place where the
Antiquities were going to dig. We sat on the Roman wall and ate nuts.
And as we sat there, we saw coming through the beet-field two laborers
with picks and shovels, and a very young man with thin legs and a
bicycle. It turned out afterwards to be a free wheel, the first we had
ever seen.

They stopped at a mound inside the Roman wall, and the men took their
coats off and spat on their hands.

We went down at once, of course. The thin-legged bicyclist explained his
machine to us very fully and carefully when we asked him, and then we
saw the men were cutting turfs and turning them over and rolling them
up, and putting them in a heap. So we asked the gentleman with his thin
legs what they were doing. He said:

"They are beginning the preliminary excavation in readiness for
to-morrow."

"What's up to-morrow?" H. O. asked.

"To-morrow we propose to open this barrow and examine it."

"Then _you're_ the Antiquities," said H. O.

"I'm the secretary," said the gentleman, smiling, but narrowly.

"Oh, you're all coming to tea with us," Dora said, and added anxiously,
"how many of you do you think there'll be?"

"Oh, not more than eighty or ninety, I should think," replied the
gentleman.

This took our breath away and we went home. As we went, Oswald, who
notices many things that would pass unobserved by the light and
careless, saw Denny frowning hard.

So he said, "What's up?"

"I've got an idea," the Dentist said. "Let's call a council." The
Dentist had grown quite used to our ways now. We had called him Dentist
ever since the fox-hunt day. He called a council as if he had been used
to calling such things all his life, and having them come, too; whereas
we all know that his former existing was that of a white mouse in a
trap, with that cat of a Murdstone aunt watching him through the bars.

(That is what is called a figure of speech. Albert's uncle told me.)

Councils are held in the straw-loft.

As soon as we were all there and the straw had stopped rustling after
our sitting down, Dicky said:

"I hope it's nothing to do with the Wouldbegoods?"

"No," said Denny in a hurry: "quite the opposite."

"I hope it's nothing wrong," said Dora and Daisy together.

"It's--it's 'Hail to thee, blithe spirit--bird thou never wert,'" said
Denny. "I mean, I think it's what is called a lark."

"You never know your luck. Go on, Dentist," said Dick.

"Well, then, do you know a book called _The Daisy Cha