get some cobbler's wax in Falding
village for a bird-net he was making.

But just above Falding Lock, where the river is narrow and straight, we
saw a sad and gloomy sight--a big barge sitting flat on the mud because
there was not water enough to float her.

There was no one on board, but we knew by a red flannel waistcoat that
was spread out to dry on top that the barge belonged to friends of ours.

Then Alice said, 'They have gone to find the man who turns on the water
to fill the pen. I daresay they won't find him. He's gone to his dinner,
I shouldn't wonder. What a lovely surprise it would be if they came back
to find their barge floating high and dry on a lot of water! DO let's
do it. It's a long time since any of us did a kind action deserving of
being put in the Book of Golden Deeds.'

We had given that name to the minute-book of that beastly 'Society of
the Wouldbegoods'. Then you could think of the book if you wanted to
without remembering the Society. I always tried to forget both of them.

Oswald said, 'But how? YOU don't know how. And if you did we haven't got
a crowbar.'

I cannot help telling you that locks are opened with crowbars. You push
and push till a thing goes up and the water runs through. It is rather
like the little sliding door in the big door of a hen-house.

'I know where the crowbar is,' Alice said. 'Dicky and I were down here
yesterday when you were su--' She was going to say sulking, I know, but
she remembered manners ere too late so Oswald bears her no malice. She
went on: 'Yesterday, when you were upstairs. And we saw the water-tender
open the lock and the weir sluices. It's quite easy, isn't it, Dicky?'

'As easy as kiss your hand,' said Dicky; 'and what's more, I know where
he keeps the other thing he opens the sluices with. I votes we do.'

'Do let's, if we can,' Noel said, 'and the bargees will bless the names
of their unknown benefactors. They might make a song about us, and sing
it on winter nights as they pass round the wassail bowl in front of the
cabin fire.'

Noel wanted to very much; but I don't think it was altogether for
generousness, but because he wanted to see how the sluices opened. Yet
perhaps I do but wrong the boy.

We sat and looked at the barge a bit longer, and then Oswald said, well,
he didn't mind going back to the lock and having a look at the crowbars.
You see Oswald did not propose this; he did not even care very much
about it when Alice suggested