GOOD HUNTING
When we had got that four shillings by digging for treasure we ought, by rights, to have tried Dicky's idea of answering the advertisement about ladies and gentlemen and spare time and two pounds a week, but there were several things we rather wanted.
Dora wanted a new pair of scissors, and she said she was going to get them with her eight-pence. But Alice said -'You ought to get her those, Oswald, because you know you broke the points off hers getting the marble out of the brass thimble.'
It was quite true, though I had almost forgotten it, but then it was H. O. who jammed the marble into the thimble first of all. So I said -'It's H. O.'s fault as much as mine, anyhow. Why shouldn't he pay?'
Oswald didn't so much mind paying for the beastly scissors, but he hates injustice of every kind.
'He's such a little kid,' said Dicky, and of course H. O. said he wasn't a little kid, and it very nearly came to being a row between them. But Oswald knows when to be generous; so he said -'Look here! I'll pay sixpence of the scissors, and H. O. shall pay the rest, to teach him to be careful.'
H. O. agreed: he is not at all a mean kid, but I found out afterwards that Alice paid his share out of her own money.
Then we wanted some new paints, and NoEl wanted a pencil and a halfpenny account-book to write poetry with, and it does seem hard never to have any apples. So, somehow or other nearly all the money got spent, and we agreed that we must let the advertisement run loose a little longer.
'I only hope,' Alice said, 'that they won't have got all the ladies and gentlemen they want before we have got the money to write for the sample and instructions.'
And I was a little afraid myself, because it seemed such a splendid chance; but we looked in the paper every day, and the advertisement was always there, so we thought it was all right.
Then we had the detective try-on - and it proved no go; and then, when all the money was gone, except a halfpenny of mine and twopence of Noel's and three-pence of Dicky's and a few pennies that the girls had left, we held another council.