"There's no one at home," said Mrs. Beale; "wait a bit till I go along to the bakus with the meat, and I'll fetch it along."

"You might let me go," said Oswald, whose high spirit is always ill-attuned to waiting a bit. "I wouldn't touch anything else, and I know where you keep the key."

"There's precious little as ye don't know, it seems to me," said Mrs. Beale. "There, run along do. It's on top of the mantelshelf alongside the picture tea-tin. It's a red book. Don't go taking the 'Wesleyan Conference Reports' by mistake, the two is both together on the mantel."



Oswald in his macker splashed through the mud to Mrs. Beale's, found the key under the loose tile behind the water-butt, and got the book without adventure. He had promised not to touch anything else, so he could not make even the gentlest booby-trap as a little surprise for Mrs. Beale when she got back.

And most of that day we were telling our fortunes by the ingenious means invented by the great Emperor, or by cards, which it is hard to remember the rules for, or by our dreams. The only blights were that the others all wanted to have the book all the time, and that Noel's dreams were so long and mixed that we got tired of hearing about them before he did. But he said he was quite sure he had dreamed every single bit of every one of them. And the author hopes this was the truth.

We all went to bed hoping we should dream something that we could look up in the dream book, but none of us did.

And in the morning it was still raining and Alice said—

"Look here, if it ever clears up again let's dress up and be gipsies. We can go about in the distant villages telling people's fortunes. If you'll let me have the book all to-day I can learn up quite enough to tell them mysteriously and darkly. And gipsies always get their hands crossed with silver."

Dicky said that was one way of keeping the book to herself, but Oswald said—

"Let her try. She shall have it for an hour, and then we'll have an exam. to see how much she knows."

This was done, but while she was swatting the thing up with her fingers in her ears we began to talk about how gipsies should be dressed.

And when we all went out of the room to see if we could find anything in that tidy house to dress up in, she came after us to see what was up. So there was no exam.

We peeped into the cupboards and drawers in Miss Sandal's room, but everything was grey or brown, not at all the sort of thing to dress up for children of the Sunny South in. The plain living was shown in all her clothes; and besides, grey shows every little spot you may happen to get on it.

We were almost in despair. We looked in all the drawers in all the rooms, but found only sheets and tablecloths and more grey and brown clothing.

We tried the attic, with fainting hearts. Servants' clothes are always good for dressing-up with; they have so many different colours. But Miss Sandal had no servant. Still, she might have had one once, and the servant might have left something behind her. Dora suggested this and added—

"If you don't find anything in the attic you'll know it's Fate, and you're not to do it. Besides, I'm almost sure you can be put in prison for telling fortunes."

"Not if you're a gipsy you can't," said Noel; "they have licences to tell fortunes, I believe, and judges can't do anything to them."

So we went up to the attic. And it was as bare and tidy as the rest of the house. But there were some boxes and we looked in them. The smallest was full of old letters, so we shut it again at once. Another had books in it, and the last had a clean towel spread over what was inside. So we took off the towel, and then every one said "Oh!"

In right on the top was a scarlet thing, embroidered heavily with gold. It proved, on unfolding, to be a sort of coat, like a Chinaman's. We lifted it out and laid it on the towel on the floor. And then the full glories of that box were revealed. There were cloaks and dresses and skirts and scarves, of all the colours of a well-chosen rainbow, and all made of the most beautiful silks and stuffs, with things worked on them with silk, as well as chains of beads and many lovely ornaments. We think Miss Sandal must have been very fond of pretty things when she was young, or when she was better off.

"Well, there won't be any gipsies near by to come up to us," said Oswald joyously.

"Do you think we ought to take them, without asking?" said Dora.

"Of course not," said Oswald witheringly; "we ought to write to her and say, 'Please, Miss Sandal, we know how poor you are, and may we borrow your things to be gipsies in so as we get money for you—— All right! You go and write the letter, Dora."

"I only just asked," said Dora.

We tried the things on. Some of them were so ladylike that they were no good—evening dresses, and things like that. But there were enough useful things to go round. Oswald, in white shirt and flannel knee-breeches, tied a brick-coloured silk scarf round his middle part, and a green one round his head for a turban. The turban was fastened with a sparkling brooch with pink stones in it. He looked like a Moorish toreador. Dicky had the scarlet and gold coat, which was the right length when Dora had run a tuck in it.

Alice had a blue skirt with embroidery of peacock's feathers on it, and a gold and black jacket very short with no sleeves, and a yellow silk handkerchief on her head like Italian peasants, and another handkie round her neck. Dora's skirt was green and her handkerchiefs purple and pink.

Noel insisted on having his two scarves, one green and one yellow, twisted on his legs like putties, and a red scarf wound round his middle-part, and he stuck a long ostrich feather in his own bicycle cap and said he was a troubadour bard.

H.O. was able to wear a lady's blouse of mouse-coloured silk, embroidered with poppies. It came down to his knees and a jewelled belt kept it in place.

We made up our costumes into bundles, and Alice thoughtfully bought a pennyworth of pins. Of course it was idle to suppose that we could go through the village in our gipsy clothes without exciting some remark.

The more we thought of it the more it seemed as if it would be a good thing to get some way from our village before we began our gipsy career.

The woman at the sweet shop where Alice got the pins has a donkey and cart, and for two shillings she consented to lend us this, so that some of us could walk while some of us would always be resting in the cart.

And next morning the weather was bright and blue as ever, and we started. We were beautifully clean, but all our hairs had been arranged with the brush solely, because at the last moment nobody could find it's comb. Mrs. Beale had packed up a jolly sandwichy and apply lunch for us. We told her we were going to gather bluebells in the woods, and of course we meant to do that too.

The donkey-cart drew up at the door and we started. It was found impossible to get every one into the cart at once, so we agreed to cast lots for who should run behind, and to take it in turns, mile and mile. The lot fell on Dora and H.O., but there was precious little running about it. Anything slower than that donkey Oswald has never known, and when it came to passing its own front door the donkey simply would not. It ended in Oswald getting down and going to the animal's head, and having it out with him, man to man. The donkey was small, but of enormous strength. He set all his four feet firm and leant back—and Oswald set his two feet firm and leant back—so that Oswald and the front part of the donkey formed an angry and contentious letter V. And Oswald gazed in the donkey's eyes in a dauntless manner, and the donkey looked at Oswald as though it thought he was hay or thistles.

Alice beat the donkey from the cart with a stick that had been given us for the purpose. The rest shouted. But all was in vain. And four people in a motor car stopped it to see the heroic struggle, and laughed till I thought they would have upset their hateful motor. However, it was all for the best, though Oswald did not see it at the time. When they had had enough of laughing they started their machine again, and the noise it made penetrated the donkey's dull intelligence, and he started off without a word—I mean without any warning, and Oswald has only just time to throw himself clear of the wheels before he fell on the ground and rolled over, biting the dust.

The motor car people behaved as you would expect. But accidents happen even to motor cars, when people laugh too long and too unfeelingly. The driver turned round to laugh, and the motor instantly took the bit between its teeth and bolted into the stone wall of the churchyard. No one was hurt except the motor, but that had to spend the day at the blacksmith's, we heard afterwards. Thus was the outraged Oswald avenged by Fate.



He was not hurt either—though much the motor people would have cared if he had been—and he caught up with the others at the end of the village, for the donkey's pace had been too good to last, and the triumphal progress was resumed.

It was some time before we found a wood sufficiently lurking-looking for our secret purposes. There are no woods close to the village. But at last, up by Bonnington, we found one, and tying our noble steed to the sign-post that says how many miles it is to Ashford, we cast a hasty glance round, and finding no one in sight disappeared in the wood with our bundles.

We went in just ordinary creatures. We came out gipsies of the deepest dye, for we had got a pennorth of walnut stain from Mr. Jameson the builder, and mixed with water—the water we had brought in a medicine-bottle—it was a prime disguise. And we knew it would wash off, unlike the Condy's fluid we once stained ourselves with during a never-to-be-forgotten game of Jungle-Book.

We had put on all the glorious things we had bagged from Miss Sandal's attic treasures, but still Alice had a small bundle unopened.

"What's that?" Dora asked.

"I meant to keep it as a reserve force in case the fortune-telling didn't turn out all our fancy painted it," said Alice; "but I don't mind telling you now."

