The Story of the Treasure Seekers | Page 5

and thought and
thought. And I made up my mind before two minutes were over, and I
saw the others had, all but Dora, who is always an awful time over
everything. I got pins and needles in my leg from sitting still so long,
and when it was seven minutes H. O. cried out--'Oh, it must be more
than half an hour!'
H. O. is eight years old, but he cannot tell the clock yet. Oswald could
tell the clock when he was six.
We all stretched ourselves and began to speak at once, but Dora put up
her hands to her ears and said--
'One at a time, please. We aren't playing Babel.' (It is a very good game.
Did you ever play it?)
So Dora made us all sit in a row on the floor, in ages, and then she
pointed at us with the finger that had the brass thimble on. Her silver
one got lost when the last General but two went away. We think she
must have forgotten it was Dora's and put it in her box by mistake. She
was a very forgetful girl. She used to forget what she had spent money
on, so that the change was never quite right.
Oswald spoke first. 'I think we might stop people on Blackheath--with

crape masks and horse-pistols--and say "Your money or your life!
Resistance is useless, we are armed to the teeth"--like Dick Turpin and
Claude Duval. It wouldn't matter about not having horses, because
coaches have gone out too.'
Dora screwed up her nose the way she always does when she is going
to talk like the good elder sister in books, and said, 'That would be very
wrong: it's like pickpocketing or taking pennies out of Father's
great-coat when it's hanging in the hall.'
I must say I don't think she need have said that, especially before the
little ones--for it was when I was only four.
But Oswald was not going to let her see he cared, so he said--
'Oh, very well. I can think of lots of other ways. We could rescue an old
gentleman from deadly Highwaymen.'
'There aren't any,' said Dora.
'Oh, well, it's all the same--from deadly peril, then. There's plenty of
that. Then he would turn out to be the Prince of Wales, and he would
say, "My noble, my cherished preserver! Here is a million pounds a
year. Rise up, Sir Oswald Bastable."'
But the others did not seem to think so, and it was Alice's turn to say.
She said, 'I think we might try the divining-rod. I'm sure I could do it.
I've often read about it. You hold a stick in your hands, and when you
come to where there is gold underneath the stick kicks about. So you
know. And you dig.'
'Oh,' said Dora suddenly, 'I have an idea. But I'll say last. I hope the
divining-rod isn't wrong. I believe it's wrong in the Bible.'
'So is eating pork and ducks,' said Dicky. 'You can't go by that.'
'Anyhow, we'll try the other ways first,' said Dora. 'Now, H. O.'

'Let's be Bandits,' said H. O. 'I dare say it's wrong but it would be fun
pretending.'
'I'm sure it's wrong,' said Dora.
And Dicky said she thought everything wrong. She said she didn't, and
Dicky was very disagreeable. So Oswald had to make peace, and he
said--
'Dora needn't play if she doesn't want to. Nobody asked her. And,
Dicky, don't be an idiot: do dry up and let's hear what Noel's idea is.'
Dora and Dicky did not look pleased, but I kicked Noel under the table
to make him hurry up, and then he said he didn't think he wanted to
play any more. That's the worst of it. The others are so jolly ready to
quarrel. I told Noel to be a man and not a snivelling pig, and at last he
said he had not made up his mind whether he would print his poetry in
a book and sell it, or find a princess and marry her.
'Whichever it is,' he added, 'none of you shall want for anything, though
Oswald did kick me, and say I was a snivelling pig.'
'I didn't,' said Oswald, 'I told you not to be.' And Alice explained to him
that that was quite the opposite of what he thought. So he agreed to
drop it.
Then Dicky spoke.
'You must all of you have noticed the advertisements in the papers,
telling you that ladies and gentlemen can easily earn two pounds a
week in their spare time, and to send two shillings for sample and
instructions, carefully packed free from observation. Now that we don't
go to school all our time is spare time. So I