so to Albert-next-door's uncle, who writes books, and he said, 'Quite
right, that's what we call selection, a necessity of true art.' And he
is very clever indeed. So you see.

I have often thought that if the people who write books for children
knew a little more it would be better. I shall not tell you anything
about us except what I should like to know about if I was reading the
story and you were writing it. Albert's uncle says I ought to have put
this in the preface, but I never read prefaces, and it is not much good
writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have
never thought of this.

Well, when we had agreed to dig for treasure we all went down into the
cellar and lighted the gas. Oswald would have liked to dig there, but
it is stone flags. We looked among the old boxes and broken chairs and
fenders and empty bottles and things, and at last we found the spades we
had to dig in the sand with when we went to the seaside three years ago.
They are not silly, babyish, wooden spades, that split if you look at
them, but good iron, with a blue mark across the top of the iron part,
and yellow wooden handles. We wasted a little time getting them dusted,
because the girls wouldn't dig with spades that had cobwebs on them.
Girls would never do for African explorers or anything like that, they
are too beastly particular.

It was no use doing the thing by halves. We marked out a sort of square
in the mouldy part of the garden, about three yards across, and began
to dig. But we found nothing except worms and stones--and the ground was
very hard.

So we thought we'd try another part of the garden, and we found a
place in the big round flower bed, where the ground was much softer. We
thought we'd make a smaller hole to begin with, and it was much better.
We dug and dug and dug, and it was jolly hard work! We got very hot
digging, but we found nothing.

Presently Albert-next-door looked over the wall. We do not like him very
much, but we let him play with us sometimes, because his father is dead,
and you must not be unkind to orphans, even if their mothers are
alive. Albert is always very tidy. He wears frilly collars and velvet
knickerbockers. I can't think how he can bear to.

So we said, 'Hallo!'

And he said, 'What are you up to?'

'We're digging for treasure,' said Alice; 'an ancient parchment revealed
to us the place of concealment. Come over and help us. When we have
dug deep enough we shall