od customers of, because when our watches stop we take them there, and
he lent us a lot of empty frames on the instinctive understanding that
we would pay for them if we broke them or let them get rusty.

And so all was ready. And the fatal day approached; and it was the
holidays. For us, that is, but not for Father, for his business never
seems to rest by day and night, except at Christmas and times like that.
So we did not need to ask him if we might go. Oswald thought it would be
more amusing for Father if we told it all to him in the form of an
entertaining anecdote, afterwards.

Denny and Daisy and Albert came to spend the day.

We told Mrs. Blake Mr. Red House had asked us, and she let the girls put
on their second-best things, which are coats with capes and red
Tam-o'shanters. These capacious coats are very good for playing
highwaymen in.

We made ourselves quite clean and tidy. At the very last we found that
H.O. had been making marks on his face with burnt matches, to imitate
wrinkles, but really it only imitated dirt, so we made him wash it off.
Then he wanted to paint himself red like a clown, but we had decided
that the spectacles were to be our only disguise, and even those were
not to be assumed till Oswald gave the word.

[Illustration: THE STATIONMASTER AND PORTER LOOKED RESPECTFULLY AT US.]

No casuist observer could have thought that the nine apparently
light-headed and careless party who now wended their way to Blackheath
Station, looking as if they were not up to anything in particular, were
really an Antiquarian Society of the deepest dye. We got an empty
carriage to ourselves, and halfway between Blackheath and the other
station Oswald gave the word, and we all put on the spectacles. We had
our antiquarian papers of lore and researched history in exercise-books,
rolled up and tied with string.

The stationmaster and porter, of each of which the station boasted but
one specimen, looked respectfully at us as we got out of the train, and
we went straight out of the station, under the railway arch, and down to
the green gate of the Red House. It has a lodge, but there is no one in
it. We peeped in at the window, and there was nothing in the room but an
old beehive and a broken leather strap.

We waited in the front for a bit, so that Mr. Red House could come out
and welcome us like Albert's uncle did the other antiquaries, but no one
came, so we went round the garden. It was very brown and wet,