The Story of the Treasure Seekers | Page 3

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The Story of the Treasure Seekers
by E. Nesbit
Being the adventures of the Bastable children in search of a fortune

TO OSWALD BARRON Without whom this book could never have
been written
The Treasure Seekers is dedicated in memory of childhoods identical
but for the accidents of time and space
CONTENTS
1. The Council of Ways and Means 2. Digging for Treasure 3. Being
Detectives 4. Good Hunting 5. The Poet and the Editor 6. Noel's

Princess 7. Being Bandits 8. Being Editors 9. The G. B. 10. Lord
Tottenham 11. Castilian Amoroso 12. The Nobleness of Oswald 13.
The Robber and the Burglar 14. The Divining-rod 15. 'Lo, the Poor
Indian!' 16. The End of the Treasure-seeking
CHAPTER 1
THE COUNCIL OF WAYS AND MEANS
This is the story of the different ways we looked for treasure, and I
think when you have read it you will see that we were not lazy about
the looking.
There are some things I must tell before I begin to tell about the
treasure-seeking, because I have read books myself, and I know how
beastly it is when a story begins, "'Alas!" said Hildegarde with a deep
sigh, "we must look our last on this ancestral home"'--and then some
one else says something--and you don't know for pages and pages
where the home is, or who Hildegarde is, or anything about it. Our
ancestral home is in the Lewisham Road. It is semi-detached and has a
garden, not a large one. We are the Bastables. There are six of us
besides Father. Our Mother is dead, and if you think we don't care
because I don't tell you much about her you only show that you do not
understand people at all. Dora is the eldest. Then Oswald--and then
Dicky. Oswald won the Latin prize at his preparatory school--and
Dicky is good at sums. Alice and Noel are twins: they are ten, and
Horace Octavius is my youngest brother. It is one of us that tells this
story--but I shall not tell you which: only at the very end perhaps I will.
While the story is going on you may be trying to guess, only I bet you
don't. It was Oswald who first thought of looking for treasure. Oswald
often thinks of very interesting things. And directly he thought of it he
did not keep it to himself, as some boys would have done, but he told
the others, and said--
'I'll tell you what, we must go and seek for treasure: it is always what
you do to restore the fallen fortunes of your House.'
Dora said it was all very well. She often says that. She was trying to

mend a large hole in one of Noel's stockings. He tore it on a nail when
we were playing shipwrecked mariners on top of the chicken-house the
day H. O. fell off and cut his chin: he has the scar still. Dora is the only
one of us who ever tries to mend anything. Alice tries to make things
sometimes. Once she knitted a red scarf for Noel because his chest is
delicate, but it was much wider at one end than the other, and he
wouldn't wear it. So we used it as a pennon, and it did very well,
because most of our things are black or grey since Mother died; and
scarlet was a nice change. Father does not like you to ask for new
things. That was one way we had of knowing that the fortunes of the
ancient House of Bastable were really fallen. Another way was that
there was no more pocket-money--except a penny now and then to the
little ones, and people did not come to dinner any more, like they used
to, with pretty dresses, driving up in cabs--and the carpets got holes in
them--and when the legs came off things they were not sent