st be a great many sincerely
thirsty persons go along the Dover Road every day."

"It wouldn't be bad. We've got a little chink between us," said Oswald.

"And then think how the poor grateful creatures would linger and tell us
about their inmost sorrows. It would be most frightfully interesting. We
could write all their agonied life histories down afterwards like _All
the Year Round_ Christmas numbers. Oh, do let's!"

Alice was wriggling so with earnestness that Dicky thumped her to make
her calm.

"We might do it, just for one day," Oswald said, "but it wouldn't be
much--only a drop in the ocean compared with the enormous dryness of all
the people in the whole world. Still, every little helps, as the mermaid
said when she cried into the sea."

"I know a piece of poetry about that," Denny said.

"'Small things are best.
Care and unrest
To wealth and rank are given,
But little things
On little wings--'

Do something or other, I forget what, but it means the same as Oswald
was saying about the mermaid."

"What are you going to call it?" asked Noel coming out of a dream.

"Call what?"

"The Free Drinks game.

"'It's a horrid shame
If the Free Drinks game
Doesn't have a name.
You would be to blame
If any one came
And--'"

"Oh, shut up!" remarked Dicky. "You've been making that rot up all the
time we've been talking instead of listening properly." Dicky hates
poetry. I don't mind it so very much myself, especially Macaulay's and
Kipling's and Noel's.

"There was a lot more--'lame' and 'dame' and 'name' and 'game' and
things--and now I've forgotten it," Noel said, in gloom.

"Never mind," Alice answered, "it'll come back to you in the silent
watches of the night; you see if it doesn't. But really, Noel's right,
it _ought_ to have a name."

"Free Drinks Company."

"Thirsty Travellers' Rest."

"The Travellers' Joy."

These names were suggested, but not cared for extra.

Then some one said--I think it was Oswald:

"Why not 'The House Beautiful'?"

"It can't be a house, it must be in the road. It'll only be a stall."

"The 'Stall Beautiful' is simply silly," Oswald said.

"The 'Bar Beautiful' then," said Dicky, who knows what the "Rose and
Crown" bar is like inside, which of course is hidden from girls.

"Oh, wait a minute," cried the Dentist, snapping his fingers like he
always does when he is trying to remember things. "I thought of
something, on