The Story of the Treasure Seekers | Page 4

to be
mended, and we gave UP having the gardener except for the front
garden, and not that very often. And the silver in the big oak plate-chest
that is lined with green baize all went away to the shop to have the
dents and scratches taken out of it, and it never came back. We think
Father hadn't enough money to pay the silver man for taking out the
dents and scratches. The new spoons and forks were yellowy-white,
and not so heavy as the old ones, and they never shone after the first
day or two.
Father was very ill after Mother died; and while he was ill his
business-partner went to Spain--and there was never much money
afterwards. I don't know why. Then the servants left and there was only
one, a General. A great deal of your comfort and happiness depends on
having a good General. The last but one was nice: she used to make
jolly good currant puddings for us, and let us have the dish on the floor
and pretend it was a wild boar we were killing with our forks. But the
General we have now nearly always makes sago puddings, and they are
the watery kind, and you cannot pretend anything with them, not even
islands, like you do with porridge.
Then we left off going to school, and Father said we should go to a
good school as soon as he could manage it. He said a holiday would do

us all good. We thought he was right, but we wished he had told us he
couldn't afford it. For of course we knew.
Then a great many people used to come to the door with envelopes
with no stamps on them, and sometimes they got very angry, and said
they were calling for the last time before putting it in other hands. I
asked Eliza what that meant, and she kindly explained to me, and I was
so sorry for Father.
And once a long, blue paper came; a policeman brought it, and we were
so frightened. But Father said it was all right, only when he went up to
kiss the girls after they were in bed they said he had been crying,
though I'm sure that's not true. Because only cowards and snivellers cry,
and my Father is the bravest man in the world.
So you see it was time we looked for treasure and Oswald said so, and
Dora said it was all very well. But the others agreed with Oswald. So
we held a council. Dora was in the chair--the big dining-room chair,
that we let the fireworks off from, the Fifth of November when we had
the measles and couldn't do it in the garden. The hole has never been
mended, so now we have that chair in the nursery, and I think it was
cheap at the blowing-up we boys got when the hole was burnt.
'We must do something,' said Alice, 'because the exchequer is empty.'
She rattled the money-box as she spoke, and it really did rattle because
we always keep the bad sixpence in it for luck.
'Yes--but what shall we do?' said Dicky. 'It's so jolly easy to say let's do
SOMETHING.' Dicky always wants everything settled exactly. Father
calls him the Definite Article.
'Let's read all the books again. We shall get lots of ideas out of them.' It
was Noel who suggested this, but we made him shut up, because we
knew well enough he only wanted to get back to his old books. Noel is
a poet. He sold some of his poetry once--and it was printed, but that
does not come in this part of the story.
Then Dicky said, 'Look here. We'll be quite quiet for ten minutes by the

clock--and each think of some way to find treasure. And when we've
thought we'll try all the ways one after the other, beginning with the
eldest.'
'I shan't be able to think in ten minutes, make it half an hour,' said H. O.
His real name is Horace Octavius, but we call him H. O. because of the
advertisement, and it's not so very long ago he was afraid to pass the
hoarding where it says 'Eat H. O.' in big letters. He says it was when he
was a little boy, but I remember last Christmas but one, he woke in the
middle of the night crying and howling, and they said it was the
pudding. But he told me afterwards he had been dreaming that they
really HAD come to eat H. O., and it couldn't have been the pudding,
when you come to think of it, because it was so very plain.
Well, we made it half an hour--and we all sat quiet,