enough
+useful things to go round. Oswald, in white shirt and flannel
+knee-breeches, tied a brick-coloured silk scarf round his middle part,
+and a green one round his head for a turban. The turban was fastened
+with a sparkling brooch with pink stones in it. He looked like a Moorish
+toreador. Dicky had the scarlet and gold coat, which was the right
+length when Dora had run a tuck in it.
+
+Alice had a blue skirt with embroidery of peacock's feathers on it, and
+a gold and black jacket very short with no sleeves, and a yellow silk
+handkerchief on her head like Italian peasants, and another handkie
+round her neck. Dora's skirt was green and her handkerchiefs purple and
+pink.
+
+Noel insisted on having his two scarves, one green and one yellow,
+twisted on his legs like putties, and a red scarf wound round his
+middle-part, and he stuck a long ostrich feather in his own bicycle cap
+and said he was a troubadour bard.
+
+H.O. was able to wear a lady's blouse of mouse-coloured silk,
+embroidered with poppies. It came down to his knees and a jewelled belt
+kept it in place.
+
+We made up our costumes into bundles, and Alice thoughtfully bought a
+pennyworth of pins. Of course it was idle to suppose that we could go
+through the village in our gipsy clothes without exciting _some_ remark.
+
+The more we thought of it the more it seemed as if it would be a good
+thing to get some way from our village before we began our gipsy career.
+
+The woman at the sweet shop where Alice got the pins has a donkey and
+cart, and for two shillings she consented to lend us this, so that some
+of us could walk while some of us would always be resting in the cart.
+
+And next morning the weather was bright and blue as ever, and we
+started. We were beautifully clean, but all our hairs had been arranged
+with the brush solely, because at the last moment nobody could find it's
+comb. Mrs. Beale had packed up a jolly sandwichy and apply lunch for us.
+We told her we were going to gather bluebells in the woods, and of
+course we meant to do that too.
+
+The donkey-cart drew up at the door and we started. It was found
+impossible to get every one into the cart at once, so we agreed to cast
+lots for who should run behind, and to take it in turns, mile and mile.
+The lot fell on Dora and H.O., but there was precious little running
+about it. Anything slower than that donkey Oswald has never known, and
+when it came to passing its own front door the donkey simply would not.
+It ended in Oswald getting down and going to the animal's head, and
+having it out with him, man to man. The donkey was small, but of
+enormous strength. He set all his four feet firm and leant back--and
+Oswald set his two feet firm and leant back--so that Oswald and the
+front part of the donkey formed an angry and contentious letter V. And
+Oswald gazed in the donkey's eyes in a dauntless manner, and the donkey
+looked at Oswald as though it thought he was hay or thistles.
+
+Alice beat the donkey from the cart with a stick that had been given us
+for the purpose. The rest shouted. But all was in vain. And four people
+in a motor car stopped it to see the heroic struggle, and laughed till I
+thought they would have upset their hateful motor. However, it was all
+for the best, though Oswald did not see it at the time. When they had
+had enough of laughing they started their machine again, and the noise
+it made penetrated the donkey's dull intelligence, and he started off
+without a word--I mean without any warning, and Oswald has only just
+time to throw himself clear of the wheels before he fell on the ground
+and rolled over, biting the dust.
+
+The motor car people behaved as you would expect. But accidents happen
+even to motor cars, when people laugh too long and too unfeelingly.
+The driver turned round to laugh, and the motor instantly took the bit
+between its teeth and bolted into the stone wall of the churchyard. No
+one was hurt except the motor, but that had to spend the day at the
+blacksmith's, we heard afterwards. Thus was the outraged Oswald avenged
+by Fate.
+
+[Illustration: ALICE BEAT THE DONKEY FROM THE CART. THE REST SHOUTED.]
+
+He was not hurt either--though much the motor people would have cared if
+he had been--and he caught up with the others at the end of the village,
+for the donkey's pace had been too good to last, and the triumphal
+progress was resumed.
+
+It was some time before we found a wood sufficiently lurking-looking for
+our secret purposes. There are no woods close to the village. But at
+last, up by Bonnington, we found one, and tying our noble steed to the
+sign-post that says how many miles it is to Ashford, we cast a hasty
+glance round, and finding no one in sight disappeared in the wood with
+our bundles.
+
+We went in just ordinary creatures. We came out gipsies of the deepest
+dye, for we had got a pennorth of walnut stain from Mr. Jameson the
+builder, and mixed with water--the water we had brought in a
+medicine-bottle--it was a prime disguise. And we knew it would wash off,
+unlike the Condy's fluid we once stained ourselves with during a
+never-to-be-forgotten game of Jungle-Book.
+
+We had put on all the glorious things we had bagged from Miss Sandal's
+attic treasures, but still Alice had a small bundle unopened.
+
+"What's that?" Dora asked.
+
+"I meant to keep it as a reserve force in case the fortune-telling
+didn't turn out all our fancy painted it," said Alice; "but I don't mind
+telling you now."
+
+She opened the bundle, and there was a tambourine, some black lace, a
+packet of cigarette papers, and our missing combs.
+
+"What ever on earth----" Dicky was beginning, but Oswald saw it all. He
+has a wonderfully keen nose. And he said--
+
+"Bully for you, Alice. I wish I'd thought it myself."
+
+Alice was much pleased by this handsome speech.
+
+"Yes," she said; "perhaps really it would be best to begin with it. It
+would attract the public's attention, and then we could tell the
+fortunes. You see," she kindly explained to Dicky and H.O. and Dora, who
+had not seen it yet--though Noel had, almost as soon as I did--"you see,
+we'll all play on the combs with the veils over our faces, so that no
+one can see what our instruments are. Why, they might be mouth-organs
+for anything any one will know, or some costly instruments from the
+far-off East, like they play to sultans in zenanas. Let's just try a
+tune or two before we go on, to be sure that all the combs work right.
+Dora's has such big teeth, I shouldn't wonder if it wouldn't act at
+all."
+
+So we all papered our combs and did "Heroes," but that sounded awful.
+"The Girl I Left Behind Me" went better, and so did "Bonnie Dundee." But
+we thought "See the Conquering" or "The Death of Nelson" would be the
+best to begin with.
+
+It was beastly hot doing it under the veils, but when Oswald had done
+one tune without the veil to see how the others looked he could not help
+owning that the veils did give a hidden mystery that was a stranger to
+simple combs.
+
+We were all a bit puffed when we had played for awhile, so we decided
+that as the donkey seemed calm and was eating grass and resting, we
+might as well follow his example.
+
+"We ought not to be too proud to take pattern by the brute creation,"
+said Dora.
+
+So we had our lunch in the wood. We lighted a little fire of sticks and
+fir-cones, so as to be as gipsyish as we could, and we sat round the
+fire. We made a charming picture in our bright clothes, among what would
+have been our native surroundings if we had been real gipsies, and we
+knew how nice we looked, and stayed there though the smoke got in our
+eyes, and everything we ate tasted of it.
+
+The woods were a little damp, and that was why the fire smoked so. There
+were the jackets we had cast off when we dressed up, to sit on, and
+there was a horse-cloth in the cart intended for the donkey's wear, but
+we decided that our need was greater than its, so we took the blanket
+to recline on.
+
+It was as jolly a lunch as ever I remember, and we lingered over that
+and looking romantic till we could not bear the smoke any more.
+
+Then we got a lot of bluebells and we trampled out the fire most
+carefully, because we know about not setting woods and places alight,
+rolled up our clothes in bundles, and went out of the shadowy woodland
+into the bright sunlight, as sparkling looking a crew of gipsies as any
+one need wish for.
+
+Last time we had seen the road it had been quite white and bare of
+persons walking on it, but now there were several. And not only walkers,
+but people in carts. And some carriages passed us too.
+
+Every one stared at us, but they did not seem so astonished as we had
+every right to expect, and though interested they were not rude, and
+this is very rare among English people--and not only poor people
+either--when they see anything at all out of the way.
+
+We asked one man, who was very Sunday-best indeed in black clothes and a
+blue tie, where every one was going, for every one was going the same
+way, and every one looked as if it was going to church, which was
+unlikely, it being but Thursday. He said--
+
+"Same place wot you're going to I expect."
+
+And when we said where was that we were requested by him to get along
+with us. Which we did.
+
+An old woman in the heaviest bonnet I have ever seen and the highest--it
+was like a black church--revealed the secret to us, and we learned that
+there was a Primrose _fete_ going on in Sir Willoughby Blockson's
+grounds.
+
+We instantly decided to go to the _fete_.
+
+"I've been to a Primrose _fete_, and so have you, Dora," Oswald
+remarked, "and people are so dull at them, they'd gladly give gold to
+see the dark future. And, besides, the villages will be unpopulated, and
+no one at home but idiots and babies and their keepers."
