‘But you can’t,’ said Dora; ‘he is too clever, and besides, it’s wrong anyway.’
‘Yes you can, and it isn’t; and murdering him with boiling oil is a right act, too, so there!’ said Noel. ‘What about Ali Baba? Now then!’ And we felt it was a score for Noel.
‘What would you do if there was a robber?’ said Alice.
H. O. said he would kill him with boiling oil; but Alice explained that she meant a real robber—now—this minute—in the house.
Oswald and Dicky did not say; but Noel said he thought it would only be fair to ask the robber quite politely and quietly to go away, and then if he didn’t you could deal with him.
Now what I am going to tell you is a very strange and wonderful thing, and I hope you will be able to believe it. I should not, if a boy told me, unless I knew him to be a man of honour, and perhaps not then unless he gave his sacred word. But it is true, all the same, and it only shows that the days of romance and daring deeds are not yet at an end.
Alice was just asking Noel how he would deal with the robber who wouldn’t go if he was asked politely and quietly, when we heard a noise downstairs—quite a plain noise, not the kind of noise you fancy you hear. It was like somebody moving a chair. We held our breath and listened and then came another noise, like some one poking a fire. Now, you remember there was no one to poke a fire or move a chair downstairs, because Eliza and Father were both out. They could not have come in without our hearing them, because the front door is as hard to shut as the back one, and whichever you go in by you have to give a slam that you can hear all down the street.
H. O. and Alice and Dora caught hold of each other’s blankets and looked at Dicky and Oswald, and every one was quite pale. And Noel whispered—
‘It’s ghosts, I know it is’—and then we listened again, but there was no more noise. Presently Dora said in a whisper—
‘Whatever shall we do? Oh, whatever shall we do—what shall we do?’ And she kept on saying it till we had to tell her to shut up.