on.' That means it was in a box; and inside the box was some
stiff browny cardboard, crinkled like the galvanized iron on the tops of
chicken-houses, and inside that was a lot of paper, some of it printed
and some scrappy, and in the very middle of it all a bottle, not
very large, and black, and sealed on the top of the cork with yellow
sealing-wax.

We looked at it as it lay on the nursery table, and while all the others
grabbed at the papers to see what the printing said, Oswald went to look
for the corkscrew, so as to see what was inside the bottle. He found
the corkscrew in the dresser drawer--it always gets there, though it is
supposed to be in the sideboard drawer in the dining-room--and when he
got back the others had read most of the printed papers.

'I don't think it's much good, and I don't think it's quite nice to sell
wine,' Dora said 'and besides, it's not easy to suddenly begin to sell
things when you aren't used to it.'

'I don't know,' said Alice; 'I believe I could.' They all looked rather
down in the mouth, though, and Oswald asked how you were to make your
two pounds a week.

'Why, you've got to get people to taste that stuff in the bottle. It's
sherry--Castilian Amoroso its name is--and then you get them to buy it,
and then you write to the people and tell them the other people want the
wine, and then for every dozen you sell you get two shillings from the
wine people, so if you sell twenty dozen a week you get your two pounds.
I don't think we shall sell as much as that,' said Dicky.

'We might not the first week,' Alice said, 'but when people found out
how nice it was, they would want more and more. And if we only got ten
shillings a week it would be something to begin with, wouldn't it?'

Oswald said he should jolly well think it would, and then Dicky took the
cork out with the corkscrew. The cork broke a good deal, and some of
the bits went into the bottle. Dora got the medicine glass that has
the teaspoons and tablespoons marked on it, and we agreed to have a
teaspoonful each, to see what it was like.

'No one must have more than that,' Dora said, 'however nice it is.'

Dora behaved rather as if it were her bottle. I suppose it was, because
she had lent the money for it.

Then she measured out the teaspoonful, and she had first go, because of
being the eldest. We asked at once what it was like, but Dora could not
speak just then.

Then she said, 'It's like the tonic Noel had in the sp