u may
be ever ready and willing to do anything for nothing, yet if there's
going to be a prize there must BE a prize and there's an end of it.

Thus the idea was not followed up. Dicky yawned and said, 'Let's go into
the barn and make a fort.'

So we did, with straw. It does not hurt straw to be messed about with
like it does hay.

The downstairs--I mean down-ladder--part of the barn was fun too,
especially for Pincher. There was as good ratting there as you could
wish to see. Martha tried it, but she could not help running kindly
beside the rat, as if she was in double harness with it. This is the
noble bull-dog's gentle and affectionate nature coming out. We all
enjoyed the ratting that day, but it ended, as usual, in the girls
crying because of the poor rats. Girls cannot help this; we must not
be waxy with them on account of it, they have their nature, the same as
bull-dogs have, and it is this that makes them so useful in smoothing
the pillows of the sick-bed and tending wounded heroes.

However, the forts, and Pincher, and the girls crying, and having to be
thumped on the back, passed the time very agreeably till dinner. There
was roast mutton with onion sauce, and a roly-poly pudding.

Albert's uncle said we had certainly effaced ourselves effectually,
which means we hadn't bothered.

So we determined to do the same during the afternoon, for he told us his
heroine was by no means out of the wood yet.

And at first it was easy. Jam roly gives you a peaceful feeling and you
do not at first care if you never play any runabout game ever any more.
But after a while the torpor begins to pass away. Oswald was the first
to recover from his.

He had been lying on his front part in the orchard, but now he turned
over on his back and kicked his legs up, and said--

'I say, look here; let's do something.'

Daisy looked thoughtful. She was chewing the soft yellow parts of grass,
but I could see she was still thinking about that animal race. So I
explained to her that it would be very poor fun without a tortoise and a
peacock, and she saw this, though not willingly.

It was H. O. who said--

'Doing anything with animals is prime, if they only will. Let's have a
circus!'

At the word the last thought of the pudding faded from Oswald's memory,
and he stretched himself, sat up, and said--

'Bully for H. O. Let's!'

The others also threw off the heavy weight of memory, and sat up and
said 'Let's!' too.

Never