he should keep in the nursery then, and not be where he'd no
business. We bandaged his head with a towel, and then he stopped crying
and played at being England's wounded hero dying in the cockpit, while
every man was doing his duty, as the hero had told them to, and Alice
was Hardy, and I was the doctor, and the others were the crew. Playing
at Hardy made us think of our own dear robber, and we wished he was
there, and wondered if we should ever see him any more.

We were rather astonished at Father's having anyone to dinner, because
now he never seems to think of anything but business. Before Mother died
people often came to dinner, and Father's business did not take up so
much of his time and was not the bother it is now. And we used to see
who could go furthest down in our nightgowns and get nice things to
eat, without being seen, out of the dishes as they came out of the
dining-room. Eliza can't cook very nice things. She told Father she was
a good plain cook, but he says it was a fancy portrait. We stayed in the
nursery till the charwoman came in and told us to be off--she was going
to make one job of it, and have our carpet up as well as all the
others, now the man was here to beat them. It came up, and it was very
dusty--and under it we found my threepenny-bit that I lost ages ago,
which shows what Eliza is. H. O. had got tired of being the wounded
hero, and Dicky was so tired of doing nothing that Dora said she knew
he'd begin to tease Noel in a minute; then of course Dicky said he
wasn't going to tease anybody--he was going out to the Heath. He said
he'd heard that nagging women drove a man from his home, and now he
found it was quite true. Oswald always tries to be a peacemaker, so he
told Dicky to shut up and not make an ass of himself. And Alice said,
'Well, Dora began'--And Dora tossed her chin up and said it wasn't any
business of Oswald's any way, and no one asked Alice's opinion. So we
all felt very uncomfortable till Noel said, 'Don't let's quarrel about
nothing. You know let dogs delight--and I made up another piece while
you were talking--

Quarrelling is an evil thing,
It fills with gall life's cup;
For when once you begin
It takes such a long time to make it up.'

We all laughed then and stopped jawing at each other. Noel is very funny
with his poetry. But that piece happened to come out quite true. You
begin to quarrel and then you can't stop; often, long before the others
are