th, our all going
down to the butcher and saying we were sorry made it all right. But
suppose it had been in other dates!

The butcher's wife gave us cake and ginger wine, and was very jolly. She
asked us where we had got the false half-crowns. Oswald said they had
been given us. This was true, but when they were given us they were
pennies.

Did Oswald tell a lie to the butcher? He has often wondered. He hopes
not. It is easy to know whether a thing is a lie or not when nothing
depends on it. But when events are happening, and the utmost rigour of
the law may be the result of your making a mistake, you have to tell the
truth as carefully as you can.

No English gentleman tells a lie--Oswald knows that, of course. But an
Englishman is not obliged to criminalate himself. The rules of honour
and the laws of your country are very puzzling and contradictory.

But the butcher got paid afterwards in real money--a half-sovereign and
two half-crowns, and seven unsilvered pennies. So nobody was injured,
and the author thinks that is the great thing after all.

All the same, if ever he goes to stay with old nurse again, he thinks he
will tell the butcher All in confidence. He does not like to have any
doubts about such a serious thing as the honour of a Bastable.

THE END OF OSWALD'S PART OF THE BOOK.

OTHERS

[Illustration: 'A little person in a large white cap.'--Page 257]

MOLLY, THE MEASLES, AND THE MISSING WILL

We all think a great deal too much of ourselves. We all believe--every
man, woman, and child of us--in our very insidest inside heart, that no
one else in the world is at all like us, and that things happen to us
that happen to no one else. Now, this is a great mistake, because
however different we may be in the colour of our hair and eyes, the
inside part, the part that we feel and suffer with, is pretty much alike
in all of us. But no one seems to know this except me. That is why
people won't tell you the really wonderful things that happen to them:
they think you are so different that you could never believe the
wonderful things. But of course you are not different really, and you
can believe wonderful things as easily as anybody else. For instance,
you will be able to believe this story quite easily, for though it
didn't happen to you, that was merely an accident. It might have
happened, quite easily, to you or any else. As it happened, it happened
to Maria Toodlethwaite Carruthers.

You