'm glad I thought of it!"

"I'm not," said Noel suddenly. "I wish you hadn't--I wish we hadn't. I
know just exactly what he feels like now. He feels as if he'd like to
_kill_ you for it, and I daresay he would if you hadn't been a craven,
white-feathered skulker and not signed your name."

It was a thunderbolt in our midst Noel behaving like this. It made
Oswald feel a sick inside feeling that perhaps Dora had been right. She
sometimes is--and Oswald hates this feeling.

Dicky was so surprised at the unheard-of cheek of his young brother that
for a moment he was speechless, and before he got over his
speechlessness Noel was crying and wouldn't have any more dinner. Alice
spoke in the eloquent language of the human eye and begged Dicky to look
over it this once. And he replied by means of the same useful organ that
he didn't care what a silly kid thought. So no more was said. When Noel
had done crying he began to write a piece of poetry and kept at it all
the afternoon. Oswald only saw just the beginning. It was called

"THE DISAPPOINTED PORTER'S FURY
_Supposed to be by the Porter himself_,"

and it began:--

"When first I opened the hamper fair
And saw the parcel inside there
My heart rejoiced like dry gardens when
It rains--but soon I changed and then
I seized my trusty knife and bowl
Of poison, and said 'Upon the whole
I will have the life of the man
Or woman who thought of this wicked plan
To deceive a trusting porter so.
No noble heart would have thought of it. No.'"

There were pages and pages of it. Of course it was all nonsense--the
poetry, I mean. And yet . . . . . . (I have seen that put in books when
the author does not want to let out all he thought at the time.)

That evening at tea-time Jane came and said--

"Master Dicky, there's an old aged man at the door inquiring if you live
here."

So Dicky thought it was the bootmaker perhaps; so he went out, and
Oswald went with him, because he wanted to ask for a bit of cobbler's
wax.

But it was not the shoemaker. It was an old man, pale in the face and
white in the hair, and he was so old that we asked him into Father's
study by the fire, as soon as we had found out it was really Dicky he
wanted to see.

When we got him there he said--

"Might I trouble you to shut the door?"

This is the way a burglar or