ce said Oswald was unkind, though you see he was not, and she
kissed Noel and said she and he would take turns to watch for the
postman, so as to get the answer (which of course would be subscribed on
the envelope with the name of Turnbull instead of Bastable) before the
servant could tell the postman that the name was a stranger to her.

And next evening it came, and it was very polite and grown-up--and said
we should be welcome, and that we might read our papers and skate on the
moat. The Red House has a moat, like the Moat House in the country, but
not so wild and dangerous. Only we never skated on it because the frost
gave out the minute we had got leave to. Such is life, as the sparks fly
upwards. (The last above is called a moral reflection.)

So now, having got leave from Mr. Red House (I won't give his name
because he is a writer of worldly fame and he might not like it), we set
about writing our papers. It was not bad fun, only rather difficult
because Dora said she never knew which Encyclo. volume she might be
wanting, as she was using Edinburgh, Mary, Scotland, Bothwell, Holywell,
and France, and many others, and Oswald never knew which he might want,
owing to his not being able exactly to remember the distinguished and
deathless other appellation of Sir Thomas Thingummy, who had lived in
the Red House.

Noel was up to the ears in Agincourt, yet that made but little
difference to our destiny. He is always plunged in poetry of one sort or
another, and if it hadn't been that, it would have been something else.
This, at least, we insisted on having kept a secret, so he could not
read it to us.

H.O. got very inky the first half-holiday, and then he got some
sealing-wax and a big envelope from Father, and put something in and
fastened it up, and said he had done his.

Dicky would not tell us what his paper was going to be about, but he
said it would not be like ours, and he let H.O. help him by looking on
while he invented more patent screws for ships.

The spectacles were difficult. We got three pairs of the uncle's, and
one that had belonged to the housekeeper's grandfather, but nine pairs
were needed, because Albert-next-door mouched in one half-holiday and
wanted to join, and said if we'd let him he'd write a paper on the
Constitutions of Clarendon, and we thought he couldn't do it, so we let
him. And then, after all, he did.

So at last Alice went down to Bennett's in the village, that we are such
go