+
+So we went to the _fete_.
+
+The people got thicker and thicker, and when we got to Sir Willoughby's
+lodge gates, which have sprawling lions on the gate-posts, we were told
+to take the donkey cart round to the stable-yard.
+
+This we did, and proud was the moment when a stiff groom had to bend his
+proud stomach to go to the head of Bates's donkey.
+
+"This is something like," said Alice, and Noel added:
+
+"The foreign princes are well received at this palace."
+
+"We aren't princes, we're gipsies," said Dora, tucking his scarf in. It
+would keep on getting loose.
+
+"There _are_ gipsy princes, though," said Noel, "because there are gipsy
+kings."
+
+"You aren't always a prince first," said Dora; "don't wriggle so or I
+can't fix you. Sometimes being made a king just happens to some one who
+isn't any one in particular."
+
+"I don't think so," said Noel; "you have to be a prince before you're a
+king, just as you have to be a kitten before you're a cat, or a puppy
+before you're a dog, or a worm before you're a serpent, or----"
+
+"What about the King of Sweden?" Dora was beginning, when a very nice
+tall, thin man, with white flowers in his buttonhole like for a wedding,
+came strolling up and said--
+
+"And whose show is this? Eh, what?"
+
+We said it was ours.
+
+"Are you expected?" he asked.
+
+We said we thought not, but we hoped he didn't mind.
+
+"What are you? Acrobats? Tight-rope? That's a ripping Burmese coat
+you've got there."
+
+"Yes, it is. No we aren't," said Alice, with dignity. "I am Zaida, the
+mysterious prophetess of the golden Orient, and the others are
+mysterious too, but we haven't fixed on their names yet."
+
+"By jove!" said the gentleman; "but who are you really?"
+
+"Our names are our secret," said Oswald, with dignity, but Alice said,
+"Oh, but we don't mind telling _you_, because I'm sure you're nice.
+We're really the Bastables, and we want to get some money for some one
+we know that's rather poor--of course I can't tell you _her_ name. And
+we've learnt how to tell fortunes--really we have. Do you think they'll
+let us tell them at the _fete_. People are often dull at _fetes_, aren't
+they?"
+
+"By Jove!" said the gentleman again--"by Jove, they are!"
+
+He plunged for a moment in deep reflection.
+
+"We've got co--musical instruments," said Noel; "shall we play to you a
+little?"
+
+"Not here," said the gentleman; "follow me."
+
+He led the way by the backs of shrubberies to an old summer-house, and
+we asked him to wait outside.
+
+Then we put on our veils and tuned up. "See, see the conquering----"
+
+But he did not let us finish the tune; he burst in upon us, crying--
+
+"Ripping--oh, ripping! And now tell me my fortune."
+
+Alice took off her veil and looked at his hand.
+
+"You will travel in distant lands," she said; "you will have great
+wealth and honour; you will marry a beautiful lady--a very fine woman,
+it says in the book, but I think a beautiful lady sounds nicer, don't
+you?"
+
+[Illustration: "WE'VE GOT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS," SAID NOEL.]
+
+"Much; but I shouldn't mention the book when you're telling the
+fortune."
+
+"I wouldn't, except to you," said Alice, "and she'll have lots of money
+and a very sweet disposition. Trials and troubles beset your path, but
+do but be brave and fearless and you will overcome all your enemies.
+Beware of a dark woman--most likely a widow."
+
+"I will," said he, for Alice had stopped for breath. "Is that all?"
+
+"No. Beware of a dark woman and shun the society of drunkards and
+gamblers. Be very cautious in your choice of acquaintances, or you will
+make a false friend who will be your ruin. That's all, except that you
+will be married very soon and live to a green old age with the beloved
+wife of your bosom, and have twelve sons and----"
+
+"Stop, stop!" said the gentleman; "twelve sons are as many as I can
+bring up handsomely on my present income. Now, look here. You did that
+jolly well, only go slower, and pretend to look for things in the hand
+before you say them. Everything's free at the _fete_, so you'll get no
+money for your fortune-telling."
+
+Gloom was on each young brow.
+
+"It's like this," he went on, "there is a lady fortune-teller in a tent
+in the park."
+
+"Then we may as well get along home," said Dicky.
+
+"Not at all," said our new friend, for such he was now about to prove
+himself to be; "that lady does not want to tell fortunes to-day. She has
+a headache. Now, if you'll really stick to it, and tell the people's
+fortunes as well as you told mine, I'll stand you--let's see--two quid
+for the afternoon. Will that do? What?"
+
+We said we should just jolly well think it would.
+
+"I've got some Eau de Cologne in a medicine-bottle," Dora said; "my
+brother Noel has headaches sometimes, but I think he's going to be all
+right to-day. Do take it, it will do the lady's head good."
+
+"I'll take care of her head," he said, laughing, but he took the bottle
+and said, "Thank you."
+
+Then he told us to stay where we were while he made final arrangements,
+and we were left with palpitating breasts to look wildly through the
+Book of Fate, so as to have the things ready. But it turned out to be
+time thrown away, for when he came back he said to Alice--
+
+"It'll have to be only you and your sister, please, for I see they've
+stuck up a card with 'Esmeralda, the gipsy Princess, reads the hand and
+foretells the future' on it. So you boys will have to be mum. You can be
+attendants--mutes, by jove!--yes that's it. And, I say, kiddies, you
+will jolly well play up, won't you? Don't stand any cheek. Stick it on,
+you know. I can't tell you how important it is about----about the lady's
+headache."
+
+"I should think this would be a cool place for a headache to be quiet
+in," said Dora; and it was, for it was quite hidden in the shrubbery and
+no path to it.
+
+"By Jove!" he remarked yet once again, "so it would. You're right!"
+
+He led us out of the shrubbery and across the park. There were people
+dotted all about and they stared, but they touched their hats to the
+gentleman, and he returned their salute with stern politeness.
+
+Inside the tent with "Esmeralda, &c.," outside there was a lady in a hat
+and dust-cloak. But we could see her spangles under the cloak.
+
+"Now," said the gentleman to Dicky, "you stand at the door and let
+people in, one at a time. You others can just play a few bars on your
+instruments for each new person--only a very little, because you do get
+out of tune, though that's barbaric certainly. Now, here's the two quid.
+And you stick to the show till five; you'll hear the stable clock
+chime."
+
+The lady was very pale with black marks under her eyes, and her eyes
+looked red, Oswald thought. She seemed about to speak, but the gentleman
+said--
+
+"Do trust me, Ella. I'll explain everything directly. Just go to the old
+summer-house--_you_ know--and I'll be there directly. I'll take a couple
+of pegs out of the back and you can slip away among the trees. Hold your
+cloak close over your gown. Goodbye, kiddies. Stay, give me your
+address, and I'll write and tell you if my fortune comes true."
+
+So he shook hands with us and went. And we did stick to it, though it is
+far less fun than you would think telling fortunes all the afternoon in
+a stuffy tent, while outside you know there are things to eat and people
+enjoying themselves. But there were the two gold quid, and we were
+determined to earn them. It is very hard to tell a different fortune for
+each person, and there were a great many. The girls took it in turns,
+and Oswald wonders why their hairs did not go gray. Though of course it
+was much better fun for them than for us, because we had just to be
+mutes when we weren't playing on the combs.
+
+The people we told fortunes to at first laughed rather, and said we were
+too young to know anything. But Oswald said in a hollow voice that we
+were as old as the Pyramids, and after that Alice took the tucks out of
+Dicky's red coat and put it on and turbaned herself, and looked much
+older.
+
+The stable clock had chimed the quarter to five some little time, when
+an elderly gentleman with whiskers, who afterwards proved to be Sir
+Willoughby, burst into the tent.
+
+"Where's Miss Blockson?" he said, and we answered truthfully that we did
+not know.
+
+"How long have you been here?" he furiously asked.
+
+"Ever since two," said Alice wearily.
+
+He said a word that I should have thought a baronet would have been
+above using.
+
+"Who brought you here?"
+
+We described the gentleman who had done this, and again the baronet said
+things we should never be allowed to say. "That confounded Carew!" he
+added, with more words.
+
+"Is anything wrong?" asked Dora--"can we do anything? We'll stay on
+longer if you like--if you can't find the lady who was doing Esmeralda
+before we came."
+
+"I'm not very likely to find her," he said ferociously. "Stay longer
+indeed! Get away out of my sight before I have you locked up for
+vagrants and vagabonds."
+
+He left the scene in bounding and mad fury. We thought it best to do as
+he said, and went round the back way to the stables so as to avoid
+exciting his ungoverned rage by meeting him again. We found our cart and
+went home. We had got two quid and something to talk about.
