anks to the lady.

He said--

"We all thank you heartily for your goodness. The entertainment was
beautiful. We shall never forget your kindness and hospitableness."

The lady laughed, and said she had been very pleased to have us. A fat
gentleman said--

"And your teas? I hope you enjoyed those--eh?"

Oswald had not had time to make up an answer to that, so he answered
straight from the heart, and said--

"Ra--_ther_!"

And every one laughed and slapped us boys on the back and kissed the
girls, and the gentleman who played the bones in the nigger minstrels
saw us home. We ate the cold pudding that night, and H.O. dreamed that
something came to eat him, like it advises you to in the advertisements
on the hoardings. The grown-ups said it was the pudding, but I don't
think it could have been that, because, as I have said more than once,
it was so very plain.

Some of H.O.'s brothers and sisters thought it was a judgment on him for
pretending about who the poor children were he was collecting the money
for. Oswald does not believe such a little boy as H.O. would have a real
judgment made just for him and nobody else, whatever he did.

But it certainly is odd. H.O. was the only one who had bad dreams, and
he was also the only one who got any of the things we bought with that
ill-gotten money, because, you remember, he picked a hole in the
raisin-paper as he was bringing the parcel home. The rest of us had
nothing, unless you count the scrapings of the pudding-basin, and those
don't really count at all.

_ARCHIBALD THE UNPLEASANT_

THE house of Bastable was once in poor, but honest, circs. That was when
it lived in a semi-detached house in the Lewisham Road, and looked for
treasure. There were six scions of the house who looked for it--in fact
there were seven, if you count Father. I am sure he looked right enough,
but he did not do it the right way. And we did. And so we found a
treasure of a great-uncle, and we and Father went to live with him in a
very affluent mansion on Blackheath--with gardens and vineries and
pineries and everything jolly you can think of. And then, when we were
no longer so beastly short of pocket-money, we tried to be good, and
sometimes it came out right, and sometimes it didn't. Something like
sums.

And then it was the Christmas holidays--and we had a bazaar and raffled
the most beautiful goat you ever saw, and we gave the money to the poor
and needy.

And then we felt i