She opened the bundle, and there was a tambourine, some black lace, a packet of cigarette papers, and our missing combs.

"What ever on earth——" Dicky was beginning, but Oswald saw it all. He has a wonderfully keen nose. And he said—

"Bully for you, Alice. I wish I'd thought it myself."

Alice was much pleased by this handsome speech.

"Yes," she said; "perhaps really it would be best to begin with it. It would attract the public's attention, and then we could tell the fortunes. You see," she kindly explained to Dicky and H.O. and Dora, who had not seen it yet—though Noel had, almost as soon as I did—"you see, we'll all play on the combs with the veils over our faces, so that no one can see what our instruments are. Why, they might be mouth-organs for anything any one will know, or some costly instruments from the far-off East, like they play to sultans in zenanas. Let's just try a tune or two before we go on, to be sure that all the combs work right. Dora's has such big teeth, I shouldn't wonder if it wouldn't act at all."

So we all papered our combs and did "Heroes," but that sounded awful. "The Girl I Left Behind Me" went better, and so did "Bonnie Dundee." But we thought "See the Conquering" or "The Death of Nelson" would be the best to begin with.

It was beastly hot doing it under the veils, but when Oswald had done one tune without the veil to see how the others looked he could not help owning that the veils did give a hidden mystery that was a stranger to simple combs.

We were all a bit puffed when we had played for awhile, so we decided that as the donkey seemed calm and was eating grass and resting, we might as well follow his example.

"We ought not to be too proud to take pattern by the brute creation," said Dora.

So we had our lunch in the wood. We lighted a little fire of sticks and fir-cones, so as to be as gipsyish as we could, and we sat round the fire. We made a charming picture in our bright clothes, among what would have been our native surroundings if we had been real gipsies, and we knew how nice we looked, and stayed there though the smoke got in our eyes, and everything we ate tasted of it.

The woods were a little damp, and that was why the fire smoked so. There were the jackets we had cast off when we dressed up, to sit on, and there was a horse-cloth in the cart intended for the donkey's wear, but we decided that our need was greater than its, so we took the blanket to recline on.

It was as jolly a lunch as ever I remember, and we lingered over that and looking romantic till we could not bear the smoke any more.

Then we got a lot of bluebells and we trampled out the fire most carefully, because we know about not setting woods and places alight, rolled up our clothes in bundles, and went out of the shadowy woodland into the bright sunlight, as sparkling looking a crew of gipsies as any one need wish for.

Last time we had seen the road it had been quite white and bare of persons walking on it, but now there were several. And not only walkers, but people in carts. And some carriages passed us too.

Every one stared at us, but they did not seem so astonished as we had every right to expect, and though interested they were not rude, and this is very rare among English people—and not only poor people either—when they see anything at all out of the way.

We asked one man, who was very Sunday-best indeed in black clothes and a blue tie, where every one was going, for every one was going the same way, and every one looked as if it was going to church, which was unlikely, it being but Thursday. He said—

"Same place wot you're going to I expect."

And when we said where was that we were requested by him to get along with us. Which we did.

An old woman in the heaviest bonnet I have ever seen and the highest—it was like a black church—revealed the secret to us, and we learned that there was a Primrose fete going on in Sir Willoughby Blockson's grounds.

We instantly decided to go to the fete.

"I've been to a Primrose fete, and so have you, Dora," Oswald remarked, "and people are so dull at them, they'd gladly give gold to see the dark future. And, besides, the villages will be unpopulated, and no one at home but idiots and babies and their keepers."

So we went to the fete.

The people got thicker and thicker, and when we got to Sir Willoughby's lodge gates, which have sprawling lions on the gate-posts, we were told to take the donkey cart round to the stable-yard.

This we did, and proud was the moment when a stiff groom had to bend his proud stomach to go to the head of Bates's donkey.

"This is something like," said Alice, and Noel added:

"The foreign princes are well received at this palace."

"We aren't princes, we're gipsies," said Dora, tucking his scarf in. It would keep on getting loose.

"There are gipsy princes, though," said Noel, "because there are gipsy kings."

"You aren't always a prince first," said Dora; "don't wriggle so or I can't fix you. Sometimes being made a king just happens to some one who isn't any one in particular."

"I don't think so," said Noel; "you have to be a prince before you're a king, just as you have to be a kitten before you're a cat, or a puppy before you're a dog, or a worm before you're a serpent, or——"

"What about the King of Sweden?" Dora was beginning, when a very nice tall, thin man, with white flowers in his buttonhole like for a wedding, came strolling up and said—

"And whose show is this? Eh, what?"

We said it was ours.

"Are you expected?" he asked.

We said we thought not, but we hoped he didn't mind.

"What are you? Acrobats? Tight-rope? That's a ripping Burmese coat you've got there."

"Yes, it is. No we aren't," said Alice, with dignity. "I am Zaida, the mysterious prophetess of the golden Orient, and the others are mysterious too, but we haven't fixed on their names yet."

"By jove!" said the gentleman; "but who are you really?"

"Our names are our secret," said Oswald, with dignity, but Alice said, "Oh, but we don't mind telling you, because I'm sure you're nice. We're really the Bastables, and we want to get some money for some one we know that's rather poor—of course I can't tell you her name. And we've learnt how to tell fortunes—really we have. Do you think they'll let us tell them at the fete. People are often dull at fetes, aren't they?"

"By Jove!" said the gentleman again—"by Jove, they are!"

He plunged for a moment in deep reflection.

"We've got co—musical instruments," said Noel; "shall we play to you a little?"

"Not here," said the gentleman; "follow me."

He led the way by the backs of shrubberies to an old summer-house, and we asked him to wait outside.

Then we put on our veils and tuned up. "See, see the conquering——"

But he did not let us finish the tune; he burst in upon us, crying—

"Ripping—oh, ripping! And now tell me my fortune."

Alice took off her veil and looked at his hand.

"You will travel in distant lands," she said; "you will have great wealth and honour; you will marry a beautiful lady—a very fine woman, it says in the book, but I think a beautiful lady sounds nicer, don't you?"



"Much; but I shouldn't mention the book when you're telling the fortune."

"I wouldn't, except to you," said Alice, "and she'll have lots of money and a very sweet disposition. Trials and troubles beset your path, but do but be brave and fearless and you will overcome all your enemies. Beware of a dark woman—most likely a widow."

"I will," said he, for Alice had stopped for breath. "Is that all?"

"No. Beware of a dark woman and shun the society of drunkards and gamblers. Be very cautious in your choice of acquaintances, or you will make a false friend who will be your ruin. That's all, except that you will be married very soon and live to a green old age with the beloved wife of your bosom, and have twelve sons and——"

"Stop, stop!" said the gentleman; "twelve sons are as many as I can bring up handsomely on my present income. Now, look here. You did that jolly well, only go slower, and pretend to look for things in the hand before you say them. Everything's free at the fete, so you'll get no money for your fortune-telling."

Gloom was on each young brow.

"It's like this," he went on, "there is a lady fortune-teller in a tent in the park."

"Then we may as well get along home," said Dicky.

"Not at all," said our new friend, for such he was now about to prove himself to be; "that lady does not want to tell fortunes to-day. She has a headache. Now, if you'll really stick to it, and tell the people's fortunes as well as you told mine, I'll stand you—let's see—two quid for the afternoon. Will that do? What?"

We said we should just jolly well think it would.

"I've got some Eau de Cologne in a medicine-bottle," Dora said; "my brother Noel has headaches sometimes, but I think he's going to be all right to-day. Do take it, it will do the lady's head good."

"I'll take care of her head," he said, laughing, but he took the bottle and said, "Thank you."

Then he told us to stay where we were while he made final arrangements, and we were left with palpitating breasts to look wildly through the Book of Fate, so as to have the things ready. But it turned out to be time thrown away, for when he came back he said to Alice—

"It'll have to be only you and your sister, please, for I see they've stuck up a card with 'Esmeralda, the gipsy Princess, reads the hand and foretells the future' on it. So you boys will have to be mum. You can be attendants—mutes, by jove!—yes that's it. And, I say, kiddies, you will jolly well play up, won't you? Don't stand any cheek. Stick it on, you know. I can't tell you how important it is about——about the lady's headache."