+
+But none of us--not even Oswald the discerning--understood exactly what
+we had been mixed up in, till the pink satin box with three large
+bottles of A1 scent in it, and postmarks of foreign lands, came to Dora.
+And there was a letter. It said--
+
+"My dear Gipsies,--I beg to return the Eau de Cologne you so kindly lent
+me. The lady did use a little of it, but I found that foreign travel was
+what she really wanted to make her quite happy. So we caught the 4.15
+to town, and now we are married, and intend to live to a green old age,
+&c., as you foretold. But for your help my fortune couldn't have come
+true, because my wife's father, Sir Willoughby, thought I was not rich
+enough to marry. But you see I was. And my wife and I both thank you
+heartily for your kind help. I hope it was not an awful swat. I had to
+say five because of the train. Good luck to you, and thanks awfully.
+
+                                    "Yours faithfully,
+                                              "CARISBROOK CAREW."
+
+If Oswald had known beforehand we should never have made that two quid
+for Miss Sandal.
+
+For Oswald does not approve of marriages and would never, if he knew it,
+be the means of assisting one to occur.
+
+
+
+
+_THE LADY AND THE LICENSE; OR, FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND_
+
+
+          "MY DEAR KIDDIES,--Miss Sandal's married sister
+          has just come home from Australia, and she feels
+          very tired. No wonder, you will say, after such a
+          long journey. So she is going to Lymchurch to
+          rest. Now I want you all to be very quiet, because
+          when you are in your usual form you aren't exactly
+          restful, are you? If this weather lasts you will
+          be able to be out most of the time, and when you
+          are indoors for goodness' sake control your lungs
+          and your boots, especially H.O.'s. Mrs. Bax has
+          travelled about a good deal, and once was nearly
+          eaten by cannibals. But I hope you won't bother
+          her to tell you stories. She is coming on Friday.
+          I am glad to hear from Alice's letter that you
+          enjoyed the Primrose Fete. Tell Noel that
+          'poetticle' is not the usual way of spelling the
+          word he wants. I send you ten shillings for
+          pocket-money, and again implore you to let Mrs.
+          Bax have a little rest and peace.
+
+                                          "Your loving
+                                                    "FATHER."
+
+          "PS.--If you want anything sent down, tell me, and
+          I will get Mrs. Bax to bring it. I met your friend
+          Mr. Red House the other day at lunch."
+
+When the letter had been read aloud, and we had each read it to
+ourselves, a sad silence took place.
+
+Dicky was the first to speak.
+
+"It _is_ rather beastly, I grant you," he said, "but it might be worse."
+
+"I don't see how," said H.O. "I do wish Father would jolly well learn to
+leave my boots alone."
+
+"It might be worse, I tell you," said Dicky. "Suppose instead of telling
+us to keep out of doors it had been the other way?"
+
+"Yes," said Alice, "suppose it had been, 'Poor Mrs. Bax requires to be
+cheered up. Do not leave her side day or night. Take it in turns to make
+jokes for her. Let not a moment pass without some merry jest'? Oh yes,
+it might be much, much worse."
+
+"Being able to get out all day makes it all right about trying to make
+that two pounds increase and multiply," remarked Oswald. "Now who's
+going to meet her at the station? Because after all it's her sister's
+house, and we've got to be polite to visitors even if we're in a house
+we aren't related to."
+
+This was seen to be so, but no one was keen on going to the station. At
+last Oswald, ever ready for forlorn hopes, consented to go.
+
+We told Mrs. Beale, and she got the best room ready, scrubbing
+everything till it smelt deliciously of wet wood and mottled soap. And
+then we decorated the room as well as we could.
+
+"She'll want some pretty things," said Alice, "coming from the land of
+parrots and opossums and gum-trees and things."
+
+We did think of borrowing the stuffed wild-cat that is in the bar at the
+"Ship," but we decided that our decorations must be very quiet--and the
+wild-cat, even in its stuffed state, was anything but; so we borrowed a
+stuffed roach in a glass box and stood it on the chest of drawers. It
+looked very calm. Sea-shells are quiet things when they are vacant, and
+Mrs. Beale let us have the four big ones off her chiffonnier.
+
+The girls got flowers--bluebells and white wood-anemones. We might have
+had poppies or buttercups, but we thought the colours might be too loud.
+We took some books up for Mrs. Bax to read in the night. And we took the
+quietest ones we could find.
+
+"Sonnets on Sleep," "Confessions of an Opium Eater," "Twilight of the
+Gods," "Diary of a Dreamer," and "By Still Waters," were some of them.
+The girls covered them with grey paper, because some of the bindings
+were rather gay.
+
+The girls hemmed grey calico covers for the drawers and the
+dressing-table, and we drew the blinds half-down, and when all was done
+the room looked as quiet as a roosting wood-pigeon.
+
+We put in a clock, but we did not wind it up.
+
+"She can do that herself," said Dora, "if she feels she can bear to hear
+it ticking."
+
+Oswald went to the station to meet her. He rode on the box beside the
+driver. When the others saw him mount there I think they were sorry they
+had not been polite and gone to meet her themselves. Oswald had a jolly
+ride. We got to the station just as the train came in. Only one lady got
+out of it, so Oswald knew it must be Mrs. Bax. If he had not been told
+how quiet she wanted to be he would have thought she looked rather
+jolly. She had short hair and gold spectacles. Her skirts were short,
+and she carried a parrot-cage in her hand. It contained our parrot, and
+when we wrote to tell Father that it and Pincher were the only things we
+wanted sent we never thought she would have brought either.
+
+"Mrs. Bax, I believe," was the only break Oswald made in the polite
+silence that he took the parrot-cage and her bag from her in.
+
+"How do you do?" she said very briskly for a tired lady; and Oswald
+thought it was noble of her to make the effort to smile. "Are you Oswald
+or Dicky?"
+
+Oswald told her in one calm word which he was, and then Pincher rolled
+madly out of a dog-box almost into his arms. Pincher would not be
+quiet. Of course he did not understand the need for it. Oswald conversed
+with Pincher in low, restraining whispers as he led the way to the
+"Ship's" fly. He put the parrot-cage on the inside seat of the carriage,
+held the door open for Mrs. Bax with silent politeness, closed it as
+quietly as possible, and prepared to mount on the box.
+
+"Oh, won't you come inside?" asked Mrs. Bax. "Do!"
+
+"No, thank you," said Oswald in calm and mouse-like tones; and to avoid
+any more jaw he got at once on to the box with Pincher.
+
+So that Mrs. Bax was perfectly quiet for the whole six miles--unless you
+count the rattle and shake-up-and-down of the fly. On the box Oswald and
+Pincher "tasted the sweets of a blissful re-union," like it says in
+novels. And the man from the "Ship" looked on and said how well bred
+Pincher was. It was a happy drive.
+
+There was something almost awful about the sleek, quiet tidiness of the
+others, who were all standing in a row outside the cottage to welcome
+Mrs. Bax. They all said, "How do you do?" in hushed voices, and all
+looked as if butter would not melt in any of their young mouths. I never
+saw a more soothing-looking lot of kids.
+
+She went to her room, and we did not see her again till tea-time.
+
+Then, still exquisitely brushed and combed, we sat round the board--in
+silence. We had left the tea-tray place for Mrs. Bax, of course. But
+she said to Dora--
+
+"Wouldn't you like to pour out?"
+
+And Dora replied in low, soft tones, "If you wish me to, Mrs. Bax. I
+usually do." And she did.
+
+We passed each other bread-and-butter and jam and honey with silent
+courteousness. And of course we saw that she had enough to eat.
+
+"Do you manage to amuse yourself pretty well here?" she asked presently.
+
+We said, "Yes, thank you," in hushed tones.
+
+"What do you do?" she asked.
+
+We did not wish to excite her by telling her what we did, so Dicky
+murmured--
+
+"Nothing in particular," at the same moment that Alice said--
+
+"All sorts of things."
+
+"Tell me about them," said Mrs. Bax invitingly.
+
+We replied by a deep silence. She sighed, and passed her cup for more
+tea.
+
+"Do you ever feel shy," she asked suddenly. "I do, dreadfully, with new
+people."
+
+We liked her for saying that, and Alice replied that she hoped she would
+not feel shy with us.
+
+"I hope not," she said. "Do you know, there was such a funny woman in
+the train? She had seventeen different parcels, and she kept counting
+them, and one of them was a kitten, and it was always under the seat
+when she began to count, so she always got the number wrong."
+
+We should have liked to hear about that kitten--especially what colour
+it was and how old--but Oswald felt that Mrs. Bax was only trying to
+talk for our sakes, so that we shouldn't feel shy, so he simply said,
+"Will you have some more cake?" and nothing more was said about the
+kitten.
