ad the reviews of books
in the old _Spectators_ and _Athenaeums_, and put in the words they say
there about other people's books. We said we thought that chapter about
Geraldine and the garters was "subtle" and "masterly" and
"inevitable"--that it had an "old-world charm," and was "redolent of the
soil." We said, too, that we had "read it with breathless interest from
cover to cover," and that it had "poignant pathos and a convincing
realism," and the "fine flower of delicate sentiment," besides much
other rot that the author can't remember.

When all the letters were done we addressed them and stamped them and
licked them down, and then we got different people to post them. Our
under-gardener, who lives in Greenwich, and the other under-gardener,
who lives in Lewisham, and the servants on their evenings out, which
they spend in distant spots like Plaistow and Grove Park--each had a
letter to post. The piano-tuner was a great catch--he lived in Highgate;
and the electric-bell man was Lambeth. So we got rid of all the letters,
and watched the post for a reply. We watched for a week, but no answer
came.

You think, perhaps, that we were duffers to watch for a reply when we
had signed all the letters with fancy names like Daisy Dolman, Everard
St. Maur, and Sir Cholmondely Marjoribanks, and put fancy addresses on
them, like Chatsworth House, Loampit Vale, and The Bungalow, Eaton
Square. But we were not such idiots as you think, dear reader, and you
are not so extra clever as you think, either. We had written _one_
letter (it had the grandest _Spectator_ words in it) on our own
letter-paper, with the address on the top and the uncle's coat-of-arms
outside the envelope. Oswald's real own name was signed to this letter,
and this was the one we looked for the answer to. See?

But that answer did not come. And when three long days had passed away
we all felt most awfully stale about it. Knowing the great good we had
done for Albert's uncle made our interior feelings very little better,
if at all.

And on the fourth day Oswald spoke up and said what was in everybody's
inside heart. He said--

"This is futile rot. I vote we write and ask that editor why he doesn't
answer letters."

"He wouldn't answer that one any more than he did the other," said Noel.
"Why should he? He knows you can't do anything to him for not."

"Why shouldn't we go and ask him?" H.O. said. "He couldn't not answer us
if we was all there, staring him