in such a hurry, because after a bit Mrs. Red House
came out, and said she wanted to play too. She pretended to be a very
ancient antiquary, and was most jolly, so that the others read their
papers to her, and Oswald knows she would have liked his paper best,
because it _was_ the best, though I say it.

Dicky's turned out to be all about that patent screw, and how Nelson
would not have been killed if his ship had been built with one.

Daisy's paper was about Lady Jane Grey, and hers and Dora's were exactly
alike, the dullest by far, because they had got theirs out of books.

Alice had not written hers because she had been helping Noel to copy
his.

Denny's was about King Charles, and he was very grown-up and fervent
about this ill-fated monarch and white roses.

Mrs. Red House took us into the summer-houses, where it was warmer, and
such is the wonderful architecture of the Red House gardens that there
was a fresh summer-house for each paper, except Noel's and H.O.'s, which
were read in the stable. There were no horses there.

Noel's was very long, and it began--

"This is the story of Agincourt.
If you don't know it you jolly well ought.
It was a famous battle fair,
And all your ancestors fought there
That is if you come of a family old.
The Bastables do; they were always very bold.
And at Agincourt
They fought
As they ought;
So we have been taught."

And so on and so on, till some of us wondered why poetry was ever
invented. But Mrs. Red House said she liked it awfully, so Noel said--

"You may have it to keep. I've got another one of it at home."

"I'll put it next my heart, Noel," she said. And she did, under the blue
stuff and fur.

H.O.'s was last, but when we let him read it he wouldn't, so Dora opened
his envelope and it was thick inside with blotting-paper, and in the
middle there was a page with

"1066 WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR,"

and nothing else.

"Well," he said, "I said I'd write all I knew about 1066, and that's it.
I can't write more than I know, can I?" The girls said he couldn't, but
Oswald thought he might have tried.

"It wasn't worth blacking your face all over just for that," he said.
But Mrs. Red House laughed very much and said it was a lovely paper, and
told _her_ all she wanted to know about 1066.

Then