+
+Mrs. Bax seemed very noble. She kept trying to talk to us about Pincher,
+and trains and Australia, but we were determined she should be quiet, as
+she wished it so much, and we restrained our brimming curiosity about
+opossums up gum-trees, and about emus and kangaroos and wattles, and
+only said "Yes" or "No," or, more often, nothing at all.
+
+When tea was over we melted away, "like snow-wreaths in Thawjean," and
+went out on the beach and had a yelling match. Our throats felt as
+though they were full of wool, from the hushed tones we had used in
+talking to Mrs. Bax. Oswald won the match. Next day we kept carefully
+out of the way, except for meals. Mrs. Bax tried talking again at
+breakfast-time, but we checked our wish to listen, and passed the
+pepper, salt, mustard, bread, toast, butter, marmalade, and even the
+cayenne, vinegar, and oil, with such politeness that she gave up.
+
+We took it in turns to watch the house and drive away organ-grinders. We
+told them they must not play in front of that house, because there was
+an Australian lady who had to be kept quiet. And they went at once. This
+cost us expense, because an organ-grinder will never consent to fly the
+spot under twopence a flight.
+
+We went to bed early. We were quite weary with being so calm and still.
+But we knew it was our duty, and we liked the feel of having done it.
+
+The day after was the day Jake Lee got hurt. Jake is the man who drives
+about the country in a covered cart, with pins and needles, and combs
+and frying-pans, and all the sort of things that farmers' wives are
+likely to want in a hurry, and no shops for miles. I have always thought
+Jake's was a beautiful life. I should like to do it myself. Well, this
+particular day he had got his cart all ready to start and had got his
+foot on the wheel to get up, when a motor-car went by puffing and
+hooting. I always think motor-cars seem so rude somehow. And the horse
+was frightened; and no wonder. It shied, and poor Jake was thrown
+violently to the ground, and hurt so much that they had to send for the
+doctor. Of course we went and asked Mrs. Jake if we could do
+anything--such as take the cart out and sell the things to the farmers'
+wives.
+
+But she thought not.
+
+It was after this that Dicky said--
+
+"Why shouldn't we get things of our own and go and sell them--with
+Bates' donkey?"
+
+Oswald was thinking the same thing, but he wishes to be fair, so he owns
+that Dicky spoke first. We all saw at once that the idea was a good one.
+
+"Shall we dress up for it?" H.O. asked. We thought not. It is always
+good sport to dress up, but I have never heard of people selling things
+to farmers' wives in really beautiful disguises.
+
+"We ought to go as shabby as we can," said Alice; "but somehow that
+always seems to come natural to your clothes when you've done a few
+interesting things in them. We have plenty of clothes that look poor but
+deserving. What shall we buy to sell?"
+
+"Pins and needles, and tape and bodkins," said Dora.
+
+"Butter," said Noel; "it is terrible when there is no butter."
+
+"Honey is nice," said H.O., "and so are sausages."
+
+"Jake has ready-made shirts and corduroy trousers. I suppose a farmer's
+shirt and trousers may give at any moment," said Alice, "and if he can't
+get new ones he has to go to bed till they are mended."
+
+Oswald thought tin-tacks, and glue, and string must often be needed to
+mend barns and farm tools with if they broke suddenly. And Dicky said--
+
+"I think the pictures of ladies hanging on to crosses in foaming seas
+are good. Jake told me he sold more of them than anything. I suppose
+people suddenly break the old ones, and home isn't home without a lady
+holding on to a cross."
+
+We went to Munn's shop, and we bought needles and pins, and tapes and
+bodkins, a pound of butter, a pot of honey and one of marmalade, and
+tin-tacks, string, and glue. But we could not get any ladies with
+crosses, and the shirts and trousers were too expensive for us to dare
+to risk it. Instead, we bought a head-stall for eighteenpence, because
+how providential we should be to a farmer whose favourite horse had
+escaped and he had nothing to catch it with; and three tin-openers, in
+case of a distant farm subsisting entirely on tinned things, and the
+only opener for miles lost down the well or something. We also bought
+several other thoughtful and far-sighted things.
+
+That night at supper we told Mrs. Bax we wanted to go out for the day.
+She had hardly said anything that supper-time, and now she said--
+
+"Where are you going? Teaching Sunday school?"
+
+As it was Monday, we felt her poor brain was wandering--most likely for
+want of quiet. And the room smelt of tobacco smoke, so we thought some
+one had been to see her and perhaps been too noisy for her. So Oswald
+said gently--
+
+"No, we are not going to teach Sunday school."
+
+Mrs. Bax sighed. Then she said--
+
+"I am going out myself to-morrow--for the day."
+
+"I hope it will not tire you too much," said Dora, with soft-voiced and
+cautious politeness. "If you want anything bought we could do it for
+you, with pleasure, and you could have a nice, quiet day at home."
+
+"Thank you," said Mrs. Bax shortly; and we saw she would do what she
+chose, whether it was really for her own good or not.
+
+She started before we did next morning, and we were careful to be
+mouse-quiet till the "Ship's" fly which contained her was out of
+hearing. Then we had another yelling competition, and Noel won with that
+new shriek of his that is like railway engines in distress; and then we
+went and fetched Bates' donkey and cart and packed our bales in it and
+started, some riding and some running behind.
+
+Any faint distant traces of respectableness that were left to our
+clothes were soon covered up by the dust of the road and by some of the
+ginger-beer bursting through the violence of the cart, which had no
+springs.
+
+The first farm we stopped at the woman really did want some pins, for
+though a very stupid person, she was making a pink blouse, and we
+said--
+
+"Do have some tape! You never know when you may want it."
+
+"I believe in buttons," she said. "No strings for me, thank you."
+
+But when Oswald said, "What about pudding-strings? You can't button up
+puddings as if they were pillows!" she consented to listen to reason.
+But it was only twopence altogether.
+
+But at the next place the woman said we were "mummickers," and told us
+to "get along, do." And she set her dog at us; but when Pincher sprang
+from the inmost recesses of the cart she called her dog off. But too
+late, for it and Pincher were locked in the barking, scuffling, growling
+embrace of deadly combat. When we had separated the dogs she went into
+her house and banged the door, and we went on through the green flat
+marshes, among the buttercups and may-bushes.
+
+"I wonder what she meant by 'mummickers'?" said H.O.
+
+"She meant she saw our high-born airs through our shabby clothes," said
+Alice. "It's always happening, especially to princes. There's nothing so
+hard to conceal as a really high-bred air."
+
+"I've been thinking," said Dicky, "whether honesty wouldn't perhaps be
+the best policy--not always, of course; but just this once. If people
+knew what we were doing it for they might be glad to help on the good
+work---- What?"
+
+So at the next farm, which was half hidden by trees, like the picture at
+the beginning of "Sensible Susan," we tied the pony to the gate-post and
+knocked at the door. It was opened by a man this time, and Dora said to
+him--
+
+"We are honest traders. We are trying to sell these things to keep a
+lady who is poor. If you buy some you will be helping too. Wouldn't you
+like to do that? It is a good work, and you will be glad of it
+afterwards, when you come to think over the acts of your life."
+
+"Upon my word an' 'onner!" said the man, whose red face was surrounded
+by a frill of white whiskers. "If ever I see a walkin' Tract 'ere it
+stands!"
+
+"She doesn't mean to be tractish," said Oswald quickly; "it's only her
+way. But we really are trying to sell things to help a poor person--no
+humbug, sir--so if we _have_ got anything you want we shall be glad. And
+if not--well, there's no harm in asking, is there, sir?"
+
+The man with the frilly whiskers was very pleased to be called
+"sir"--Oswald knew he would be--and he looked at everything we'd got,
+and bought the head-stall and two tin-openers, and a pot of marmalade,
+and a ball of string, and a pair of braces. This came to four and
+twopence, and we were very pleased. It really seemed that our business
+was establishing itself root and branch.
+
+When it came to its being dinner-time, which was first noticed through
+H.O. beginning to cry and say he did not want to play any more, it was
+found that we had forgotten to bring any dinner. So we had to eat some
+of our stock--the jam, the biscuits, and the cucumber.
+
+"I feel a new man," said Alice, draining the last of the ginger-beer
+bottles. "At that homely village on the brow of yonder hill we shall
+sell all that remains of the stock, and go home with money in both
+pockets."
+
+But our luck had changed. As so often happens, our hearts beat high with
+hopeful thoughts, and we felt jollier than we had done all day. Merry
+laughter and snatches of musical song re-echoed from our cart, and from
+round it as we went up the hill. All Nature was smiling and gay. There
+was nothing sinister in the look of the trees or the road--or anything.
+
+Dogs are said to have inside instincts that warn them of intending
+perils, but Pincher was not a bit instinctive that day somehow. He
+sported gaily up and down the hedge-banks after pretending rats, and
+once he was so excited that I believe he was playing at weasels and
+stoats. But of course there was really no trace of these savage denizens
+of the jungle. It was just Pincher's varied imagination.
