ood at once boil and freeze,
which our uncle had told us was possible, but only in India), perhaps he
thought that Maidstone was already as good as taken and it didn't
matter what he said. While Oswald was debating within his intellect what
to say next, and how to say it so as to discover as many as possible of
the enemy's dark secrets, Noel said:

"How did you get here? You weren't here yesterday at tea-time."

The soldier gave the pot another sandy rub, and said:

"I dare say it does seem quick work--the camp seems as if it had sprung
up in the night, doesn't it?--like a mushroom."

Alice and Oswald looked at each other, and then at the rest of us. The
words "_sprung up in the night_" seemed to touch a string in every
heart.

"You see," whispered Noel, "he won't tell us how he came here. _Now_, is
it humbug or history?"

Oswald, after whisperedly requesting his young brother to dry up and not
bother, remarked:

"Then you're an invading army?"

"Well," said the soldier, "we're a skeleton battalion, as a matter of
fact, but we're invading all right enough."

And now indeed the blood of the stupidest of us froze, just as the
quick-witted Oswald's had done earlier in the interview. Even H. O.
opened his mouth and went the color of mottled soap; he is so fat that
this is the nearest he can go to turning pale.

Denny said, "But you don't look like skeletons."

The soldier stared, then he laughed and said: "Ah, that's the padding
in our tunics. You should see us in the gray dawn taking our morning
bath in a bucket."

It was a dreadful picture for the imagination. A skeleton, with its
bones all loose most likely, bathing anyhow in a pail. There was a
silence while we thought it over.

Now, ever since the cleaning-cauldron soldier had said that about taking
Maidstone, Alice had kept on pulling at Oswald's jacket behind, and he
had kept on not taking any notice. But now he could not stand it any
longer, so he said, "Well, what is it?"

Alice drew him aside, or rather, she pulled at his jacket so that he
nearly fell over backwards, and then she whispered, "Come along, don't
stay parleying with the foe. He's only talking to you to gain time."

"What for?" said Oswald.

"Why, so that we shouldn't warn the other army, you silly," Alice said,
and Oswald was so upset by what she said that he forgot to be properly
angry with her for the wrong word she used.

"But we ought to warn them at home," she said; "suppose