"I should think this would be a cool place for a headache to be quiet in," said Dora; and it was, for it was quite hidden in the shrubbery and no path to it.

"By Jove!" he remarked yet once again, "so it would. You're right!"

He led us out of the shrubbery and across the park. There were people dotted all about and they stared, but they touched their hats to the gentleman, and he returned their salute with stern politeness.

Inside the tent with "Esmeralda, &c.," outside there was a lady in a hat and dust-cloak. But we could see her spangles under the cloak.

"Now," said the gentleman to Dicky, "you stand at the door and let people in, one at a time. You others can just play a few bars on your instruments for each new person—only a very little, because you do get out of tune, though that's barbaric certainly. Now, here's the two quid. And you stick to the show till five; you'll hear the stable clock chime."

The lady was very pale with black marks under her eyes, and her eyes looked red, Oswald thought. She seemed about to speak, but the gentleman said—

"Do trust me, Ella. I'll explain everything directly. Just go to the old summer-house—you know—and I'll be there directly. I'll take a couple of pegs out of the back and you can slip away among the trees. Hold your cloak close over your gown. Goodbye, kiddies. Stay, give me your address, and I'll write and tell you if my fortune comes true."

So he shook hands with us and went. And we did stick to it, though it is far less fun than you would think telling fortunes all the afternoon in a stuffy tent, while outside you know there are things to eat and people enjoying themselves. But there were the two gold quid, and we were determined to earn them. It is very hard to tell a different fortune for each person, and there were a great many. The girls took it in turns, and Oswald wonders why their hairs did not go gray. Though of course it was much better fun for them than for us, because we had just to be mutes when we weren't playing on the combs.

The people we told fortunes to at first laughed rather, and said we were too young to know anything. But Oswald said in a hollow voice that we were as old as the Pyramids, and after that Alice took the tucks out of Dicky's red coat and put it on and turbaned herself, and looked much older.

The stable clock had chimed the quarter to five some little time, when an elderly gentleman with whiskers, who afterwards proved to be Sir Willoughby, burst into the tent.

"Where's Miss Blockson?" he said, and we answered truthfully that we did not know.

"How long have you been here?" he furiously asked.

"Ever since two," said Alice wearily.

He said a word that I should have thought a baronet would have been above using.

"Who brought you here?"

We described the gentleman who had done this, and again the baronet said things we should never be allowed to say. "That confounded Carew!" he added, with more words.

"Is anything wrong?" asked Dora—"can we do anything? We'll stay on longer if you like—if you can't find the lady who was doing Esmeralda before we came."

"I'm not very likely to find her," he said ferociously. "Stay longer indeed! Get away out of my sight before I have you locked up for vagrants and vagabonds."

He left the scene in bounding and mad fury. We thought it best to do as he said, and went round the back way to the stables so as to avoid exciting his ungoverned rage by meeting him again. We found our cart and went home. We had got two quid and something to talk about.

But none of us—not even Oswald the discerning—understood exactly what we had been mixed up in, till the pink satin box with three large bottles of A1 scent in it, and postmarks of foreign lands, came to Dora. And there was a letter. It said—

"My dear Gipsies,—I beg to return the Eau de Cologne you so kindly lent me. The lady did use a little of it, but I found that foreign travel was what she really wanted to make her quite happy. So we caught the 4.15 to town, and now we are married, and intend to live to a green old age, &c., as you foretold. But for your help my fortune couldn't have come true, because my wife's father, Sir Willoughby, thought I was not rich enough to marry. But you see I was. And my wife and I both thank you heartily for your kind help. I hope it was not an awful swat. I had to say five because of the train. Good luck to you, and thanks awfully.

"Yours faithfully, "CARISBROOK CAREW."

If Oswald had known beforehand we should never have made that two quid for Miss Sandal.

For Oswald does not approve of marriages and would never, if he knew it, be the means of assisting one to occur.



THE LADY AND THE LICENSE; OR, FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND

"MY DEAR KIDDIES,—Miss Sandal's married sister has just come home from Australia, and she feels very tired. No wonder, you will say, after such a long journey. So she is going to Lymchurch to rest. Now I want you all to be very quiet, because when you are in your usual form you aren't exactly restful, are you? If this weather lasts you will be able to be out most of the time, and when you are indoors for goodness' sake control your lungs and your boots, especially H.O.'s. Mrs. Bax has travelled about a good deal, and once was nearly eaten by cannibals. But I hope you won't bother her to tell you stories. She is coming on Friday. I am glad to hear from Alice's letter that you enjoyed the Primrose Fete. Tell Noel that 'poetticle' is not the usual way of spelling the word he wants. I send you ten shillings for pocket-money, and again implore you to let Mrs. Bax have a little rest and peace.

"Your loving "FATHER."

"PS.—If you want anything sent down, tell me, and I will get Mrs. Bax to bring it. I met your friend Mr. Red House the other day at lunch."

When the letter had been read aloud, and we had each read it to ourselves, a sad silence took place.

Dicky was the first to speak.

"It is rather beastly, I grant you," he said, "but it might be worse."

"I don't see how," said H.O. "I do wish Father would jolly well learn to leave my boots alone."

"It might be worse, I tell you," said Dicky. "Suppose instead of telling us to keep out of doors it had been the other way?"

"Yes," said Alice, "suppose it had been, 'Poor Mrs. Bax requires to be cheered up. Do not leave her side day or night. Take it in turns to make jokes for her. Let not a moment pass without some merry jest'? Oh yes, it might be much, much worse."

"Being able to get out all day makes it all right about trying to make that two pounds increase and multiply," remarked Oswald. "Now who's going to meet her at the station? Because after all it's her sister's house, and we've got to be polite to visitors even if we're in a house we aren't related to."

This was seen to be so, but no one was keen on going to the station. At last Oswald, ever ready for forlorn hopes, consented to go.

We told Mrs. Beale, and she got the best room ready, scrubbing everything till it smelt deliciously of wet wood and mottled soap. And then we decorated the room as well as we could.

"She'll want some pretty things," said Alice, "coming from the land of parrots and opossums and gum-trees and things."

We did think of borrowing the stuffed wild-cat that is in the bar at the "Ship," but we decided that our decorations must be very quiet—and the wild-cat, even in its stuffed state, was anything but; so we borrowed a stuffed roach in a glass box and stood it on the chest of drawers. It looked very calm. Sea-shells are quiet things when they are vacant, and Mrs. Beale let us have the four big ones off her chiffonnier.

The girls got flowers—bluebells and white wood-anemones. We might have had poppies or buttercups, but we thought the colours might be too loud. We took some books up for Mrs. Bax to read in the night. And we took the quietest ones we could find.

"Sonnets on Sleep," "Confessions of an Opium Eater," "Twilight of the Gods," "Diary of a Dreamer," and "By Still Waters," were some of them. The girls covered them with grey paper, because some of the bindings were rather gay.

The girls hemmed grey calico covers for the drawers and the dressing-table, and we drew the blinds half-down, and when all was done the room looked as quiet as a roosting wood-pigeon.

We put in a clock, but we did not wind it up.

"She can do that herself," said Dora, "if she feels she can bear to hear it ticking."

Oswald went to the station to meet her. He rode on the box beside the driver. When the others saw him mount there I think they were sorry they had not been polite and gone to meet her themselves. Oswald had a jolly ride. We got to the station just as the train came in. Only one lady got out of it, so Oswald knew it must be Mrs. Bax. If he had not been told how quiet she wanted to be he would have thought she looked rather jolly. She had short hair and gold spectacles. Her skirts were short, and she carried a parrot-cage in her hand. It contained our parrot, and when we wrote to tell Father that it and Pincher were the only things we wanted sent we never thought she would have brought either.

"Mrs. Bax, I believe," was the only break Oswald made in the polite silence that he took the parrot-cage and her bag from her in.

"How do you do?" she said very briskly for a tired lady; and Oswald thought it was noble of her to make the effort to smile. "Are you Oswald or Dicky?"

Oswald told her in one calm word which he was, and then Pincher rolled madly out of a dog-box almost into his arms. Pincher would not be quiet. Of course he did not understand the need for it. Oswald conversed with Pincher in low, restraining whispers as he led the way to the "Ship's" fly. He put the parrot-cage on the inside seat of the carriage, held the door open for Mrs. Bax with silent politeness, closed it as quietly as possible, and prepared to mount on the box.