+
+We got to the village, and with joyful expectations we knocked at the
+first door we came to.
+
+Alice had spread out a few choice treasures--needles, pins, tape, a
+photograph-frame, and the butter, rather soft by now, and the last of
+the tin-openers--on a basket-lid, like the fish-man does with herrings
+and whitings and plums and apples (you cannot sell fish in the country
+unless you sell fruit too. The author does not know why this is).
+
+The sun was shining, the sky was blue. There was no sign at all of the
+intending thunderbolt, not even when the door was opened. This was done
+by a woman.
+
+She just looked at our basket-lid of things any one might have been
+proud to buy, and smiled. I saw her do it. Then she turned her
+traitorous head and called "Jim!" into the cottage.
+
+A sleepy grunt rewarded her.
+
+"Jim, I say!" she repeated. "Come here directly minute."
+
+Next moment Jim appeared. He was Jim to her because she was his wife, I
+suppose, but to us he was the Police, with his hair ruffled--from his
+hateful sofa-cushions, no doubt--and his tunic unbuttoned.
+
+"What's up?" he said in a husky voice, as if he had been dreaming that
+he had a cold. "Can't a chap have a minute to himself to read the paper
+in?"
+
+"You told me to," said the woman. "You said if any folks come to the
+door with things I was to call you, whether or no."
+
+Even now we were blind to the disaster that was entangling us in the
+meshes of its trap. Alice said--
+
+"We've sold a good deal, but we've _some_ things left--very nice things.
+These crochet needles----"
+
+But the Police, who had buttoned up his tunic in a hurry, said quite
+fiercely--
+
+"Let's have a look at your license."
+
+"We didn't bring any," said Noel, "but if you will give us an order
+we'll bring you some to-morrow." He thought a lisen was a thing to sell
+that we ought to have thought of.
+
+"None of your lip," was the unexpected reply of the now plainly brutal
+constable. "Where's your license, I say?"
+
+"We have a license for our dog, but Father's got it," said Oswald,
+always quick-witted, but not, this time, quite quick enough.
+
+"Your 'awker's license is what I want, as well you knows, you young
+limb. Your pedlar's license--your license to sell things. You ain't half
+so half-witted as you want to make out."
+
+"We haven't got a pedlar's license," said Oswald. If we had been in a
+book the Police would have been touched to tears by Oswald's simple
+honesty. He would have said "Noble boy!" and then gone on to say he had
+only asked the question to test our honour. But life is not really at
+all the same as books. I have noticed lots of differences. Instead of
+behaving like the book-Police, this thick-headed constable said--
+
+"Blowed if I wasn't certain of it! Well, my young blokes, you'll just
+come along o' me to Sir James. I've got orders to bring up the next case
+afore him."
+
+"_Case!_" said Dora. "_Oh, don't!_ We didn't know we oughtn't to. We
+only wanted----"
+
+"Ho, yes," said the constable, "you can tell all that to the magistrate;
+and anything you say will be used against you."
+
+"I'm sure it will," said Oswald. "Dora, don't lower yourself to speak to
+him. Come, we'll go home."
+
+The Police was combing its hair with a half-toothless piece of comb, and
+we turned to go. But it was vain.
+
+Ere any of our young and eager legs could climb into the cart the Police
+had seized the donkey's bridle. We could not desert our noble steed--and
+besides, it wasn't really ours, but Bates's, and this made any hope of
+flight quite a forlorn one. For better, for worse, we had to go with the
+donkey.
+
+"Don't cry, for goodness' sake!" said Oswald in stern undertones. "Bite
+your lips. Take long breaths. Don't let him see we mind. This beast's
+only the village police. Sir James will be a gentleman. _He'll_
+understand. Don't disgrace the house of Bastable. Look here! Fall into
+line--no, Indian file will be best, there are so few of us. Alice, if
+you snivel I'll never say you ought to have been a boy again. H.O., shut
+your mouth; no one's going to hurt you--you're too young."
+
+"I _am_ trying," said Alice, gasping.
+
+"Noel," Oswald went on--now, as so often, showing the brilliant
+qualities of the born leader and general--"don't _you_ be in a funk.
+Remember how Byron fought for the Greeks at Missy-what's-its-name. _He_
+didn't grouse, and he was a poet, like you! Now look here, let's be
+_game_. Dora, you're the eldest. Strike up--any tune. We'll _march_ up,
+and show this sneak we Bastables aren't afraid, whoever else is."
+
+You will perhaps find it difficult to believe, but we _did_ strike up.
+We sang "The British Grenadiers," and when the Police told us to stow it
+we did not. And Noel said--
+
+"Singing isn't dogs or pedlaring. You don't want a license for that."
+
+"I'll soon show you!" said the Police.
+
+But he had to jolly well put up with our melodious song, because he knew
+that there isn't really any law to prevent you singing if you want to.
+
+We went on singing. It soon got easier than at first, and we followed
+Bates's donkey and cart through some lodge gates and up a drive with big
+trees, and we came out in front of a big white house, and there was a
+lawn. We stopped singing when we came in sight of the house, and got
+ready to be polite to Sir James. There were some ladies on the lawn in
+pretty blue and green dresses. This cheered us. Ladies are seldom quite
+heartless, especially when young.
+
+The Police drew up Bates's donkey opposite the big front door with
+pillars, and rang the bell. Our hearts were beating desperately. We cast
+glances of despair at the ladies. Then, quite suddenly, Alice gave a
+yell that wild Indian war-whoops are simply nothing to, and tore across
+the lawn and threw her arms round the green waist of one of the ladies.
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad!" she cried; "oh, save us! We haven't done anything
+wrong, really and truly we haven't."
+
+And then we all saw that the lady was our own Mrs. Red House, that we
+liked so much. So we all rushed to her, and before that Police had got
+the door answered we had told her our tale. The other ladies had turned
+away when we approached her, and gone politely away into a shrubbery.
+
+"There, there," she said, patting Alice and Noel and as much of the
+others as she could get hold of. "Don't you worry, dears, don't. I'll
+make it all right with Sir James. Let's all sit down in a comfy heap,
+and get our breaths again. I am so glad to see you all. My husband met
+your father at lunch the other day. I meant to come over and see you
+to-morrow."
+
+You cannot imagine the feelings of joy and safeness that we felt now we
+had found someone who knew we were Bastables, and not vagrant outcasts
+like the Police thought.
+
+The door had now been answered. We saw the base Police talking to the
+person who answered it. Then he came towards us, very red in the face.
+
+"Leave off bothering the lady," he said, "and come along of me. Sir
+James is in his lib_ra_ry, and he's ready to do justice on you, so he
+is."
+
+Mrs. Red House jumped up, and so did we. She said with smiles, as if
+nothing was wrong--
+
+"Good morning, Inspector!"
+
+He looked pleased and surprised, as well he might, for it'll be long
+enough before he's within a mile of being _that_.
+
+"Good morning, miss, I'm sure," he replied.
+
+"I think there's been a little mistake, Inspector," she said. "I expect
+it's some of your men--led away by zeal for their duties. But I'm sure
+_you'll_ understand. I am staying with Lady Harborough, and these
+children are very dear friends of mine."
+
+The Police looked very silly, but he said something about hawking
+without a license.
+
+"Oh no, not _hawking_," said Mrs. Red House, "not _hawking_, surely!
+They were just _playing_ at it, you know. Your subordinates must have
+been quite mistaken."
+
+Our honesty bade us say that he was his own only subordinate, and that
+he hadn't been mistaken; but it is rude to interrupt, especially a lady,
+so we said nothing.
+
+The Police said firmly, "You'll excuse me, miss, but Sir James expressly
+told me to lay a information directly next time I caught any of 'em at
+it without a license."
+
+"But, you see, you didn't catch them at it." Mrs. Red House took some
+money out of her purse. "You might just give this to your subordinates
+to console them for the mistake they've made. And look here, these
+mistakes do lead to trouble sometimes. So I'll tell you what I'll do.
+I'll promise not to tell Sir James a word about it. _So_ nobody will be
+blamed."
+
+We listened breathless for his reply. He put his hands behind him--
+
+"Well, miss," he said at last, "you've managed to put the Force in the
+wrong somehow, which isn't often done, and I'm blest if I know how you
+make it out. But there's Sir James a-waiting for me to come before him
+with my complaint. What am I a-goin' to say to him?"
+
+"Oh, anything," said Mrs. Red House; "surely some one else has done
+something wrong that you can tell him about?"
+
+"There was a matter of a couple of snares and some night lines," he said
+slowly, drawing nearer to Mrs. Red House; "but I couldn't take no money,
+of course."
