cake because he was hungry. How do you know what you'd do if you were hungry enough?'

'I shouldn't steal,' said Dora.

'I'm not so sure,' said Dicky; and they argued about it all the way home, and before we got in it began to rain in torrents.

Conversations about food always make you feel as though it was a very long time since you had had anything to eat. Mrs. Beale had gone home, of course, but we went into the larder. It is a generous larder. No lock, only a big wooden latch that pulls up with a string, like in Red Riding Hood. And the floor is clean damp red brick. It makes ginger-nuts soft if you put the bag on this floor. There was half a rhubarb pie, and there were meat turnovers with potato in them. Mrs. Beale is a thoughtful person, and I know many people much richer that are not nearly so thoughtful.

We had a comfortable feast at the kitchen table, standing up to eat, like horses.

Then we had to let Noël read us his piece of poetry about the soldier; he wouldn't have slept if[Pg 45] we hadn't. It was very long, and it began as I have said, and ended up:

[Pg 45]

 'Poor soldiers, learn a lesson from to-day, It is very wrong to run away; It is better to stay And serve your King and Country—hurray!' 

'Poor soldiers, learn a lesson from to-day,

It is very wrong to run away;

It is better to stay

And serve your King and Country—hurray!'

Noël owned that Hooray sounded too cheerful for the end of a poem about soldiers with faces like theirs were.

'But I didn't mean it about the soldiers. It was about the King and Country. Half a sec. I'll put that in.' So he wrote:

 'P.S.—I do not mean to be unkind, Poor soldiers, to you, so never mind. When I say hurray or sing, It is because I am thinking of my Country and my King.' 

'P.S.—I do not mean to be unkind,

Poor soldiers, to you, so never mind.

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