"Oh, won't you come inside?" asked Mrs. Bax. "Do!"

"No, thank you," said Oswald in calm and mouse-like tones; and to avoid any more jaw he got at once on to the box with Pincher.

So that Mrs. Bax was perfectly quiet for the whole six miles—unless you count the rattle and shake-up-and-down of the fly. On the box Oswald and Pincher "tasted the sweets of a blissful re-union," like it says in novels. And the man from the "Ship" looked on and said how well bred Pincher was. It was a happy drive.

There was something almost awful about the sleek, quiet tidiness of the others, who were all standing in a row outside the cottage to welcome Mrs. Bax. They all said, "How do you do?" in hushed voices, and all looked as if butter would not melt in any of their young mouths. I never saw a more soothing-looking lot of kids.

She went to her room, and we did not see her again till tea-time.

Then, still exquisitely brushed and combed, we sat round the board—in silence. We had left the tea-tray place for Mrs. Bax, of course. But she said to Dora—

"Wouldn't you like to pour out?"

And Dora replied in low, soft tones, "If you wish me to, Mrs. Bax. I usually do." And she did.

We passed each other bread-and-butter and jam and honey with silent courteousness. And of course we saw that she had enough to eat.

"Do you manage to amuse yourself pretty well here?" she asked presently.

We said, "Yes, thank you," in hushed tones.

"What do you do?" she asked.

We did not wish to excite her by telling her what we did, so Dicky murmured—

"Nothing in particular," at the same moment that Alice said—

"All sorts of things."

"Tell me about them," said Mrs. Bax invitingly.

We replied by a deep silence. She sighed, and passed her cup for more tea.

"Do you ever feel shy," she asked suddenly. "I do, dreadfully, with new people."

We liked her for saying that, and Alice replied that she hoped she would not feel shy with us.

"I hope not," she said. "Do you know, there was such a funny woman in the train? She had seventeen different parcels, and she kept counting them, and one of them was a kitten, and it was always under the seat when she began to count, so she always got the number wrong."

We should have liked to hear about that kitten—especially what colour it was and how old—but Oswald felt that Mrs. Bax was only trying to talk for our sakes, so that we shouldn't feel shy, so he simply said, "Will you have some more cake?" and nothing more was said about the kitten.

Mrs. Bax seemed very noble. She kept trying to talk to us about Pincher, and trains and Australia, but we were determined she should be quiet, as she wished it so much, and we restrained our brimming curiosity about opossums up gum-trees, and about emus and kangaroos and wattles, and only said "Yes" or "No," or, more often, nothing at all.

When tea was over we melted away, "like snow-wreaths in Thawjean," and went out on the beach and had a yelling match. Our throats felt as though they were full of wool, from the hushed tones we had used in talking to Mrs. Bax. Oswald won the match. Next day we kept carefully out of the way, except for meals. Mrs. Bax tried talking again at breakfast-time, but we checked our wish to listen, and passed the pepper, salt, mustard, bread, toast, butter, marmalade, and even the cayenne, vinegar, and oil, with such politeness that she gave up.

We took it in turns to watch the house and drive away organ-grinders. We told them they must not play in front of that house, because there was an Australian lady who had to be kept quiet. And they went at once. This cost us expense, because an organ-grinder will never consent to fly the spot under twopence a flight.

We went to bed early. We were quite weary with being so calm and still. But we knew it was our duty, and we liked the feel of having done it.

The day after was the day Jake Lee got hurt. Jake is the man who drives about the country in a covered cart, with pins and needles, and combs and frying-pans, and all the sort of things that farmers' wives are likely to want in a hurry, and no shops for miles. I have always thought Jake's was a beautiful life. I should like to do it myself. Well, this particular day he had got his cart all ready to start and had got his foot on the wheel to get up, when a motor-car went by puffing and hooting. I always think motor-cars seem so rude somehow. And the horse was frightened; and no wonder. It shied, and poor Jake was thrown violently to the ground, and hurt so much that they had to send for the doctor. Of course we went and asked Mrs. Jake if we could do anything—such as take the cart out and sell the things to the farmers' wives.

But she thought not.

It was after this that Dicky said—

"Why shouldn't we get things of our own and go and sell them—with Bates' donkey?"

Oswald was thinking the same thing, but he wishes to be fair, so he owns that Dicky spoke first. We all saw at once that the idea was a good one.

"Shall we dress up for it?" H.O. asked. We thought not. It is always good sport to dress up, but I have never heard of people selling things to farmers' wives in really beautiful disguises.

"We ought to go as shabby as we can," said Alice; "but somehow that always seems to come natural to your clothes when you've done a few interesting things in them. We have plenty of clothes that look poor but deserving. What shall we buy to sell?"

"Pins and needles, and tape and bodkins," said Dora.

"Butter," said Noel; "it is terrible when there is no butter."

"Honey is nice," said H.O., "and so are sausages."

"Jake has ready-made shirts and corduroy trousers. I suppose a farmer's shirt and trousers may give at any moment," said Alice, "and if he can't get new ones he has to go to bed till they are mended."

Oswald thought tin-tacks, and glue, and string must often be needed to mend barns and farm tools with if they broke suddenly. And Dicky said—

"I think the pictures of ladies hanging on to crosses in foaming seas are good. Jake told me he sold more of them than anything. I suppose people suddenly break the old ones, and home isn't home without a lady holding on to a cross."

We went to Munn's shop, and we bought needles and pins, and tapes and bodkins, a pound of butter, a pot of honey and one of marmalade, and tin-tacks, string, and glue. But we could not get any ladies with crosses, and the shirts and trousers were too expensive for us to dare to risk it. Instead, we bought a head-stall for eighteenpence, because how providential we should be to a farmer whose favourite horse had escaped and he had nothing to catch it with; and three tin-openers, in case of a distant farm subsisting entirely on tinned things, and the only opener for miles lost down the well or something. We also bought several other thoughtful and far-sighted things.

That night at supper we told Mrs. Bax we wanted to go out for the day. She had hardly said anything that supper-time, and now she said—

"Where are you going? Teaching Sunday school?"

As it was Monday, we felt her poor brain was wandering—most likely for want of quiet. And the room smelt of tobacco smoke, so we thought some one had been to see her and perhaps been too noisy for her. So Oswald said gently—

"No, we are not going to teach Sunday school."

Mrs. Bax sighed. Then she said—

"I am going out myself to-morrow—for the day."

"I hope it will not tire you too much," said Dora, with soft-voiced and cautious politeness. "If you want anything bought we could do it for you, with pleasure, and you could have a nice, quiet day at home."

"Thank you," said Mrs. Bax shortly; and we saw she would do what she chose, whether it was really for her own good or not.

She started before we did next morning, and we were careful to be mouse-quiet till the "Ship's" fly which contained her was out of hearing. Then we had another yelling competition, and Noel won with that new shriek of his that is like railway engines in distress; and then we went and fetched Bates' donkey and cart and packed our bales in it and started, some riding and some running behind.

Any faint distant traces of respectableness that were left to our clothes were soon covered up by the dust of the road and by some of the ginger-beer bursting through the violence of the cart, which had no springs.

The first farm we stopped at the woman really did want some pins, for though a very stupid person, she was making a pink blouse, and we said—

"Do have some tape! You never know when you may want it."

"I believe in buttons," she said. "No strings for me, thank you."

But when Oswald said, "What about pudding-strings? You can't button up puddings as if they were pillows!" she consented to listen to reason. But it was only twopence altogether.

But at the next place the woman said we were "mummickers," and told us to "get along, do." And she set her dog at us; but when Pincher sprang from the inmost recesses of the cart she called her dog off. But too late, for it and Pincher were locked in the barking, scuffling, growling embrace of deadly combat. When we had separated the dogs she went into her house and banged the door, and we went on through the green flat marshes, among the buttercups and may-bushes.

"I wonder what she meant by 'mummickers'?" said H.O.

"She meant she saw our high-born airs through our shabby clothes," said Alice. "It's always happening, especially to princes. There's nothing so hard to conceal as a really high-bred air."

"I've been thinking," said Dicky, "whether honesty wouldn't perhaps be the best policy—not always, of course; but just this once. If people knew what we were doing it for they might be glad to help on the good work—— What?"