+
+"Of course not," she said; "I beg your pardon for offering it. But I'll
+give you my name and address, and if ever I can be of any use to
+you----"
+
+She turned her back on us while she wrote it down with a stumpy pencil
+he lent her; but Oswald could swear that he heard money chink, and that
+there was something large and round wrapped up in the paper she gave
+him.
+
+"Sorry for any little misunderstanding," the Police now said, feeling
+the paper with his fingers; "and my respects to you, miss, and your
+young friends. I'd best be going."
+
+And he went--to Sir James, I suppose. He seemed quite tamed. I hope the
+people who set the snares got off.
+
+"So _that's_ all right," said Mrs. Red House. "Oh, you dear children,
+you must stay to lunch, and we'll have a splendid time."
+
+"What a darling Princess you are!" Noel said slowly. "You are a witch
+Princess, too, with magic powers over the Police."
+
+"It's not a very pretty sort of magic," she said, and she sighed.
+
+"Everything about you is pretty," said Noel. And I could see him
+beginning to make the faces that always precur his poetry-fits. But
+before the fit could break out thoroughly the rest of us awoke from our
+stupor of grateful safeness and began to dance round Mrs. Red House in a
+ring. And the girls sang--
+
+          "The rose is red, the violet's blue,
+           Carnation's sweet, and so are you,"
+
+over and over again, so we had to join in; though I think "She's a jolly
+good fellow would have been more manly and less like a poetry book."
+
+Suddenly a known voice broke in on our singing.
+
+"_Well!_" it said. And we stopped dancing. And there were the other two
+ladies who had politely walked off when we first discovered Mrs. Red
+House. And one of them was Mrs. Bax--of all people in the world! And she
+was smoking a cigarette. So now we knew where the smell of tobacco came
+from, in the White House.
+
+We said, "_Oh!_" in one breath, and were silent.
+
+"Is it possible," said Mrs. Bax, "that these are the Sunday-school
+children I've been living with these three long days?"
+
+"We're sorry," said Dora, softly; "we wouldn't have made a noise if we'd
+know you were here."
+
+"So I suppose," said Mrs. Bax. "Chloe, you seem to be a witch. How have
+you galvanised my six rag dolls into life like this?"
+
+"Rag dolls!" said H.O., before we could stop him. "I think you're jolly
+mean and ungrateful; and it was sixpence for making the organs fly."
+
+"My brain's reeling," said Mrs. Bax, putting her hands to her head.
+
+"H.O. is very rude, and I am sorry," said Alice, "but it _is_ hard to be
+called rag dolls, when you've only tried to do as you were told."
+
+And then, in answer to Mrs. Red House's questions, we told how father
+had begged us to be quiet, and how we had earnestly tried to. When it
+was told, Mrs. Bax began to laugh, and so did Mrs. Red House, and at
+last Mrs. Bax said--
+
+"Oh, my dears! you don't know how glad I am that you're really alive! I
+began to think--oh--I don't know what I thought! And you're not rag
+dolls. You're heroes and heroines, every man jack of you. And I do thank
+you. But I never wanted to be quiet like _that_. I just didn't want to
+be bothered with London and tiresome grown-up people. And now let's
+enjoy ourselves! Shall it be rounders, or stories about cannibals?"
+
+"Rounders first and stories after," said H.O. And it was so.
+
+Mrs. Bax, now that her true nature was revealed, proved to be A1. The
+author does not ask for a jollier person to be in the house with. We had
+rare larks the whole time she stayed with us.
+
+And to think that we might never have known her true character if she
+hadn't been an old school friend of Mrs. Red House's, and if Mrs. Red
+House hadn't been such a friend of ours!
+
+"Friendship," as Mr. William Smith so truly says in his book about
+Latin, "is the crown of life."
+
+
+
+
+_THE POOR AND NEEDY_
+
+
+"WHAT shall we do to-day, kiddies?" said Mrs. Bax. We had discovered her
+true nature but three days ago, and already she had taken us out in a
+sailing-boat and in a motor car, had given us sweets every day, and
+taught us eleven new games that we had not known before; and only four
+of the new games were rotters. How seldom can as much be said for the
+games of a grown-up, however gifted!
+
+The day was one of cloudless blue perfectness, and we were all basking
+on the beach. We had all bathed. Mrs. Bax said we might. There are
+points about having a grown-up with you, if it is the right kind. You
+can then easily get it to say "Yes" to what you want, and after that, if
+anything goes wrong it is their fault, and you are pure from blame. But
+nothing had gone wrong with the bathe, and, so far, we were all alive,
+and not cold at all, except our fingers and feet.
+
+"What would you _like_ to do?" asked Mrs. Bax. We were far away from
+human sight along the beach, and Mrs. Bax was smoking cigarettes as
+usual.
+
+"I don't know," we all said politely. But H.O. said--
+
+"What about poor Miss Sandal?"
+
+"Why poor?" asked Mrs. Bax.
+
+"Because she is," said H.O.
+
+"But how? What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Bax.
+
+"Why, isn't she?" said H.O.
+
+"Isn't she what?" said Mrs. Bax.
+
+"What you said why about," said H.O.
+
+She put her hands to her head. Her short hair was still damp and rumpled
+from contact with the foaming billows of ocean.
+
+"Let's have a fresh deal and start fair," she said; "why do you think my
+sister is poor?"
+
+"I forgot she was your sister," said H.O., "or I wouldn't have said
+it--honour bright I wouldn't."
+
+"Don't mention it," said Mrs. Bax, and began throwing stones at a groin
+in amiable silence.
+
+We were furious with H.O., first because it is such bad manners to throw
+people's poverty in their faces, or even in their sisters' faces, like
+H.O. had just done, and second because it seemed to have put out of Mrs.
+Bax's head what she was beginning to say about what would we like to do.
+
+So Oswald presently remarked, when he had aimed at the stump she was
+aiming at, and hit it before she did, for though a fair shot for a lady,
+she takes a long time to get her eye in.
+
+"Mrs. Bax, we should like to do whatever _you_ like to do." This was
+real politeness and true too, as it happened, because by this time we
+could quite trust her not to want to do anything deeply duffing.
+
+"That's very nice of you," she replied, "but don't let me interfere with
+any plans of yours. My own idea was to pluck a waggonette from the
+nearest bush. I suppose they grow freely in these parts?"
+
+"There's one at the 'Ship,'" said Alice; "it costs seven-and-six to
+pluck it, just for going to the station."
+
+"Well, then! And to stuff our waggonette with lunch and drive over to
+Lynwood Castle, and eat it there."
+
+"A picnic!" fell in accents of joy from the lips of one and all.
+
+"We'll also boil the billy in the castle courtyard, and eat buns in the
+shadow of the keep."
+
+"Tea as well?" said H.O., "with buns? You can't be poor and needy any
+way, whatever your----"
+
+We hastily hushed him, stifling his murmurs with sand.
+
+"I always think," said Mrs. Bax dreamily, "that 'the more the merrier,'
+is peculiarly true of picnics. So I have arranged--always subject to
+your approval, of course--to meet your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Red House,
+there, and----"
+
+We drowned her conclusive remarks with a cheer. And Oswald, always
+willing to be of use, offered to go to the 'Ship' and see about the
+waggonette. I like horses and stable-yards, and the smell of hay and
+straw, and talking to ostlers and people like that.
+
+There turned out to be two horses belonging to the best waggonette, or
+you could have a one-horse one, much smaller, with the blue cloth of the
+cushions rather frayed, and mended here and there, and green in patches
+from age and exposition to the weather.
+
+Oswald told Mrs. Bax this, not concealing about how shabby the little
+one was, and she gloriously said--
+
+"The pair by all means! We don't kill a pig every day!"
+
+"No, indeed," said Dora, but if "killing a pig" means having a lark,
+Mrs. Bax is as good a pig-killer as any I ever knew.
+
+It was splendid to drive (Oswald, on the box beside the driver, who had
+his best coat with the bright buttons) along the same roads that we had
+trodden as muddy pedestrinators, or travelled along behind Bates's
+donkey.
+
+It was a perfect day, as I said before. We were all clean and had our
+second-best things on. I think second-bests are much more comfy than
+first-bests. You feel equivalent to meeting any one, and have "a heart
+for any fate," as it says in the poetry-book, and yet you are not
+starched and booted and stiffened and tightened out of all human
+feelings.
+
+Lynwood Castle is in a hollow in the hills. It has a moat all round it
+with water-lily leaves on it. I suppose there are lilies when in
+season. There is a bridge over the moat--not the draw kind of bridge.
+And the castle has eight towers--four round and four square ones, and a
+courtyard in the middle, all green grass, and heaps of stones--stray
+bits of castle, I suppose they are--and a great white may-tree in the
+middle that Mrs. Bax said was hundreds of years old.
