.

"Here," she said. "You must be hungry if you've come all that way. I
think they might have given you some tea after all the trouble you've
had."

We took the cake with correct thanks.

"I wish _I_ could play at circuses," she said. "Tell me about it."

We told her while we ate the cake; and when we had done she said perhaps
it was better to hear about than do, especially the goat's part and
Dicky's.

"But I do wish auntie had given you tea," she said.

We told her not to be too hard on her aunt, because you have to make
allowances for grown-up people.

When we parted she said she would never forget us, and Oswald gave her
his pocket button-hook and corkscrew combined for a keepsake.

* * * * *

Dicky's act with the goat (which is true, and no kid) was the only thing
out of that day that was put in the Golden Deed Book, and he put that in
himself while we were hunting the pig.

Alice and me capturing the pig was never put in. We would scorn to write
our own good actions, but I suppose Dicky was dull with us all away; and
you must pity the dull, and not blame them.

* * * * *

I will not seek to unfold to you how we got the pig home, or how the
donkey was caught (that was poor sport compared to the pig). Nor will I
tell you a word of all that was said and done to the intrepid hunters of
the Black and Learned. I have told you all the interesting part. Seek
not to know the rest. It is better buried in obliquity.

BEING BEAVERS; OR, THE YOUNG EXPLORERS (ARCTIC OR OTHERWISE)

You read in books about the pleasures of London, and about how people
who live in the country long for the gay whirl of fashion in town
because the country is so dull. I do not agree with this at all. In
London, or at any rate Lewisham, nothing happens unless you make it
happen; or if it happens it doesn't happen to you, and you don't know
the people it does happen to. But in the country the most interesting
events occur quite freely, and they seem to happen to you as much as to
any one else. Very often quite without your doing anything to help.

The natural and right ways of earning your living in the country are
much jollier than town ones, too; sowing and reaping, and doing things
with animals, are much better sport than fishmongering or bakering or
oil-shopping, and those sort of things, except, of course, a plumber's
and gasfitter's, and he is the same, town o