"He wouldn't answer that one any more than he did the other," said Noël. "Why should he? He knows you can't do anything to him for not."
"Why shouldn't we go and ask him?" H.O. said. "He couldn't not answer us if we was all there, staring him in the face."
"I don't suppose he'd see you," said Dora; "and it's 'were,' not 'was.'"
"The other editor did when I got the guinea for my beautiful poems," Noël reminded us.
"Yes," said the thoughtful Oswald; "but then it doesn't matter how young you are when you're just a poetry-seller. But we're the discerning public now, and he'd think we ought to be grown up. I say, Dora, suppose you rigged yourself up in old Blakie's things. You'd look quite twenty or thirty."
Dora looked frightened, and said she thought we'd better not.
But Alice said, "Well, I will, then. I don't care. I'm as tall as Dora. But I won't go alone. Oswald, you'll have to dress up old and come too. It's not much to do for Albert's uncle's sake."
"You know you'll enjoy it," said Dora, and she may have wished that she did not so often think that we had better not. However, the dye was now cast, and the remainder of this adventure was doomed to be coloured by the dye we now prepared. (This is an allegory. It means we had burned our boats. And that is another.)
We decided to do the deed next day, and during the evening Dicky and Oswald went out and bought a grey beard and moustache, which was the only thing we could think of to disguise the manly and youthful form of the bold Oswald into the mature shape of a grown-up and discerning public character.
Meanwhile, the girls made tiptoe and brigand-like excursions into Miss Blake's room (she is the housekeeper) and got several things. Among others, a sort of undecided thing like part of a wig, which Miss Blake wears on Sundays. Jane, our housemaid, says it is called a "transformation," and that duchesses wear them.