red, "In the midst of?"

"Yes," said Cyril impressively. "There is a larder window at the side of
the clergyman's house, and I saw things to eat inside--custard pudding
and cold chicken and tongue--and pies--and jam. It's rather a high
window--but with wings"--

"How clever of you!" said Jane.

"Not at all," said Cyril modestly; "any born general--Napoleon or the
Duke of Marlborough--would have seen it just the same as I did."

"It seems very wrong," said Anthea.

"Nonsense," said Cyril. "What was it Sir Philip Sidney said when the
soldier wouldn't give him a drink?--'My necessity is greater than his.'"

"We'll club together our money, though, and leave it to pay for the
things, won't we?" Anthea was persuasive, and very nearly in tears,
because it is most trying to feel enormously hungry and unspeakably
sinful at one and the same time.

"Some of it," was the cautious reply.

Everyone now turned out its pockets on the lead roof of the tower, where
visitors for the last hundred and fifty years had cut their own and
their sweethearts' initials with penknives in the soft lead. There was
five-and-seven-pence halfpenny altogether, and even the upright Anthea
admitted that that was too much to pay for four people's dinners. Robert
said he thought eighteenpence.

[Illustration: Every one now turned out his pockets]

And half-a-crown was finally agreed to be "handsome."

So Anthea wrote on the back of her last term's report, which happened to
be in her pocket, and from which she first tore her own name and that of
the school, the following letter:--

"DEAR REVEREND CLERGYMAN,--We are very hungry
indeed because of having to fly all day, and we
think it is not stealing when you are starving to
death. We are afraid to ask you for fear you
should say 'No,' because of course you know about
angels, but you would not think we were angels. We
will only take the necessities of life, and no
pudding or pie, to show you it is not grediness
but true starvation that makes us make your larder
stand and deliver. But we are not highwaymen by
trade."

"Cut it short," said the others with one accord. And Anthea hastily
added--

"Our intentions are quite honourable if you only
knew. And here is half-a-crown to show we are
sinseer and grateful.

"Thank you for your kind hospitalit