o say 'No!' as loud as he could.

'Well, then,' Oswald said, 'look here, you're spoiling the whole thing.
Don't be a jackape, Denny. What is it?'

'You won't tell the others if I tell you?'

'Not if you say not,' Oswald answered in kindly tones.

'Well, it's my shoes.'

'Take them off, man.'

'You won't laugh?'

'NO!' cried Oswald, so impatiently that the others looked back to see
why he was shouting. He waved them away, and with humble gentleness
began to undo the black-tape sandals.

Denny let him, crying hard all the time.

When Oswald had got off the first shoe the mystery was made plain to
him.

'Well! Of all the--' he said in proper indignation.

Denny quailed--though he said he did not--but then he doesn't know what
quailing is, and if Denny did not quail then Oswald does not know what
quailing is either.

For when Oswald took the shoe off he naturally chucked it down and
gave it a kick, and a lot of little pinky yellow things rolled out. And
Oswald look closer at the interesting sight. And the little things were
SPLIT peas.

'Perhaps you'll tell me,' said the gentle knight, with the politeness of
despair, 'why on earth you've played the goat like this?'

'Oh, don't be angry,' Denny said; and now his shoes were off, he curled
and uncurled his toes and stopped crying. 'I KNEW pilgrims put peas in
their shoes--and--oh, I wish you wouldn't laugh!'

'I'm not,' said Oswald, still with bitter politeness.

'I didn't want to tell you I was going to, because I wanted to be better
than all of you, and I thought if you knew I was going to you'd want to
too, and you wouldn't when I said it first. So I just put some peas
in my pocket and dropped one or two at a time into my shoes when you
weren't looking.'

In his secret heart Oswald said, 'Greedy young ass.' For it IS greedy to
want to have more of anything than other people, even goodness.

Outwardly Oswald said nothing.

'You see'--Denny went on--'I do want to be good. And if pilgriming is to
do you good, you ought to do it properly. I shouldn't mind being hurt
in my feet if it would make me good for ever and ever. And besides, I
wanted to play the game thoroughly. You always say I don't.'

The breast of the kind Oswald was touched by these last words.

'I think you're quite good enough,' he said. 'I'll fetch back the
others--no, they won't laugh.'

And we all went back to Denny, and the girls made a fuss with him. But
Oswald and Dicky were gra