'It makes my blood boil to think of it.'

Noel said he was sorry for that, because everyone else we had told it to
had owned, when we asked them, that it froze their blood.

'Ah,' said the Uncle, 'but in India we learn how to freeze our blood and
boil it at the same time.'

In those hot longitudes, perhaps, the blood is always near
boiling-point, which accounts for Indian tempers, though not for the
curry and pepper they eat. But I must not wander; there is no curry at
all in this story. About temper I will not say.

Then Uncle let us all go with him to the station when the fly came back
for him; and when we said good-bye he tipped us all half a quid, without
any insidious distinctions about age or considering whether you were a
boy or a girl. Our Indian uncle is a true-born Briton, with no nonsense
about him.

We cheered him like one man as the train went off, and then we offered
the fly-driver a shilling to take us back to the four cross-roads, and
the grateful creature did it for nothing because, he said, the gent had
tipped him something like. How scarce is true gratitude! So we cheered
the driver too for this rare virtue, and then went home to talk about
what we should do with our money. I cannot tell you all that we did with
it, because money melts away 'like snow-wreaths in thaw-jean', as Denny
says, and somehow the more you have the more quickly it melts. We
all went into Maidstone, and came back with the most beautiful lot of
brown-paper parcels, with things inside that supplied long-felt wants.
But none of them belongs to this narration, except what Oswald and Denny
clubbed to buy.

This was a pistol, and it took all the money they both had, but when
Oswald felt the uncomfortable inside sensation that reminds you who it
is and his money that are soon parted he said to himself--

'I don't care. We ought to have a pistol in the house, and one that
will go off, too--not those rotten flintlocks. Suppose there should be
burglars and us totally unarmed?'

We took it in turns to have the pistol, and we decided always to
practise with it far from the house, so as not to frighten the
grown-ups, who are always much nervouser about firearms than we are.

It was Denny's idea getting it; and Oswald owns it surprised him, but
the boy was much changed in his character. We got it while the others
were grubbing at the pastry-cook's in the High Street, and we said
nothing till after tea, though it was hard not to fi