And then everybody said nothing for a short time. At last Father said--

'You may go--but remember--'

The words that followed I am not going to tell you. It is no use telling
you what you know before--as they do in schools. And you must all have
had such words said to you many times. We went away when it was over.
The girls cried, and we boys got out books and began to read, so that
nobody should think we cared. But we felt it deeply in our interior
hearts, especially Oswald, who is the eldest and the representative of
the family.

We felt it all the more because we had not really meant to do anything
wrong. We only thought perhaps the grown-ups would not be quite pleased
if they knew, and that is quite different. Besides, we meant to put all
the things back in their proper places when we had done with them before
anyone found out about it. But I must not anticipate (that means telling
the end of the story before the beginning. I tell you this because it is
so sickening to have words you don't know in a story, and to be told to
look it up in the dicker).

We are the Bastables--Oswald, Dora, Dicky, Alice, Noel, and H. O. If you
want to know why we call our youngest brother H. O. you can jolly well
read The Treasure Seekers and find out. We were the Treasure Seekers,
and we sought it high and low, and quite regularly, because we
particularly wanted to find it. And at last we did not find it, but
we were found by a good, kind Indian uncle, who helped Father with his
business, so that Father was able to take us all to live in a jolly big
red house on Blackheath, instead of in the Lewisham Road, where we lived
when we were only poor but honest Treasure Seekers. When we were poor
but honest we always used to think that if only Father had plenty of
business, and we did not have to go short of pocket money and wear
shabby clothes (I don't mind this myself, but the girls do), we should
be happy and very, very good.

And when we were taken to the beautiful big Blackheath house we
thought now all would be well, because it was a house with vineries and
pineries, and gas and water, and shrubberies and stabling, and replete
with every modern convenience, like it says in Dyer & Hilton's list
of Eligible House Property. I read all about it, and I have copied the
words quite right.

It is a beautiful house, all the furniture solid and strong, no casters
off the chairs, and the tables not scratched, and the silver not dented;