oys got out books
and began to read, so that nobody should think we cared. But we felt it
deeply in our interior hearts, especially Oswald, who is the eldest and
the representative of the family.

We felt it all the more because we had not really meant to do anything
wrong. We only thought perhaps the grown-ups would not be quite pleased
if they knew, and that is quite different. Besides, we meant to put all
the things back in their proper places when we had done with them before
any one found out about it. But I must not anticipate (that means
telling the end of a story before the beginning. I tell you this because
it is so sickening to have words you don't know in a story, and to be
told to look it up in the dicker).

We are the Bastables--Oswald, Dora, Dicky, Alice, Noel, and H. O. If you
want to know why we call our youngest brother H. O. you can jolly well
read _The Treasure Seekers_ and find out. We were the Treasure Seekers,
and we sought it high and low, and quite regularly, because we
particularly wanted to find it. And at last we did not find it, but we
were found by a good, kind Indian uncle, who helped father with his
business, so that father was able to take us all to live in a jolly big
red house on Blackheath, instead of in the Lewisham Road, where we lived
when we were only poor but honest Treasure Seekers. When we were poor
but honest we always used to think that if only father had plenty of
business, and we did not have to go short of pocket-money and wear
shabby clothes (I don't mind this myself, but the girls do), we should
be quite happy and very, very good.

And when we were taken to the beautiful big Blackheath house we thought
now all would be well, because it was a house with vineries and
pineries, and gas and water, and shrubberies and stabling, and replete
with every modern convenience, like it says in Dyer & Hilton's list of
Eligible House Property. I read all about it, and I have copied the
words quite right.

It is a beautiful house, all the furniture solid and strong, no casters
off the chairs, and the tables not scratched, and the silver not dented;
and lots of servants, and the most decent meals every day--and lots of
pocket-money.

But it is wonderful how soon you get used to things, even the things you
want most. Our watches, for instance. We wanted them frightfully; but
when I had had mine a week or two, after the mainspring got broken and
was repaired at Bennett's in the villag