We did not take all the pots Alice had found--but just the two that
weren't broken--two crooked jugs, made of stuff like flower-pots are
made of. We made two long cuts with the spade and lifted the turf up and
scratched the earth under, and took it out very carefully in handfuls
on to the newspaper, till the hole was deepish. Then we put in the jugs,
and filled it up with earth and flattened the turf over. Turf stretches
like elastic. This we did a couple of yards from the place where the
mound was dug into by the men, and we had been so careful with the
newspaper that there was no loose earth about.

Then we went home in the wet moonlight--at least the grass was very
wet--chuckling through the peppermint, and got up to bed without anyone
knowing a single thing about it.

The next day the Antiquities came. It was a jolly hot day, and the
tables were spread under the trees on the lawn, like a large and very
grand Sunday-school treat. There were dozens of different kinds of cake,
and bread-and-butter, both white and brown, and gooseberries and
plums and jam sandwiches. And the girls decorated the tables with
flowers--blue larkspur and white Canterbury bells. And at about three
there was a noise of people walking in the road, and presently the
Antiquities began to come in at the front gate, and stood about on the
lawn by twos and threes and sixes and sevens, looking shy and uncomfy,
exactly like a Sunday-school treat. Presently some gentlemen came, who
looked like the teachers; they were not shy, and they came right up to
the door. So Albert's uncle, who had not been too proud to be up in our
room with us watching the people on the lawn through the netting of our
short blinds, said--

'I suppose that's the Committee. Come on!'

So we all went down--we were in our Sunday things--and Albert's uncle
received the Committee like a feudal system baron, and we were his
retainers.

He talked about dates, and king posts and gables, and mullions, and
foundations, and records, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, and poetry, and Julius
Caesar, and Roman remains, and lych gates and churches, and dog's-tooth
moulding till the brain of Oswald reeled. I suppose that Albert's uncle
remarked that all our mouths were open, which is a sign of reels in the
brain, for he whispered--

'Go hence, and mingle unsuspected with the crowd!'

So we went out on to the lawn, which was now crowded with men and women
and one child. This was a girl; she was