the eldest; and
Alice said, 'If any one goes it ought to be me, because I thought of
it.'

So Oswald said, 'Well, go then'; and she said, 'Not for anything!' And
she begged us not to, and we talked about it in the tree till we were
all quite hoarse with whispering.

At last we decided on a plan of action.

Alice was to stay in the tree, and scream 'Murder!' if anything
happened. Dicky and I were to get down into the next garden and take it
in turns to peep.

So we got down as quietly as we could, but the tree made much more noise
than it does in the day, and several times we paused, fearing that all
was discovered. But nothing happened.

There was a pile of red flower-pots under the window and one very large
one was on the window-ledge. It seemed as if it was the hand of Destiny
had placed it there, and the geranium in it was dead, and there was
nothing to stop your standing on it--so Oswald did. He went first
because he is the eldest, and though Dicky tried to stop him because he
thought of it first it could not be, on account of not being able to say
anything.

So Oswald stood on the flower-pot and tried to look through one of the
holes. He did not really expect to see the coiners at their fell work,
though he had pretended to when we were talking in the tree. But if he
had seen them pouring the base molten metal into tin moulds the shape of
half-crowns he would not have been half so astonished as he was at the
spectacle now revealed.

At first he could see little, because the hole had unfortunately been
made a little too high, so that the eye of the detective could only see
the Prodigal Son in a shiny frame on the opposite wall. But Oswald held
on to the window-frame and stood on tiptoe and then he _saw_.

There was no furnace, and no base metal, no bearded men in leathern
aprons with tongs and things, but just a table with a table-cloth on it
for supper, and a tin of salmon and a lettuce and some bottled beer. And
there on a chair was the cloak and the hat of the mysterious stranger,
and the two people sitting at the table were the two youngest grown-up
daughters of the lady next door, and one of them was saying--

'So I got the salmon three-halfpence cheaper, and the lettuces are only
six a penny in the Broadway, just fancy! We must save as much as ever we
can on our housekeeping money if we want to go away decent next year.'

And the other said, 'I wish we could _all_ go _every_ year, or
else--Really