So at the next farm, which was half hidden by trees, like the picture at the beginning of "Sensible Susan," we tied the pony to the gate-post and knocked at the door. It was opened by a man this time, and Dora said to him—

"We are honest traders. We are trying to sell these things to keep a lady who is poor. If you buy some you will be helping too. Wouldn't you like to do that? It is a good work, and you will be glad of it afterwards, when you come to think over the acts of your life."

"Upon my word an' 'onner!" said the man, whose red face was surrounded by a frill of white whiskers. "If ever I see a walkin' Tract 'ere it stands!"

"She doesn't mean to be tractish," said Oswald quickly; "it's only her way. But we really are trying to sell things to help a poor person—no humbug, sir—so if we have got anything you want we shall be glad. And if not—well, there's no harm in asking, is there, sir?"

The man with the frilly whiskers was very pleased to be called "sir"—Oswald knew he would be—and he looked at everything we'd got, and bought the head-stall and two tin-openers, and a pot of marmalade, and a ball of string, and a pair of braces. This came to four and twopence, and we were very pleased. It really seemed that our business was establishing itself root and branch.

When it came to its being dinner-time, which was first noticed through H.O. beginning to cry and say he did not want to play any more, it was found that we had forgotten to bring any dinner. So we had to eat some of our stock—the jam, the biscuits, and the cucumber.

"I feel a new man," said Alice, draining the last of the ginger-beer bottles. "At that homely village on the brow of yonder hill we shall sell all that remains of the stock, and go home with money in both pockets."

But our luck had changed. As so often happens, our hearts beat high with hopeful thoughts, and we felt jollier than we had done all day. Merry laughter and snatches of musical song re-echoed from our cart, and from round it as we went up the hill. All Nature was smiling and gay. There was nothing sinister in the look of the trees or the road—or anything.

Dogs are said to have inside instincts that warn them of intending perils, but Pincher was not a bit instinctive that day somehow. He sported gaily up and down the hedge-banks after pretending rats, and once he was so excited that I believe he was playing at weasels and stoats. But of course there was really no trace of these savage denizens of the jungle. It was just Pincher's varied imagination.

We got to the village, and with joyful expectations we knocked at the first door we came to.

Alice had spread out a few choice treasures—needles, pins, tape, a photograph-frame, and the butter, rather soft by now, and the last of the tin-openers—on a basket-lid, like the fish-man does with herrings and whitings and plums and apples (you cannot sell fish in the country unless you sell fruit too. The author does not know why this is).

The sun was shining, the sky was blue. There was no sign at all of the intending thunderbolt, not even when the door was opened. This was done by a woman.

She just looked at our basket-lid of things any one might have been proud to buy, and smiled. I saw her do it. Then she turned her traitorous head and called "Jim!" into the cottage.

A sleepy grunt rewarded her.

"Jim, I say!" she repeated. "Come here directly minute."

Next moment Jim appeared. He was Jim to her because she was his wife, I suppose, but to us he was the Police, with his hair ruffled—from his hateful sofa-cushions, no doubt—and his tunic unbuttoned.

"What's up?" he said in a husky voice, as if he had been dreaming that he had a cold. "Can't a chap have a minute to himself to read the paper in?"

"You told me to," said the woman. "You said if any folks come to the door with things I was to call you, whether or no."

Even now we were blind to the disaster that was entangling us in the meshes of its trap. Alice said—

"We've sold a good deal, but we've some things left—very nice things. These crochet needles——"

But the Police, who had buttoned up his tunic in a hurry, said quite fiercely—

"Let's have a look at your license."

"We didn't bring any," said Noel, "but if you will give us an order we'll bring you some to-morrow." He thought a lisen was a thing to sell that we ought to have thought of.

"None of your lip," was the unexpected reply of the now plainly brutal constable. "Where's your license, I say?"

"We have a license for our dog, but Father's got it," said Oswald, always quick-witted, but not, this time, quite quick enough.

"Your 'awker's license is what I want, as well you knows, you young limb. Your pedlar's license—your license to sell things. You ain't half so half-witted as you want to make out."

"We haven't got a pedlar's license," said Oswald. If we had been in a book the Police would have been touched to tears by Oswald's simple honesty. He would have said "Noble boy!" and then gone on to say he had only asked the question to test our honour. But life is not really at all the same as books. I have noticed lots of differences. Instead of behaving like the book-Police, this thick-headed constable said—

"Blowed if I wasn't certain of it! Well, my young blokes, you'll just come along o' me to Sir James. I've got orders to bring up the next case afore him."

"Case!" said Dora. "Oh, don't! We didn't know we oughtn't to. We only wanted——"

"Ho, yes," said the constable, "you can tell all that to the magistrate; and anything you say will be used against you."

"I'm sure it will," said Oswald. "Dora, don't lower yourself to speak to him. Come, we'll go home."

The Police was combing its hair with a half-toothless piece of comb, and we turned to go. But it was vain.

Ere any of our young and eager legs could climb into the cart the Police had seized the donkey's bridle. We could not desert our noble steed—and besides, it wasn't really ours, but Bates's, and this made any hope of flight quite a forlorn one. For better, for worse, we had to go with the donkey.

"Don't cry, for goodness' sake!" said Oswald in stern undertones. "Bite your lips. Take long breaths. Don't let him see we mind. This beast's only the village police. Sir James will be a gentleman. He'll understand. Don't disgrace the house of Bastable. Look here! Fall into line—no, Indian file will be best, there are so few of us. Alice, if you snivel I'll never say you ought to have been a boy again. H.O., shut your mouth; no one's going to hurt you—you're too young."

"I am trying," said Alice, gasping.

"Noel," Oswald went on—now, as so often, showing the brilliant qualities of the born leader and general—"don't you be in a funk. Remember how Byron fought for the Greeks at Missy-what's-its-name. He didn't grouse, and he was a poet, like you! Now look here, let's be game. Dora, you're the eldest. Strike up—any tune. We'll march up, and show this sneak we Bastables aren't afraid, whoever else is."

You will perhaps find it difficult to believe, but we did strike up. We sang "The British Grenadiers," and when the Police told us to stow it we did not. And Noel said—

"Singing isn't dogs or pedlaring. You don't want a license for that."

"I'll soon show you!" said the Police.

But he had to jolly well put up with our melodious song, because he knew that there isn't really any law to prevent you singing if you want to.

We went on singing. It soon got easier than at first, and we followed Bates's donkey and cart through some lodge gates and up a drive with big trees, and we came out in front of a big white house, and there was a lawn. We stopped singing when we came in sight of the house, and got ready to be polite to Sir James. There were some ladies on the lawn in pretty blue and green dresses. This cheered us. Ladies are seldom quite heartless, especially when young.

The Police drew up Bates's donkey opposite the big front door with pillars, and rang the bell. Our hearts were beating desperately. We cast glances of despair at the ladies. Then, quite suddenly, Alice gave a yell that wild Indian war-whoops are simply nothing to, and tore across the lawn and threw her arms round the green waist of one of the ladies.

"Oh, I'm so glad!" she cried; "oh, save us! We haven't done anything wrong, really and truly we haven't."

And then we all saw that the lady was our own Mrs. Red House, that we liked so much. So we all rushed to her, and before that Police had got the door answered we had told her our tale. The other ladies had turned away when we approached her, and gone politely away into a shrubbery.

"There, there," she said, patting Alice and Noel and as much of the others as she could get hold of. "Don't you worry, dears, don't. I'll make it all right with Sir James. Let's all sit down in a comfy heap, and get our breaths again. I am so glad to see you all. My husband met your father at lunch the other day. I meant to come over and see you to-morrow."

You cannot imagine the feelings of joy and safeness that we felt now we had found someone who knew we were Bastables, and not vagrant outcasts like the Police thought.

The door had now been answered. We saw the base Police talking to the person who answered it. Then he came towards us, very red in the face.

"Leave off bothering the lady," he said, "and come along of me. Sir James is in his library, and he's ready to do justice on you, so he is."

Mrs. Red House jumped up, and so did we. She said with smiles, as if nothing was wrong—

"Good morning, Inspector!"

He looked pleased and surprised, as well he might, for it'll be long enough before he's within a mile of being that.

"Good morning, miss, I'm sure," he replied.

