ce and got it?"

"There's no one at home," said Mrs. Beale; "wait a bit till I go along
to the bakus with the meat, and I'll fetch it along."

"You might let me go," said Oswald, whose high spirit is always
ill-attuned to waiting a bit. "I wouldn't touch anything else, and I
know where you keep the key."

"There's precious little as ye don't know, it seems to me," said Mrs.
Beale. "There, run along do. It's on top of the mantelshelf alongside
the picture tea-tin. It's a red book. Don't go taking the 'Wesleyan
Conference Reports' by mistake, the two is both together on the mantel."

[Illustration: "I SAY, BEALIE DEAR, YOU'VE GOT A BOOK UP AT YOUR
PLACE."]

Oswald in his macker splashed through the mud to Mrs. Beale's, found the
key under the loose tile behind the water-butt, and got the book without
adventure. He had promised not to touch anything else, so he could not
make even the gentlest booby-trap as a little surprise for Mrs. Beale
when she got back.

And most of that day we were telling our fortunes by the ingenious means
invented by the great Emperor, or by cards, which it is hard to remember
the rules for, or by our dreams. The only blights were that the others
all wanted to have the book all the time, and that Noel's dreams were so
long and mixed that we got tired of hearing about them before he did.
But he said he was quite sure he had dreamed every single bit of every
one of them. And the author hopes this was the truth.

We all went to bed hoping we should dream something that we could look
up in the dream book, but none of us did.

And in the morning it was still raining and Alice said--

"Look here, if it ever clears up again let's dress up and be gipsies. We
can go about in the distant villages telling people's fortunes. If
you'll let me have the book all to-day I can learn up quite enough to
tell them mysteriously and darkly. And gipsies always get their hands
crossed with silver."

Dicky said that was one way of keeping the book to herself, but Oswald
said--

"Let her try. She shall have it for an hour, and then we'll have an
exam. to see how much she knows."

This was done, but while she was swatting the thing up with her fingers
in her ears we began to talk about how gipsies should be dressed.

And when we all went out of the room to see if we could find anything in
that tidy house to dress up in, she came after us to see what was up. So
there was no exam.

We peeped into the cupboar