d until those fifteen shillings were spent we felt almost as jolly as
though our fortunes had been properly restored. You do not notice your
general fortune so much, as long as you have money in your pocket. This
is why so many children with regular pocket-money have never felt
it their duty to seek for treasure. So, perhaps, our not having
pocket-money was a blessing in disguise. But the disguise was quite
impenetrable, like the villains' in the books; and it seemed still more
so when the fifteen shillings were all spent. Then at last the others
agreed to let Oswald try his way of seeking for treasure, but they were
not at all keen about it, and many a boy less firm than Oswald would
have chucked the whole thing. But Oswald knew that a hero must rely on
himself alone. So he stuck to it, and presently the others saw their
duty, and backed him up.

CHAPTER 10. LORD TOTTENHAM

Oswald is a boy of firm and unswerving character, and he had never
wavered from his first idea. He felt quite certain that the books were
right, and that the best way to restore fallen fortunes was to rescue an
old gentleman in distress. Then he brings you up as his own son: but
if you preferred to go on being your own father's son I expect the old
gentleman would make it up to you some other way. In the books the least
thing does it--you put up the railway carriage window--or you pick up
his purse when he drops it--or you say a hymn when he suddenly asks you
to, and then your fortune is made.

The others, as I said, were very slack about it, and did not seem to
care much about trying the rescue. They said there wasn't any deadly
peril, and we should have to make one before we could rescue the old
gentleman from it, but Oswald didn't see that that mattered. However, he
thought he would try some of the easier ways first, by himself.

So he waited about the station, pulling up railway carriage windows for
old gentlemen who looked likely--but nothing happened, and at last the
porters said he was a nuisance. So that was no go. No one ever asked him
to say a hymn, though he had learned a nice short one, beginning 'New
every morning'--and when an old gentleman did drop a two-shilling piece
just by Ellis's the hairdresser's, and Oswald picked it up, and was
just thinking what he should say when he returned it, the old gentleman
caught him by the collar and called him a young thief. It would have
been very unpleasant for Oswald if he hadn't happened