"I think there's been a little mistake, Inspector," she said. "I expect it's some of your men—led away by zeal for their duties. But I'm sure you'll understand. I am staying with Lady Harborough, and these children are very dear friends of mine."

The Police looked very silly, but he said something about hawking without a license.

"Oh no, not hawking," said Mrs. Red House, "not hawking, surely! They were just playing at it, you know. Your subordinates must have been quite mistaken."

Our honesty bade us say that he was his own only subordinate, and that he hadn't been mistaken; but it is rude to interrupt, especially a lady, so we said nothing.

The Police said firmly, "You'll excuse me, miss, but Sir James expressly told me to lay a information directly next time I caught any of 'em at it without a license."

"But, you see, you didn't catch them at it." Mrs. Red House took some money out of her purse. "You might just give this to your subordinates to console them for the mistake they've made. And look here, these mistakes do lead to trouble sometimes. So I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll promise not to tell Sir James a word about it. So nobody will be blamed."

We listened breathless for his reply. He put his hands behind him—

"Well, miss," he said at last, "you've managed to put the Force in the wrong somehow, which isn't often done, and I'm blest if I know how you make it out. But there's Sir James a-waiting for me to come before him with my complaint. What am I a-goin' to say to him?"

"Oh, anything," said Mrs. Red House; "surely some one else has done something wrong that you can tell him about?"

"There was a matter of a couple of snares and some night lines," he said slowly, drawing nearer to Mrs. Red House; "but I couldn't take no money, of course."

"Of course not," she said; "I beg your pardon for offering it. But I'll give you my name and address, and if ever I can be of any use to you——"

She turned her back on us while she wrote it down with a stumpy pencil he lent her; but Oswald could swear that he heard money chink, and that there was something large and round wrapped up in the paper she gave him.

"Sorry for any little misunderstanding," the Police now said, feeling the paper with his fingers; "and my respects to you, miss, and your young friends. I'd best be going."

And he went—to Sir James, I suppose. He seemed quite tamed. I hope the people who set the snares got off.

"So that's all right," said Mrs. Red House. "Oh, you dear children, you must stay to lunch, and we'll have a splendid time."

"What a darling Princess you are!" Noel said slowly. "You are a witch Princess, too, with magic powers over the Police."

"It's not a very pretty sort of magic," she said, and she sighed.

"Everything about you is pretty," said Noel. And I could see him beginning to make the faces that always precur his poetry-fits. But before the fit could break out thoroughly the rest of us awoke from our stupor of grateful safeness and began to dance round Mrs. Red House in a ring. And the girls sang—

"The rose is red, the violet's blue, Carnation's sweet, and so are you,"

over and over again, so we had to join in; though I think "She's a jolly good fellow would have been more manly and less like a poetry book."

Suddenly a known voice broke in on our singing.

"Well!" it said. And we stopped dancing. And there were the other two ladies who had politely walked off when we first discovered Mrs. Red House. And one of them was Mrs. Bax—of all people in the world! And she was smoking a cigarette. So now we knew where the smell of tobacco came from, in the White House.

We said, "Oh!" in one breath, and were silent.

"Is it possible," said Mrs. Bax, "that these are the Sunday-school children I've been living with these three long days?"

"We're sorry," said Dora, softly; "we wouldn't have made a noise if we'd know you were here."

"So I suppose," said Mrs. Bax. "Chloe, you seem to be a witch. How have you galvanised my six rag dolls into life like this?"

"Rag dolls!" said H.O., before we could stop him. "I think you're jolly mean and ungrateful; and it was sixpence for making the organs fly."

"My brain's reeling," said Mrs. Bax, putting her hands to her head.

"H.O. is very rude, and I am sorry," said Alice, "but it is hard to be called rag dolls, when you've only tried to do as you were told."

And then, in answer to Mrs. Red House's questions, we told how father had begged us to be quiet, and how we had earnestly tried to. When it was told, Mrs. Bax began to laugh, and so did Mrs. Red House, and at last Mrs. Bax said—

"Oh, my dears! you don't know how glad I am that you're really alive! I began to think—oh—I don't know what I thought! And you're not rag dolls. You're heroes and heroines, every man jack of you. And I do thank you. But I never wanted to be quiet like that. I just didn't want to be bothered with London and tiresome grown-up people. And now let's enjoy ourselves! Shall it be rounders, or stories about cannibals?"

"Rounders first and stories after," said H.O. And it was so.

Mrs. Bax, now that her true nature was revealed, proved to be A1. The author does not ask for a jollier person to be in the house with. We had rare larks the whole time she stayed with us.

And to think that we might never have known her true character if she hadn't been an old school friend of Mrs. Red House's, and if Mrs. Red House hadn't been such a friend of ours!

"Friendship," as Mr. William Smith so truly says in his book about Latin, "is the crown of life."



THE POOR AND NEEDY

"WHAT shall we do to-day, kiddies?" said Mrs. Bax. We had discovered her true nature but three days ago, and already she had taken us out in a sailing-boat and in a motor car, had given us sweets every day, and taught us eleven new games that we had not known before; and only four of the new games were rotters. How seldom can as much be said for the games of a grown-up, however gifted!

The day was one of cloudless blue perfectness, and we were all basking on the beach. We had all bathed. Mrs. Bax said we might. There are points about having a grown-up with you, if it is the right kind. You can then easily get it to say "Yes" to what you want, and after that, if anything goes wrong it is their fault, and you are pure from blame. But nothing had gone wrong with the bathe, and, so far, we were all alive, and not cold at all, except our fingers and feet.

"What would you like to do?" asked Mrs. Bax. We were far away from human sight along the beach, and Mrs. Bax was smoking cigarettes as usual.

"I don't know," we all said politely. But H.O. said—

"What about poor Miss Sandal?"

"Why poor?" asked Mrs. Bax.

"Because she is," said H.O.

"But how? What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Bax.

"Why, isn't she?" said H.O.

"Isn't she what?" said Mrs. Bax.

"What you said why about," said H.O.

She put her hands to her head. Her short hair was still damp and rumpled from contact with the foaming billows of ocean.

"Let's have a fresh deal and start fair," she said; "why do you think my sister is poor?"

"I forgot she was your sister," said H.O., "or I wouldn't have said it—honour bright I wouldn't."

"Don't mention it," said Mrs. Bax, and began throwing stones at a groin in amiable silence.

We were furious with H.O., first because it is such bad manners to throw people's poverty in their faces, or even in their sisters' faces, like H.O. had just done, and second because it seemed to have put out of Mrs. Bax's head what she was beginning to say about what would we like to do.

So Oswald presently remarked, when he had aimed at the stump she was aiming at, and hit it before she did, for though a fair shot for a lady, she takes a long time to get her eye in.

"Mrs. Bax, we should like to do whatever you like to do." This was real politeness and true too, as it happened, because by this time we could quite trust her not to want to do anything deeply duffing.

"That's very nice of you," she replied, "but don't let me interfere with any plans of yours. My own idea was to pluck a waggonette from the nearest bush. I suppose they grow freely in these parts?"

"There's one at the 'Ship,'" said Alice; "it costs seven-and-six to pluck it, just for going to the station."

"Well, then! And to stuff our waggonette with lunch and drive over to Lynwood Castle, and eat it there."

"A picnic!" fell in accents of joy from the lips of one and all.

"We'll also boil the billy in the castle courtyard, and eat buns in the shadow of the keep."

"Tea as well?" said H.O., "with buns? You can't be poor and needy any way, whatever your——"

We hastily hushed him, stifling his murmurs with sand.

"I always think," said Mrs. Bax dreamily, "that 'the more the merrier,' is peculiarly true of picnics. So I have arranged—always subject to your approval, of course—to meet your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Red House, there, and——"

We drowned her conclusive remarks with a cheer. And Oswald, always willing to be of use, offered to go to the 'Ship' and see about the waggonette. I like horses and stable-yards, and the smell of hay and straw, and talking to ostlers and people like that.

There turned out to be two horses belonging to the best waggonette, or you could have a one-horse one, much smaller, with the blue cloth of the cushions rather frayed, and mended here and there, and green in patches from age and exposition to the weather.

Oswald told Mrs. Bax this, not concealing about how shabby the little one was, and she gloriously said—

"The pair by all means! We don't kill a pig every day!"

