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108 the action. But some heroes do have. De gustibus something or other, which means, one man's meat is another man's poison.

When we got up into the room with the iron-grated door, it all seemed very bare. Three bottles of yellow stuff and tenpence halfpenny in coppers is not much to start a coining enterprise with.

'We ought to make it look like coining, anyway,' said Oswald.

'Coiners have furnaces,' said Dicky.

Alice said: 'Wouldn't a spirit-lamp do? Old nurse has got an old one on the scullery shelf.'

We thought it would.

Then Noël reminded us that coiners have moulds, and Oswald went and bought a pair of wooden lemon squeezers for sevenpence three farthings. In his far-sightedness he remembered that coiners use water, so he bought two enamelled iron bowls at sixpence halfpenny the two. When he came back he noticed the coal-scuttle we had always felt so friendly to, and he filled it with water and brought it up. It did not leak worth mentioning.

'We ought to have a bench,' said Dicky; 'most