+
+Mrs. Red House was sitting under the may-tree when we got there, nursing
+her baby, in a blue dress and looking exactly like a picture on the top
+of a chocolate-box.
+
+The girls instantly wanted to nurse the baby so we let them. And we
+explored the castle. We had never happened to explore one thoroughly
+before. We did not find the deepest dungeon below the castle moat,
+though we looked everywhere for it, but we found everything else you can
+think of belonging to castles--even the holes they used to pour boiling
+lead through into the eyes of besiegers when they tried to squint up to
+see how strong the garrison was in the keep--and the little slits they
+shot arrows through, and the mouldering remains of the portcullis. We
+went up the eight towers, every single one of them, and some parts were
+jolly dangerous, I can tell you. Dicky and I would not let H.O. and Noel
+come up the dangerous parts. There was no lasting ill-feeling about
+this. By the time we had had a thorough good explore lunch was ready.
+
+It was a glorious lunch--not too many meaty things, but all sorts of
+cakes and sweets, and grapes and figs and nuts.
+
+We gazed at the feast, and Mrs. Bax said--
+
+"There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread you've got."
+
+"_They_ had currant wine," said Noel, who has only just read the book by
+Mr. Charles Dickens.
+
+"Well, so have you," said Mrs. Bax. And we had. Two bottles of it.
+
+"I never knew any one like you," said Noel to Mrs. Red House, dreamily
+with his mouth full, "for knowing the things people really like to eat,
+not the things that are good for them, but what they _like_, and Mrs.
+Bax is just the same."
+
+"It was one of the things they taught at our school," said Mrs. Bax. "Do
+you remember the Saturday night feasts, Chloe, and how good the cocoanut
+ice tasted after extra strong peppermints?"
+
+"Fancy you knowing _that_!" said H.O. "I thought it was us found _that_
+out."
+
+"I really know much more about things to eat than _she_ does," said Mrs.
+Bax. "I was quite an old girl when she was a little thing in pinafores.
+She was such a nice little girl."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if she was always nice," said Noel, "even when she
+was a baby!"
+
+Everybody laughed at this, except the existing baby, and it was asleep
+on the waggonette cushions, under the white may-tree, and perhaps if it
+had been awake it wouldn't have laughed, for Oswald himself, though
+possessing a keen sense of humour, did not see anything to laugh at.
+
+Mr. Red House made a speech after dinner, and said drink to the health
+of everybody, one after the other, in currant wine, which was done,
+beginning with Mrs. Bax and ending with H.O.
+
+Then he said--
+
+"Somnus, avaunt! What shall we play at?" and nobody, as so often
+happens, had any idea ready. Then suddenly Mrs. Red House said--
+
+"Good gracious, look there!" and we looked there, and where we were to
+look was the lowest piece of the castle wall, just beside the keep that
+the bridge led over to, and what we were to look at was a strange
+blobbiness of knobbly bumps along the top, that looked exactly like
+human heads.
+
+It turned out, when we had talked about cannibals and New Guinea, that
+human heads were just exactly what they were. Not loose heads, stuck on
+pikes or things like that, such as there often must have been while the
+castle stayed in the olden times it was built in and belonged to, but
+real live heads with their bodies still in attendance on them.
+
+They were, in fact, the village children.
+
+"Poor little Lazaruses!" said Mr. Red House.
+
+"There's not such a bad slice of Dives' feast left," said Mrs. Bax.
+"Shall we----?"
+
+So Mr. Red House went out by the keep and called the heads in (with the
+bodies they were connected with, of course), and they came and ate up
+all that was left of the lunch. Not the buns, of course, for those were
+sacred to tea-time, but all the other things, even the nuts and figs,
+and we were quite glad that they should have them--really and truly we
+were, even H.O.!
+
+They did not seem to be very clever children, or just the sort you would
+choose for your friends, but I suppose you like to play, however little
+you are other people's sort. So, after they had eaten all there was,
+when Mrs. Red House invited them all to join in games with us we knew we
+ought to be pleased. But village children are not taught rounders, and
+though we wondered at first why their teachers had not seen to this, we
+understood presently. Because it is most awfully difficult to make them
+understand the very simplest thing.
+
+But they could play all the ring games, and "Nuts and May," and "There
+Came Three Knights"--and another one we had never heard of before. The
+singing part begins:--
+
+          "Up and down the green grass,
+             This and that and thus,
+           Come along, my pretty maid,
+             And take a walk with us.
+           You shall have a duck, my dear,
+             And you shall have a drake,
+           And you shall have a handsome man
+             For your father's sake."
+
+I forget the rest, and if anybody who reads this knows it, and will
+write and tell me, the author will not have laboured in vain.
+
+The grown-ups played with all their heart and soul--I expect it is but
+seldom they are able to play, and they enjoy the novel excitement. And
+when we'd been at it some time we saw there was another head looking
+over the wall.
+
+"Hullo!" said Mrs. Bax, "here's another of them, run along and ask it to
+come and join in."
+
+She spoke to the village children, but nobody ran.
+
+"Here, you go," she said, pointing at a girl in red plaits tied with
+dirty sky-blue ribbon.
+
+"Please, miss, I'd leifer not," replied the red-haired. "Mother says we
+ain't to play along of him."
+
+"Why, what's the matter with him?" asked Mrs. Red House.
+
+"His father's in jail, miss, along of snares and night lines, and no one
+won't give his mother any work, so my mother says we ain't to demean
+ourselves to speak to him."
+
+"But it's not the child's fault," said Mrs. Red House, "is it now?"
+
+"I don't know, miss," said the red-haired.
+
+"But it's cruel," said Mrs. Bax. "How would you like it if your father
+was sent to prison, and nobody would speak to you?"
+
+"Father's always kep' hisself respectable," said the girl with the dirty
+blue ribbon. "You can't be sent to gaol, not if you keeps yourself
+respectable, you can't, miss."
+
+"And do none of you speak to him?"
+
+The other children put their fingers in their mouths, and looked silly,
+showing plainly that they didn't.
+
+"Don't you feel sorry for the poor little chap?" said Mrs. Bax.
+
+No answer transpired.
+
+"Can't you imagine how you'd feel if it was _your_ father?"
+
+"My father always kep' hisself respectable," the red-haired girl said
+again.
+
+"Well, I shall ask him to come and play with us," said Mrs. Red House.
+"Little pigs!" she added in low tones only heard by the author and Mr.
+Red House.
+
+But Mr. Red House said in a whisper that no one overheard except Mrs. R.
+H. and the present author.
+
+"Don't, Puss-cat; it's no good. The poor little pariah wouldn't like it.
+And these kids only do what their parents teach them."
+
+If the author didn't know what a stainless gentleman Mr. Red House is he
+would think he heard him mutter a word that gentlemen wouldn't say.
+
+"Tell off a detachment of consolation," Mr. Red House went on; "look
+here, _our_ kids--who'll go and talk to the poor little chap?"
+
+We all instantly said, "_I_ will!"
+
+The present author was chosen to be the one.
+
+When you think about yourself there is a kind of you that is not what
+you generally are but that you know you would like to be if only you
+were good enough. Albert's uncle says this is called your ideal of
+yourself. I will call it your best I, for short. Oswald's "best I" was
+glad to go and talk to that boy whose father was in prison, but the
+Oswald that generally exists hated being out of the games. Yet the whole
+Oswald, both the best and the ordinary, was pleased that he was the one
+chosen to be a detachment of consolation.
+
+He went out under the great archway, and as he went he heard the games
+beginning again. This made him feel noble, and yet he was ashamed of
+feeling it. Your feelings are a beastly nuisance, if once you begin to
+let yourself think about them. Oswald soon saw the broken boots of the
+boy whose father was in jail so nobody would play with him, standing on
+the stones near the top of the wall where it was broken to match the
+boots.
+
+He climbed up and said, "Hullo!"
+
+To this remark the boy replied, "Hullo!"
+
+Oswald now did not know what to say. The sorrier you are for people the
+harder it is to tell them so.
+
+But at last he said--
+
+"I've just heard about your father being where he is. It's beastly rough
+luck. I hope you don't mind my saying I'm jolly sorry for you."
+
+The boy had a pale face and watery blue eyes. When Oswald said this his
+eyes got waterier than ever, and he climbed down to the ground before he
+said--
+
+"I don't care so much, but it do upset mother something crool."
+
+It is awfully difficult to console those in affliction. Oswald thought
+this, then he said--
+
+"I say; never mind if those beastly kids won't play with you. It isn't
+your fault, you know."
+
+"Nor it ain't father's neither," the boy said; "he broke his arm
+a-falling off of a rick, and he hadn't paid up his club money along of
+mother's new baby costing what it did when it come, so there warn't
+nothing--and what's a hare or two, or a partridge? It ain't as if it was
+pheasants as is as dear to rear as chicks."
