e--she'd better let it alone and be a
free and happy bounder.

But all this is not what I was going to say, only the author does think
of so many things besides the story, and sometimes he puts them in. This
is the case with Thackeray and the Religious Tract Society and other
authors, as well as Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Only I don't suppose you have
ever heard of her, though she writes books that some people like very
much. But perhaps they are her friends. I did not like the one I read
about the Baronet. It was on a wet Sunday at the seaside, and nothing
else in the house but Bradshaw and "Elsie; or like a----" or I shouldn't
have. But what really happened to us before Christmas is strictly the
following narrative.

"I say," remarked Denny, when he had burned his fingers with a chestnut
that turned out a bad one after all--and such is life--and he had
finished sucking his fingers and getting rid of the chestnut, "about
these antiquaries?"

"Well, what about them?" said Oswald. He always tries to be gentle and
kind to Denny, because he knows he helped to make a man of the young
Mouse.

"I shouldn't think," said Denny, "that it was so very difficult to be
one."

"I don't know," said Dicky. "You have to read very dull books and an
awful lot of them, and remember what you read, what's more."

"I don't think so," said Alice. "That girl who came with the
antiquities--the one Albert's uncle said was upholstered in red plush
like furniture--_she_ hadn't read anything, you bet."

Dora said, "You ought not to bet, especially on Sunday," and Alice
altered it to "You may be sure."

"Well, but what then?" Oswald asked Denny. "Out with it," for he saw
that his youthful friend had got an idea and couldn't get it out. You
should always listen patiently to the ideas of others, no matter how
silly you expect them to be.

"I do wish you wouldn't hurry me so," said Denny, snapping his fingers
anxiously. And we tried to be patient.

"Why shouldn't we _be_ them?" Denny said at last.

"He means antiquaries," said Oswald to the bewildered others. "But
there's nowhere to go and nothing to do when we get there."

The Dentist (so-called for short, his real name being Denis) got red and
white, and drew Oswald aside to the window for a secret discussion.
Oswald listened as carefully as he could, but Denny always buzzes so
when he whispers.

"Right oh," he remarked, when the confidings of the Dentist had got so
that you could understan