We don’t mind Albert’s uncle chipping in sometimes when the thing’s going on, but we are glad he never asked us to promise to consult him about anything. Yet Oswald saw that my Father was quite right; and I daresay if we had had that hundred pounds we should have spent it on the share in that lucrative business for the sale of useful patent, and then found out afterwards that we should have done better to spend the money in some other way. My Father says so, and he ought to know. We had several ideas about that time, but having so little chink always stood in the way.
This was the case with H. O.‘s idea of setting up a coconut-shy on this side of the Heath, where there are none generally. We had no sticks or wooden balls, and the greengrocer said he could not book so many as twelve dozen coconuts without Mr Bastable’s written order. And as we did not wish to consult my Father it was decided to drop it. And when Alice dressed up Pincher in some of the dolls’ clothes and we made up our minds to take him round with an organ as soon as we had taught him to dance, we were stopped at once by Dicky’s remembering how he had once heard that an organ cost seven hundred pounds. Of course this was the big church kind, but even the ones on three legs can’t be got for one-and-sevenpence, which was all we had when we first thought of it. So we gave that up too.
It was a wet day, I remember, and mutton hash for dinner—very tough with pale gravy with lumps in it. I think the others would have left a good deal on the sides of their plates, although they know better, only Oswald said it was a savoury stew made of the red deer that Edward shot. So then we were the Children of the New Forest, and the mutton tasted much better. No one in the New Forest minds venison being tough and the gravy pale.
Then after dinner we let the girls have a dolls’ tea-party, on condition they didn’t expect us boys to wash up; and it was when we were drinking the last of the liquorice water out of the little cups that Dicky said—
‘This reminds me.’
So we said, ‘What of?’
Dicky answered us at once, though his mouth was full of bread with liquorice stuck in it to look like cake. You should not speak with your mouth full, even to your own relations, and you shouldn’t wipe your mouth on the back of your hand, but on your handkerchief, if you have one. Dicky did not do this. He said—
‘Why, you remember when we first began about treasure-seeking, I said I had thought of something, only I could not tell you because I hadn’t finished thinking about it.’
We said ‘Yes.’
‘Well, this liquorice water—’