have a volume of
_Percy's Anecdotes_ in his pocket, the one about lawyers, as well as a
few apples. While he read he fingered the cricket-ball, and presently it
rolled away, and he thought he would get it by-and-by.

When the tea-bell rang he forgot the ball and went hurriedly down, for
apples do not keep the inside from the pangs of hunger.

Noel met him on the landing, got red in the face, and said:

"It wasn't _quite_ fair about the ball, because H. O. and I had eaten
the cocoanut. _You_ can have it."

"I don't want your beastly ball," Oswald said, "only I hate unfairness.
However, I don't know where it is just now. When I find it you shall
have it to bowl with as often as you want."

"Then you're not waxy?"

And Oswald said "No," and they went in to tea together. So that was all
right. There were raisin cakes for tea.

Next day we happened to want to go down to the river quite early. I
don't know why; this is called Fate, or Destiny. We dropped in at the
"Rose and Crown" for some ginger-beer on our way. The landlady is a
friend of ours and lets us drink it in her back parlor, instead of in
the bar, which would be improper for girls.

We found her awfully busy, making pies and jellies, and her two sisters
were hurrying about with great hams and pairs of chickens and rounds of
cold beef and lettuces and pickled salmon and trays of crockery and
glasses.

"It's for the angling competition," she said.

We said, "What's that?"

"Why," she said, slicing cucumber like beautiful machinery while she
said it, "a lot of anglers come down some particular day and fish one
particular bit of the river. And the one that catches most fish gets the
prize. They're fishing the pen above Stoneham Lock. And they all come
here to dinner. So I've got my hands full and a trifle over."

We said, "Couldn't we help?"

But she said, "Oh no, thank you. Indeed not, please. I really am so I
don't know which way to turn. Do run along, like dears."

So we ran along like these timid but graceful animals.

Need I tell the intellectual reader that we went straight off to the pen
above Stoneham Lock to see the anglers competing? Angling is the same
thing as fishing.

I am not going to try and explain locks to you. If you've never seen a
lock you could never understand even if I wrote it in words of one
syllable and pages and pages long. And if you have, you'll understand
without my telling you. It is harder than Euclid if you don't k