"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