r have learnt such words as 'ripping' and 'jolly fine' while under
the auntal tyranny.

Since then I have read The Daisy Chain. It is a first-rate book for
girls and little boys.

But we did not want to talk about The Daisy Chain just then, so Oswald
said--

'But what's your lark?'Denny got pale pink and said--

'Don't hurry me. I'll tell you directly. Let me think a minute.'

Then he shut his pale pink eyelids a moment in thought, and then opened
them and stood up on the straw and said very fast--

'Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears, or if not ears, pots.
You know Albert's uncle said they were going to open the barrow, to
look for Roman remains to-morrow. Don't you think it seems a pity they
shouldn't find any?'

'Perhaps they will,' Dora said.

But Oswald saw, and he said 'Primus! Go ahead, old man.'

The Dentist went ahead.

'In The Daisy Chain,' he said, 'they dug in a Roman encampment and the
children went first and put some pottery there they'd made themselves,
and Harry's old medal of the Duke of Wellington. The doctor helped them
to some stuff to partly efface the inscription, and all the grown-ups
were sold. I thought we might--

'You may break, you may shatter
The vase if you will;
But the scent of the Romans
Will cling round it still.'

Denny sat down amid applause. It really was a great idea, at least for
HIM. It seemed to add just what was wanted to the visit of the Maidstone
Antiquities. To sell the Antiquities thoroughly would be indeed
splendiferous. Of course Dora made haste to point out that we had not
got an old medal of the Duke of Wellington, and that we hadn't any
doctor who would 'help us to stuff to efface', and etcetera; but we
sternly bade her stow it. We weren't going to do EXACTLY like those
Daisy Chain kids.

The pottery was easy. We had made a lot of it by the stream--which was
the Nile when we discovered its source--and dried it in the sun, and
then baked it under a bonfire, like in Foul Play. And most of the
things were such queer shapes that they should have done for almost
anything--Roman or Greek, or even Egyptian or antediluvian, or
household milk-jugs of the cavemen, Albert's uncle said. The pots were,
fortunately, quite ready and dirty, because we had already buried them
in mixed sand and river mud to improve the colour, and not remembered to
wash it off.

So the Council at once collected it all--and some rusty hinges and some
br