to talk about whether people were
handsome or not; and he made as much fuss about his ties as though he
had been a girl. So when he was gone Alice said--

"Hist! The golden moment. Let's be robbers in the loft, and when he
comes back he won't know where we are."

"He'll hear us," said Noel, biting his pencil.

"No, he won't. We'll be the Whispering Band of Weird Bandits. Come on,
Noel; you can finish the poetry up here."

"It's about _him_," said Noel gloomily, "when he's gone back to----"
(Oswald will not give the name of Archibald's school for the sake of the
other boys there, as they might not like everybody who reads this to
know about there being a chap like him in their midst.) "I shall do it
up in an envelope and put a stamp on it and post it to him, and----"

"Haste!" cried Alice. "Bard of the Bandits, haste while yet there's
time."

So we tore upstairs and put on our slippers and socks over them, and we
got the high-backed chair out of the girls' bedroom, and the others held
it steady while Oswald agilitively mounted upon its high back and opened
the trap-door and got up into the place between the roof and the
ceiling (the boys in "Stalky & Co." found this out by accident, and they
were surprised and pleased, but we have known all about it ever since we
can remember).

Then the others put the chair back, and Oswald let down the rope ladder
that we made out of bamboo and clothes-line after uncle told us the
story of the missionary lady who was shut up in a rajah's palace, and
some one shot an arrow to her with a string tied to it, and it might
have killed her I should have thought, but it didn't, and she hauled in
the string and there was a rope and a bamboo ladder, and so she escaped,
and we made one like it on purpose for the loft. No one had ever told us
not to make ladders.

The others came up by the rope-ladder (it was partly bamboo, but
rope-ladder does for short) and we shut the trap-door down. It is jolly
up there. There are two big cisterns, and one little window in a gable
that gives you just enough light. The floor is plaster with wooden
things going across, beams and joists they are called. There are some
planks laid on top of these here and there. Of course if you walk on the
plaster you will go through with your foot into the room below.

We had a very jolly game, in whispers, and Noel sat by the little
window, and was quite happy, being the bandit bard. The cisterns are
rocks you hide b