plied:

'Anything you like. You couldn't do it, anyhow.'

Dicky said:

'Miss Blake says betting is wicked; but I don't believe it is, if you
don't bet money.'

Oswald reminded him how in 'Miss Edgeworth' even that wretched little
Rosamond, who is never allowed to do anything she wants to, even lose
her own needles, makes a bet with her brother, and none of the grown-ups
turn a hair.

'But _I_ don't want to bet,' he said. 'I know you can't do it.'

'I'll bet you my fives ball I do,' Dicky rejoindered.

'Done! I'll bet you that threepenny ball of string and the cobbler's wax
you were bothering about yesterday.'

So Dicky said 'Done!' and then he went and got a tennis racket--when I
meant with his hands--and the ball soared up to the top of the house and
faded away. But when we went round to look for it we couldn't find it
anywhere. So he said it had gone over and he had won. And Oswald thought
it had not gone over, but stayed on the roof, and he hadn't. And they
could not agree about it, though they talked of nothing else till tea
time.

It was a few days after that that the big greenhouse began to leak, and
something was said at brekker about had any of us been throwing stones.
But it happened that we had not. Only after brek Oswald said to Dicky:

'What price fives balls for knocking holes in greenhouses?'

'Then you own it went over the house, and I won my bet. Hand over!'
Dicky remarked.

But Oswald did not see this, because it wasn't proved it was the fives
ball. It was only his idea.

Then it rained for two or three days, and the greenhouse leaked much
more than just a fives ball, and the grown-ups said the man who put it
up had scamped the job, and they sent for him to put it right. And when
he was ready he came, and men came with ladders and putty and glass,
and a thing to cut it with a real diamond in it that he let us have to
look at. It was fine that day, and Dicky and H. O. and I were out most
of the time talking to the men. I think the men who come to do things to
houses are so interesting to talk to; they seem to know much more about
the things that really matter than gentlemen do. I shall try to be like
them when I grow up, and not always talk about politics and the way the
army is going to the dogs.

The men were very jolly, and let us go up the ladder and look at the top
of the greenhouse. Not H. O., of course, because he is very young
indeed, and wears socks. When they had gone to dinne