ubs Secretary had sent to Albert's uncle--H.O. said they kept it for a
momentum of the day--and we altered the dates and names in blue chalk
and put in a piece about might we skate on the moat, and gave it to
Noel, who had already begun to make up his poetry about Agincourt, and
so had to be shaken before he would attend. And that evening, when
Father and our Indian uncle and Albert's uncle were seeing the others on
the way to Forest Hill, Noel's poetry and pencil were taken away from
him and he was shut up in Father's room with the Remington typewriter,
which we had never been forbidden to touch. And I don't think he hurt
it much, except quite at the beginning, when he jammed the "S" and the
"J" and the thing that means per cent. so that they stuck--and Dicky
soon put that right with a screwdriver.

He did not get on very well, but kept on writing MOR7E HOAS5 or MORD6M
HOVCE on new pieces of paper and then beginning again, till the floor
was strewn with his remains; so we left him at it, and went and played
Celebrated Painters--a game even Dora cannot say anything about on
Sunday, considering the Bible kind of pictures most of them painted. And
much later, the library door having banged once and the front door
twice, Noel came in and said he had posted it, and already he was deep
in poetry again, and had to be roused when requisite for bed.

It was not till next day that he owned that the typewriter had been a
fiend in disguise, and that the letter had come out so odd that he could
hardly read it himself.

"The hateful engine of destruction wouldn't answer to the bit in the
least," he said, "and I'd used nearly a wastepaper basket of Father's
best paper, and I thought he might come in and say something, so I just
finished it as well as I could, and I corrected it with the blue
chalk--because you'd bagged that B.B. of mine--and I didn't notice what
name I'd signed till after I'd licked the stamp."

The hearts of his kind brothers and sisters sank low. But they kept
them up as well as they could, and said--

[Illustration: IT WAS NOT TILL NEXT DAY THAT HE OWNED THAT THE
TYPEWRITER HAD BEEN A FIEND IN DISGUISE.]

"What name _did_ you sign?"

And Noel said, "Why, Edward Turnbull, of course--like at the end of the
real letter. You never crossed it out like you did his address."

"No," said Oswald witheringly. "You see, I did think, whatever else you
didn't know, I did think you knew your own silly name."

Then Ali