give
him a drop. Then the five of them went and sat on a gate a little way
off and kept laughing in a nasty way, and whenever a boy went by they
called out:

"I say, 'ere's a go," and as often as not the new boy would hang about
with them. It was disquieting, for though they had nearly all had
lemonade, we could see it had not made them friendly.

A great glorious glow of goodness gladdened (those go all together and
are called alliteration) our hearts when we saw our own tramp coming
down the road. The dogs did not growl at him as they had at the boys or
the beer-man. (I did not say before that we had the dogs with us, but of
course we had, because we had promised never to go out without them.)

Oswald said, "Hullo," and the tramp said, "Hullo."

Then Alice said, "You see we've taken your advice; we're giving free
drinks. Doesn't it all look nice?"

"It does that," said the tramp. "I don't mind if I do."

So we gave him two glasses of lemonade succeedingly, and thanked him for
giving us the idea. He said we were very welcome, and if we'd no
objection he'd sit down a bit and put on a pipe. He did, and after
talking a little more he fell asleep. Drinking anything seemed to end
in sleep with him. I always thought it was only beer and things made
people sleepy, but he was not so. When he was asleep he rolled into the
ditch, but it did not wake him up.

The boys were getting very noisy, and they began to shout things, and to
make silly noises with their mouths, and when Oswald and Dicky went over
to them and told them to just chuck it, they were worse than ever. I
think perhaps Oswald and Dicky might have fought and settled
them--though there were eleven, yet back to back you can always do it
against overwhelming numbers in a book--only Alice called out:

"Oswald, here's some more, come back!"

We went. Three big men were coming down the road, very red and hot, and
not amiable-looking. They stopped in front of the Benevolent Bar and
slowly read the wadding and red-stuff label.

Then one of them said he was blessed, or something like that, and
another said he was too. The third one said, "Blessed or not, a drink's
a drink. Blue ribbon though by ----" (a word you ought not to say,
though it is in the Bible and the catechism as well). "Let's have a
liquor, little missy."

The dogs were growling, but Oswald thought it best not to take any
notice of what the dogs said, but to give these men each a drink. So he
did