+
+Oswald did not know what to say, so he got out his new
+pen-and-pencil-combined and said--
+
+"Look here! You can have this to keep if you like."
+
+The pale-eyed boy took it and looked at it and said--
+
+"You ain't foolin' me?"
+
+And Oswald said no he wasn't, but he felt most awfully rum and uncomfy,
+and though he wanted most frightfully to do something for the boy he
+felt as if he wanted to get away more than anything else, and he never
+was gladder in his life than when he saw Dora coming along, and she
+said--
+
+"You go back and play, Oswald. I'm tired and I'd like to sit down a
+bit."
+
+She got the boy to sit down beside her, and Oswald went back to the
+others.
+
+Games, however unusually splendid, have to come to an end. And when the
+games were over and it was tea, and the village children were sent away,
+and Oswald went to call Dora and the prisoner's son, he found nothing
+but Dora, and he saw at once, in his far-sighted way, that she had been
+crying.
+
+It was one of the A1est days we ever had, and the drive home was good,
+but Dora was horribly quiet, as though the victim of dark interior
+thoughts.
+
+And the next day she was but little better.
+
+We were all paddling on the sands, but Dora would not. And presently
+Alice left us and went back to Dora, and we all saw across the sandy
+waste that something was up.
+
+And presently Alice came down and said--
+
+"Dry your feet and legs and come to a council. Dora wants to tell you
+something."
+
+We dried our pink and sandy toes and we came to the council. Then Alice
+said: "I don't think H.O. is wanted at the council, it isn't anything
+amusing; you go and enjoy yourself by the sea, and catch the nice little
+crabs, H.O. dear."
+
+H.O. said: "You always want me to be out of everything. I can be
+councils as well as anybody else."
+
+"Oh, H.O.!" said Alice, in pleading tones, "not if I give you a
+halfpenny to go and buy bulls-eyes with?"
+
+So then he went, and Dora said--
+
+"I can't think how I could do it when you'd all trusted me so. And yet I
+couldn't help it. I remember Dicky saying when you decided to give it me
+to take care of--about me being the most trustworthy of all of us. I'm
+not fit for any one to speak to. But it did seem the really right thing
+at the time, it really and truly did. And now it all looks different."
+
+"What has she done?" Dicky asked this, but Oswald almost knew.
+
+"Tell them," said Dora, turning over on her front and hiding her face
+partly in her hands, and partly in the sand.
+
+"She's given all Miss Sandal's money to that little boy that the father
+of was in prison," said Alice.
+
+"It was one pound thirteen and sevenpence halfpenny," sobbed Dora.
+
+"You ought to have consulted us, I do think, really," said Dicky. "Of
+course, I see you're sorry now, but I do think that."
+
+"How could I consult you?" said Dora; "you were all playing Cat and
+Mouse, and he wanted to get home. I only wish you'd heard what he told
+me--that's all--about his mother being ill, and nobody letting her do
+any work because of where his father is, and his baby brother ill, poor
+little darling, and not enough to eat, and everything as awful as you
+can possibly think. I'll save up and pay it all back out of my own
+money. Only do forgive me, all of you, and say you don't despise me for
+a forger and embezzlementer. I couldn't help it."
+
+"I'm glad you couldn't," said the sudden voice of H.O., who had sneaked
+up on his young stomach unobserved by the council. "You shall have all
+my money too, Dora, and here's the bulls-eye halfpenny to begin with."
+He crammed it into her hand. "Listen? I should jolly well think I did
+listen," H.O. went on. "I've just as much right as anybody else to be in
+at a council, and I think Dora was quite right, and the rest of you are
+beasts not to say so, too, when you see how she's blubbing. Suppose it
+had been _your_ darling baby-brother ill, and nobody hadn't given you
+nothing when they'd got pounds and pounds in their silly pockets?"
+
+He now hugged Dora, who responded.
+
+"It wasn't her own money," said Dicky.
+
+"If you think _you're_ our darling baby-brother----" said Oswald.
+
+But Alice and Noel began hugging Dora and H.O., and Dicky and I felt it
+was no go. Girls have no right and honourable feelings about business,
+and little boys are the same.
+
+"All right," said Oswald rather bitterly, "if a majority of the council
+backs Dora up, we'll give in. But we must all save up and repay the
+money, that's all. We shall all be beastly short for ages."
+
+"Oh," said Dora, and now her sobs were beginning to turn into sniffs,
+"you don't know how I felt! And I've felt most awful ever since, but
+those poor, poor people----"
+
+At this moment Mrs. Bax came down on to the beach by the wooden steps
+that lead from the sea-wall where the grass grows between the stones.
+
+"Hullo!" she said, "hurt yourself, my Dora-dove?"
+
+Dora was rather a favourite of hers.
+
+"It's all right now," said Dora.
+
+"_That's_ all right," said Mrs. Bax, who has learnt in
+anti-what's-its-name climes the great art of not asking too many
+questions. "Mrs. Red House has come to lunch. She went this morning to
+see that boy's mother--you know, the boy the others wouldn't play with?"
+
+We said "Yes."
+
+"Well, Mrs. Red House has arranged to get the woman some work--like the
+dear she is--the woman told her that the little lady--and that's you,
+Dora--had given the little boy one pound thirteen and sevenpence."
+
+Mrs. Bax looked straight out to sea through her gold-rimmed spectacles,
+and went on--
+
+"That must have been about all you had among the lot of you. I don't
+want to jaw, but I think you're a set of little bricks, and I must say
+so or expire on the sandy spot."
+
+There was a painful silence.
+
+H.O. looked, "There, what did I tell you?" at the rest of us.
+
+Then Alice said, "We others had nothing to do with it. It was Dora's
+doing." I suppose she said this because we did not mean to tell Mrs. Bax
+anything about it, and if there was any brickiness in the act we wished
+Dora to have the consolement of getting the credit of it.
+
+But of course Dora couldn't stand that. She said--
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Bax, it was very wrong of me. It wasn't my own money, and I'd
+no business to, but I was so sorry for the little boy and his mother and
+his darling baby-brother. The money belonged to some one else."
+
+"Who?" Mrs. Bax asked ere she had time to remember the excellent
+Australian rule about not asking questions.
+
+And H.O. blurted out, "It was Miss Sandal's money--every penny," before
+we could stop him.
+
+Once again in our career concealment was at an end. The rule about
+questions was again unregarded, and the whole thing came out.
+
+It was a long story, and Mrs. Red House came out in the middle, but
+nobody could mind her hearing things.
+
+When she knew all, from the plain living to the pedlar who hadn't a
+license, Mrs. Bax spoke up like a man, and said several kind things that
+I won't write down.
+
+She then went on to say that her sister was not poor and needy at all,
+but that she lived plain and thought high just because she liked it!
+
+We were very disappointed as soon as we had got over our hardly
+believing any one could--like it, I mean--and then Mrs. Red House said--
+
+"Sir James gave me five pounds for the poor woman, and she sent back
+thirty of your shillings. She had spent three and sevenpence, and they
+had a lovely supper of boiled pork and greens last night. So now you've
+only got that to make up, and you can buy a most splendid present for
+Miss Sandal."
+
+It is difficult to choose presents for people who live plain and think
+high because they like it. But at last we decided to get books. They
+were written by a person called Emerson, and of a dull character, but
+the backs were very beautiful, and Miss Sandal was most awfully pleased
+with them when she came down to her cottage with her partially repaired
+brother, who had fallen off the scaffold when treating a bricklayer to
+tracts.
+
+This is the end of the things we did when we were at Lymchurch in Miss
+Sandal's house.
+
+It is the last story that the present author means ever to be the author
+of. So goodbye, if you have got as far as this.
+
+                                  Your affectionate author,
+                                                   OSWALD BASTABLE.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 39, "Noel" changed to "Noel" (cost?" Noel asked)
+
+Page 77, "peacable" changed to "peaceable" (the peaceable quietness)
+
+Page 162, "alway" changed to "alway" (they always sing in)
+
+Page 196, "Its" changed to "It's" (It's not much to do)
+
+Page 217, "But" changed to "but" (but he will just say)
+
+Page 221, "birds" changed to "bird's" (like a bird's)
+
+Page 289, "anenomes" changed to "anemones" (wood-anemones)
+
+Page 294, "Mr." changed to "Mrs." (talking to Mrs. Bax.)
+
+Varied hyphenation retained: armchair and arm-chair; boathouse and
+boat-house; halfway and half-way; postmark and post-mark; stationmaster
+and station-master; tablecloths and table-cloths; thoroughbred and
+thorough-bred; wastepaper and waste-paper; motor car; motor-car.
+
+Both Krikey and crikey and handkie and hankie were used and retained.
+
+
+
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