yard.

Noël was an imprisoned troubadour dressed in bright antimacassars, and he fired off quite a lot of poetry at us before we could get the door open, which was most unfair.[Pg 106]

[Pg 106]

H. O. was a clown. He had no fancy dress except flour and two Turkish towels pinned on to look like trousers, but he put the flour all over himself, and it took the rest of the day to clean him.

It was when Alice was drying the hair-brushes that she had washed after brushing the flour out of Noël's hair in the back-garden that Oswald said:

'I know what that room was made for.'

And everyone said, 'What?' which is not manners, but your brothers and sisters do not mind because it saves time.

'Why, coiners,' said Oswald. 'Don't you see? They kept a sentinel at the door, that is a door, and if anyone approached he whispered "Cave."'

'But why have iron bars?'

'In extra safety,' said Oswald; 'and if their nefarious fires were not burning he need not say "Cave" at all. It's no use saying anything for nothing.'

It is curious, but the others did not seem to see this clear distinguishedness. All people have not the same fine brains.

But all the same the idea rankled in their hearts, and one day father came and took Dicky[Pg 107] up to London about that tooth of his, and when Dicky came back he said:

[Pg 107]

'Look here, talking of coiners, there was a man in St. Swithin's Lane to-day selling little bottles of yellow stuff, and he rubbed some of it on a penny, and it turned the penny into a half-crown before your eyes—a new half-crown! It was a penny a bottle, so I bought three bottles.'

'I always thought the plant for coining was very expensive,' said Alice.

'Ah! they tell you that to keep you from doing it, because of its being a crime,' said Dicky. 'But now I've got this stuff we can begin to be coiners right away. I believe it isn't really a crime unless you try to buy things with the base coin.'

So that 

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