ill happen
at the other end,' and it finished with 'For goodness sake, try to keep
out of mischief till I come down on Saturday'. There were lots of other
things in between.

We all promised we would. And we saw them off and waved till the train
was quite out of sight. Then we started to walk home. Daisy was tired so
Oswald carried her home on his back. When we got home she said--

'I do like you, Oswald.'

She is not a bad little kid; and Oswald felt it was his duty to be nice
to her because she was a visitor. Then we looked all over everything.
It was a glorious place. You did not know where to begin. We were all
a little tired before we found the hayloft, but we pulled ourselves
together to make a fort with the trusses of hay--great square
things--and we were having a jolly good time, all of us, when suddenly a
trap-door opened and a head bobbed up with a straw in its mouth. We knew
nothing about the country then, and the head really did scare us rather,
though, of course, we found out directly that the feet belonging to it
were standing on the bar of the loose-box underneath. The head said--

'Don't you let the governor catch you a-spoiling of that there hay,
that's all.' And it spoke thickly because of the straw.

It is strange to think how ignorant you were in the past. We can hardly
believe now that once we really did not know that it spoiled hay to mess
about with it. Horses don't like to eat it afterwards.

Always remember this.

When the head had explained a little more it went away, and we turned
the handle of the chaff-cutting machine, and nobody got hurt, though the
head HAD said we should cut our fingers off if we touched it.

And then we sat down on the floor, which is dirty with the nice clean
dirt that is more than half chopped hay, and those there was room for
hung their legs down out of the top door, and we looked down at the
farmyard, which is very slushy when you get down into it, but most
interesting.

Then Alice said--

'Now we're all here, and the boys are tired enough to sit still for a
minute, I want to have a council.'

We said what about? And she said, 'I'll tell you.' H. O., don't wriggle
so; sit on my frock if the straws tickle your legs.'

You see he wears socks, and so he can never be quite as comfortable as
anyone else.

'Promise not to laugh' Alice said, getting very red, and looking at
Dora, who got red too.

We did, and then she said:

'Dora and I have talked this