"I SAY, BEALIE DEAR, YOU'VE GOT A BOOK UP AT YOUR PLACE."
Oswald in his macker splashed through the mud to Mrs. Beale's, found the key under the loose tile behind the water-butt, and got the book without adventure. He had promised not to touch anything else, so he could not make even the gentlest booby-trap as a little surprise for Mrs. Beale when she got back.
And most of that day we were telling our fortunes by the ingenious means invented by the great Emperor, or by cards, which it is hard to remember the rules for, or by our dreams. The only blights were that the others all wanted to have the book all the time, and that Noël's dreams were so long and mixed that we got tired of hearing about them before he did. But he said he was quite sure he had dreamed every single bit of every one of them. And the author hopes this was the truth.
We all went to bed hoping we should dream something that we could look up in the dream book, but none of us did.
And in the morning it was still raining and Alice said—
"Look here, if it ever clears up again let's dress up and be gipsies. We can go about in the distant villages telling people's fortunes. If you'll let me have the book all to-day I can learn up quite enough to tell them mysteriously and darkly. And gipsies always get their hands crossed with silver."
Dicky said that was one way of keeping the book to herself, but Oswald said—
"Let her try. She shall have it for an hour, and then we'll have an exam. to see how much she knows."
This was done, but while she was swatting the thing up with her fingers in her ears we began to talk about how gipsies should be dressed.