"No, indeed," said Dora, but if "killing a pig" means having a lark, Mrs. Bax is as good a pig-killer as any I ever knew.

It was splendid to drive (Oswald, on the box beside the driver, who had his best coat with the bright buttons) along the same roads that we had trodden as muddy pedestrinators, or travelled along behind Bates's donkey.

It was a perfect day, as I said before. We were all clean and had our second-best things on. I think second-bests are much more comfy than first-bests. You feel equivalent to meeting any one, and have "a heart for any fate," as it says in the poetry-book, and yet you are not starched and booted and stiffened and tightened out of all human feelings.

Lynwood Castle is in a hollow in the hills. It has a moat all round it with water-lily leaves on it. I suppose there are lilies when in season. There is a bridge over the moat—not the draw kind of bridge. And the castle has eight towers—four round and four square ones, and a courtyard in the middle, all green grass, and heaps of stones—stray bits of castle, I suppose they are—and a great white may-tree in the middle that Mrs. Bax said was hundreds of years old.

Mrs. Red House was sitting under the may-tree when we got there, nursing her baby, in a blue dress and looking exactly like a picture on the top of a chocolate-box.

The girls instantly wanted to nurse the baby so we let them. And we explored the castle. We had never happened to explore one thoroughly before. We did not find the deepest dungeon below the castle moat, though we looked everywhere for it, but we found everything else you can think of belonging to castles—even the holes they used to pour boiling lead through into the eyes of besiegers when they tried to squint up to see how strong the garrison was in the keep—and the little slits they shot arrows through, and the mouldering remains of the portcullis. We went up the eight towers, every single one of them, and some parts were jolly dangerous, I can tell you. Dicky and I would not let H.O. and Noel come up the dangerous parts. There was no lasting ill-feeling about this. By the time we had had a thorough good explore lunch was ready.

It was a glorious lunch—not too many meaty things, but all sorts of cakes and sweets, and grapes and figs and nuts.

We gazed at the feast, and Mrs. Bax said—

"There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread you've got."

"They had currant wine," said Noel, who has only just read the book by Mr. Charles Dickens.

"Well, so have you," said Mrs. Bax. And we had. Two bottles of it.

"I never knew any one like you," said Noel to Mrs. Red House, dreamily with his mouth full, "for knowing the things people really like to eat, not the things that are good for them, but what they like, and Mrs. Bax is just the same."

"It was one of the things they taught at our school," said Mrs. Bax. "Do you remember the Saturday night feasts, Chloe, and how good the cocoanut ice tasted after extra strong peppermints?"

"Fancy you knowing that!" said H.O. "I thought it was us found that out."

"I really know much more about things to eat than she does," said Mrs. Bax. "I was quite an old girl when she was a little thing in pinafores. She was such a nice little girl."

"I shouldn't wonder if she was always nice," said Noel, "even when she was a baby!"

Everybody laughed at this, except the existing baby, and it was asleep on the waggonette cushions, under the white may-tree, and perhaps if it had been awake it wouldn't have laughed, for Oswald himself, though possessing a keen sense of humour, did not see anything to laugh at.

Mr. Red House made a speech after dinner, and said drink to the health of everybody, one after the other, in currant wine, which was done, beginning with Mrs. Bax and ending with H.O.

Then he said—

"Somnus, avaunt! What shall we play at?" and nobody, as so often happens, had any idea ready. Then suddenly Mrs. Red House said—

"Good gracious, look there!" and we looked there, and where we were to look was the lowest piece of the castle wall, just beside the keep that the bridge led over to, and what we were to look at was a strange blobbiness of knobbly bumps along the top, that looked exactly like human heads.

It turned out, when we had talked about cannibals and New Guinea, that human heads were just exactly what they were. Not loose heads, stuck on pikes or things like that, such as there often must have been while the castle stayed in the olden times it was built in and belonged to, but real live heads with their bodies still in attendance on them.

They were, in fact, the village children.

"Poor little Lazaruses!" said Mr. Red House.

"There's not such a bad slice of Dives' feast left," said Mrs. Bax. "Shall we——?"

So Mr. Red House went out by the keep and called the heads in (with the bodies they were connected with, of course), and they came and ate up all that was left of the lunch. Not the buns, of course, for those were sacred to tea-time, but all the other things, even the nuts and figs, and we were quite glad that they should have them—really and truly we were, even H.O.!

They did not seem to be very clever children, or just the sort you would choose for your friends, but I suppose you like to play, however little you are other people's sort. So, after they had eaten all there was, when Mrs. Red House invited them all to join in games with us we knew we ought to be pleased. But village children are not taught rounders, and though we wondered at first why their teachers had not seen to this, we understood presently. Because it is most awfully difficult to make them understand the very simplest thing.

But they could play all the ring games, and "Nuts and May," and "There Came Three Knights"—and another one we had never heard of before. The singing part begins:—

"Up and down the green grass, This and that and thus, Come along, my pretty maid, And take a walk with us. You shall have a duck, my dear, And you shall have a drake, And you shall have a handsome man For your father's sake."

I forget the rest, and if anybody who reads this knows it, and will write and tell me, the author will not have laboured in vain.

The grown-ups played with all their heart and soul—I expect it is but seldom they are able to play, and they enjoy the novel excitement. And when we'd been at it some time we saw there was another head looking over the wall.

"Hullo!" said Mrs. Bax, "here's another of them, run along and ask it to come and join in."

She spoke to the village children, but nobody ran.

"Here, you go," she said, pointing at a girl in red plaits tied with dirty sky-blue ribbon.

"Please, miss, I'd leifer not," replied the red-haired. "Mother says we ain't to play along of him."

"Why, what's the matter with him?" asked Mrs. Red House.

"His father's in jail, miss, along of snares and night lines, and no one won't give his mother any work, so my mother says we ain't to demean ourselves to speak to him."

"But it's not the child's fault," said Mrs. Red House, "is it now?"

"I don't know, miss," said the red-haired.

"But it's cruel," said Mrs. Bax. "How would you like it if your father was sent to prison, and nobody would speak to you?"

"Father's always kep' hisself respectable," said the girl with the dirty blue ribbon. "You can't be sent to gaol, not if you keeps yourself respectable, you can't, miss."

"And do none of you speak to him?"

The other children put their fingers in their mouths, and looked silly, showing plainly that they didn't.

"Don't you feel sorry for the poor little chap?" said Mrs. Bax.

No answer transpired.

"Can't you imagine how you'd feel if it was your father?"

"My father always kep' hisself respectable," the red-haired girl said again.

"Well, I shall ask him to come and play with us," said Mrs. Red House. "Little pigs!" she added in low tones only heard by the author and Mr. Red House.

But Mr. Red House said in a whisper that no one overheard except Mrs. R. H. and the present author.

"Don't, Puss-cat; it's no good. The poor little pariah wouldn't like it. And these kids only do what their parents teach them."

If the author didn't know what a stainless gentleman Mr. Red House is he would think he heard him mutter a word that gentlemen wouldn't say.

"Tell off a detachment of consolation," Mr. Red House went on; "look here, our kids—who'll go and talk to the poor little chap?"

We all instantly said, "I will!"

The present author was chosen to be the one.

When you think about yourself there is a kind of you that is not what you generally are but that you know you would like to be if only you were good enough. Albert's uncle says this is called your ideal of yourself. I will call it your best I, for short. Oswald's "best I" was glad to go and talk to that boy whose father was in prison, but the Oswald that generally exists hated being out of the games. Yet the whole Oswald, both the best and the ordinary, was pleased that he was the one chosen to be a detachment of consolation.

He went out under the great archway, and as he went he heard the games beginning again. This made him feel noble, and yet he was ashamed of feeling it. Your feelings are a beastly nuisance, if once you begin to let yourself think about them. Oswald soon saw the broken boots of the boy whose father was in jail so nobody would play with him, standing on the stones near the top of the wall where it was broken to match the boots.

He climbed up and said, "Hullo!"

To this remark the boy replied, "Hullo!"

Oswald now did not know what to say. The sorrier you are for people the harder it is to tell them so.

But at last he said—

"I've just heard about your father being where he is. It's beastly rough luck. I hope you don't mind my saying I'm jolly sorry for you."

The boy had a pale face and watery blue eyes. When Oswald said this his eyes got waterier than ever, and he climbed down to the ground before he said—

"I don't care so much, but it do upset mother something crool."

