Dicky hammered the last nail into the Saracen watch-tower.[Pg 92]

[Pg 92]

'Not a real money one?' he said, dropping the hammer—which was a careless thing to do, and the author told him so at the time.

'No, not a money one, but it's real all the same. Let's have a council, and I'll tell you.'

It was then that Dicky showed that if he dropped hammers it was not because he could not bury hatchets. He said, 'Righto! There's room for us all up here. Catch hold, Noël. Oswald, give him a shove up. Alice and he can sit in the Saracens' watch-tower, and I'll keep hold of H. O. if you'll hand him up.'

Alice was full of the politest compliments about the architecture of the Saracens' watch-tower, and Noël said:

'I say, Dicky, I'm awfully sorry about your prize.'

'It's all right,' said Dicky; 'I rubbed it out with bread.'

Noël opened his mouth. He looks like a very young bird when he does this.

'Then my beautiful poem's turned into dirty bread-crumbs,' he said slowly.

'Never mind,' said Alice; 'I remember nearly every word of it: we'll write it out again after tea.'

'I thought you'd be so pleased,' Noël went on,[Pg 93] 'because it makes a book more valuable to have an author's writing in it. Albert's uncle told me so.'

[Pg 93]

'But it has to be the same author that wrote the book,' Alice explained, 'and it was Cæsar wrote that book. And you aren't Cæsar yet, you know.'

'Nor don't want to be,' said Noël.

Oswald now thought that politeness was satisfied on both sides, so he said:

'What price treasures?'

And then Alice told. But it had to be in whispers, because the next-door people, who always did things at times when not convenient to us, were now taking in their washing off the line. I heard them remark that it was a 'good drying day.'

'Well,' Alice mysteriously observed, 'it was like this. (Do you think the Saracens' watch-tower is really safe for two? It seems to go 

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