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 and that rotten gipsy business with the Lamb. But we're no forrarder. We haven't really got anything worth having for our wishes."

"We've had things happening," said Robert; "that's always something."

"It's not enough, unless they're the right things," said Cyril firmly. "Now I've been thinking"—

"Not really?" whispered Robert.

"In the silent what's-its-names of the night. It's like suddenly being asked something out of history—the date of the Conquest or something; you know it all right all the time, but when you're asked it all goes out of your head. Ladies and gentlemen, you know jolly well that when we're all rotting about in the usual way heaps of things keep cropping up, and then real earnest wishes come into the heads of the beholder"—

"Hear, hear!" said Robert.

"—of the beholder, however, stupid he is," Cyril went on. "Why, even Robert might happen to think of a really useful wish if he didn't injure his poor little brains trying so