Page:Oswald Bastable and Others - Nesbit.djvu/113

Rh enough to know better. It ended in Alice and Noël going out for a walk by themselves as soon as Noël had had the crying washed off his hands and face.

The rest of us spent the shining hours in getting a board and nailing it up in the oak-tree for a look-out station, in case of s arriving with an army to attack London. The oak is always hard to climb, and this was a peculiarly hard day, because the next-door people had tied a clothes-line to the oak, and hung their wet washing out on the line.

The sun was setting (in the west as usual) before Alice and Noël returned. They came across the wide fields from the direction of a pinewood that we had never explored yet, though always meaning to.

'There!' said Dicky, 'they've been and gone to the pinewood all by themselves.'

But the hatchet Dicky was still cherishing in his breast was buried at once under the first words spoken by the returning party of explorers.

'Oh, Oswald,' said Alice, 'oh, Dicky, we've found a treasure!'

Dicky hammered the last nail into the Saracen watch-tower.