It is awfully difficult to console those in affliction. Oswald thought this, then he said—

"I say; never mind if those beastly kids won't play with you. It isn't your fault, you know."

"Nor it ain't father's neither," the boy said; "he broke his arm a-falling off of a rick, and he hadn't paid up his club money along of mother's new baby costing what it did when it come, so there warn't nothing—and what's a hare or two, or a partridge? It ain't as if it was pheasants as is as dear to rear as chicks."

Oswald did not know what to say, so he got out his new pen-and-pencil-combined and said—

"Look here! You can have this to keep if you like."

The pale-eyed boy took it and looked at it and said—

"You ain't foolin' me?"

And Oswald said no he wasn't, but he felt most awfully rum and uncomfy, and though he wanted most frightfully to do something for the boy he felt as if he wanted to get away more than anything else, and he never was gladder in his life than when he saw Dora coming along, and she said—

"You go back and play, Oswald. I'm tired and I'd like to sit down a bit."

She got the boy to sit down beside her, and Oswald went back to the others.

Games, however unusually splendid, have to come to an end. And when the games were over and it was tea, and the village children were sent away, and Oswald went to call Dora and the prisoner's son, he found nothing but Dora, and he saw at once, in his far-sighted way, that she had been crying.

It was one of the A1est days we ever had, and the drive home was good, but Dora was horribly quiet, as though the victim of dark interior thoughts.

And the next day she was but little better.

We were all paddling on the sands, but Dora would not. And presently Alice left us and went back to Dora, and we all saw across the sandy waste that something was up.

And presently Alice came down and said—

"Dry your feet and legs and come to a council. Dora wants to tell you something."

We dried our pink and sandy toes and we came to the council. Then Alice said: "I don't think H.O. is wanted at the council, it isn't anything amusing; you go and enjoy yourself by the sea, and catch the nice little crabs, H.O. dear."

H.O. said: "You always want me to be out of everything. I can be councils as well as anybody else."

"Oh, H.O.!" said Alice, in pleading tones, "not if I give you a halfpenny to go and buy bulls-eyes with?"

So then he went, and Dora said—

"I can't think how I could do it when you'd all trusted me so. And yet I couldn't help it. I remember Dicky saying when you decided to give it me to take care of—about me being the most trustworthy of all of us. I'm not fit for any one to speak to. But it did seem the really right thing at the time, it really and truly did. And now it all looks different."

"What has she done?" Dicky asked this, but Oswald almost knew.

"Tell them," said Dora, turning over on her front and hiding her face partly in her hands, and partly in the sand.

"She's given all Miss Sandal's money to that little boy that the father of was in prison," said Alice.

"It was one pound thirteen and sevenpence halfpenny," sobbed Dora.

"You ought to have consulted us, I do think, really," said Dicky. "Of course, I see you're sorry now, but I do think that."

"How could I consult you?" said Dora; "you were all playing Cat and Mouse, and he wanted to get home. I only wish you'd heard what he told me—that's all—about his mother being ill, and nobody letting her do any work because of where his father is, and his baby brother ill, poor little darling, and not enough to eat, and everything as awful as you can possibly think. I'll save up and pay it all back out of my own money. Only do forgive me, all of you, and say you don't despise me for a forger and embezzlementer. I couldn't help it."

"I'm glad you couldn't," said the sudden voice of H.O., who had sneaked up on his young stomach unobserved by the council. "You shall have all my money too, Dora, and here's the bulls-eye halfpenny to begin with." He crammed it into her hand. "Listen? I should jolly well think I did listen," H.O. went on. "I've just as much right as anybody else to be in at a council, and I think Dora was quite right, and the rest of you are beasts not to say so, too, when you see how she's blubbing. Suppose it had been your darling baby-brother ill, and nobody hadn't given you nothing when they'd got pounds and pounds in their silly pockets?"

He now hugged Dora, who responded.

"It wasn't her own money," said Dicky.

"If you think you're our darling baby-brother——" said Oswald.

But Alice and Noel began hugging Dora and H.O., and Dicky and I felt it was no go. Girls have no right and honourable feelings about business, and little boys are the same.

"All right," said Oswald rather bitterly, "if a majority of the council backs Dora up, we'll give in. But we must all save up and repay the money, that's all. We shall all be beastly short for ages."

"Oh," said Dora, and now her sobs were beginning to turn into sniffs, "you don't know how I felt! And I've felt most awful ever since, but those poor, poor people——"

At this moment Mrs. Bax came down on to the beach by the wooden steps that lead from the sea-wall where the grass grows between the stones.

"Hullo!" she said, "hurt yourself, my Dora-dove?"

Dora was rather a favourite of hers.

"It's all right now," said Dora.

"That's all right," said Mrs. Bax, who has learnt in anti-what's-its-name climes the great art of not asking too many questions. "Mrs. Red House has come to lunch. She went this morning to see that boy's mother—you know, the boy the others wouldn't play with?"

We said "Yes."

"Well, Mrs. Red House has arranged to get the woman some work—like the dear she is—the woman told her that the little lady—and that's you, Dora—had given the little boy one pound thirteen and sevenpence."

Mrs. Bax looked straight out to sea through her gold-rimmed spectacles, and went on—

"That must have been about all you had among the lot of you. I don't want to jaw, but I think you're a set of little bricks, and I must say so or expire on the sandy spot."

There was a painful silence.

H.O. looked, "There, what did I tell you?" at the rest of us.

Then Alice said, "We others had nothing to do with it. It was Dora's doing." I suppose she said this because we did not mean to tell Mrs. Bax anything about it, and if there was any brickiness in the act we wished Dora to have the consolement of getting the credit of it.

But of course Dora couldn't stand that. She said—

"Oh, Mrs. Bax, it was very wrong of me. It wasn't my own money, and I'd no business to, but I was so sorry for the little boy and his mother and his darling baby-brother. The money belonged to some one else."

"Who?" Mrs. Bax asked ere she had time to remember the excellent Australian rule about not asking questions.

And H.O. blurted out, "It was Miss Sandal's money—every penny," before we could stop him.

Once again in our career concealment was at an end. The rule about questions was again unregarded, and the whole thing came out.

It was a long story, and Mrs. Red House came out in the middle, but nobody could mind her hearing things.

When she knew all, from the plain living to the pedlar who hadn't a license, Mrs. Bax spoke up like a man, and said several kind things that I won't write down.

She then went on to say that her sister was not poor and needy at all, but that she lived plain and thought high just because she liked it!

We were very disappointed as soon as we had got over our hardly believing any one could—like it, I mean—and then Mrs. Red House said—

"Sir James gave me five pounds for the poor woman, and she sent back thirty of your shillings. She had spent three and sevenpence, and they had a lovely supper of boiled pork and greens last night. So now you've only got that to make up, and you can buy a most splendid present for Miss Sandal."

It is difficult to choose presents for people who live plain and think high because they like it. But at last we decided to get books. They were written by a person called Emerson, and of a dull character, but the backs were very beautiful, and Miss Sandal was most awfully pleased with them when she came down to her cottage with her partially repaired brother, who had fallen off the scaffold when treating a bricklayer to tracts.

This is the end of the things we did when we were at Lymchurch in Miss Sandal's house.

It is the last story that the present author means ever to be the author of. So goodbye, if you have got as far as this.

Your affectionate author, OSWALD BASTABLE.



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Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

Page 39, "Noel" changed to "Noel" (cost?" Noel asked)

Page 77, "peacable" changed to "peaceable" (the peaceable quietness)

Page 162, "alway" changed to "alway" (they always sing in)

Page 196, "Its" changed to "It's" (It's not much to do)

Page 217, "But" changed to "but" (but he will just say)

Page 221, "birds" changed to "bird's" (like a bird's)

Page 289, "anenomes" changed to "anemones" (wood-anemones)

Page 294, "Mr." changed to "Mrs." (talking to Mrs. Bax.)

Varied hyphenation retained: armchair and arm-chair; boathouse and boat-house; halfway and half-way; postmark and post-mark; stationmaster and station-master; tablecloths and table-cloths; thoroughbred and thorough-bred; wastepaper and waste-paper; motor car; motor-car.

Both Krikey and crikey and handkie and hankie were used and retained.

THE END