Page:Oswald Bastable and Others - Nesbit.djvu/134

112 We had not coined more than about four half-sovereigns when we heard Noël say: 'Hist! Hide the plant!'

We didn't take any notice, because we wanted to get enough of them done to play a game of misers, which was Alice's idea.

'Hist!' Noël said again. And then suddenly he rushed in and said: 'It's a real hist! I tell you there's someone on the stairs.'

And he shut the wooden-grated door, and Oswald, with rare presence of mind, caught up the bunch of keys and locked the wooden-grated door with the key labelled 'Mrs. S.'s room.'

Then, breathless and furtive, we all hid in the part of the room near the fireplace, where no one could see us from the door.

We hardly dared to breathe. Alice said afterwards that she could hear Oswald's heart beating with terror, but the author is almost sure that it was only his watch ticking. It had begun to go that week, after days of unexplained idleness. If we did have to pay for finding the Enchanceried house, this was when we paid.

There were feet on the stairs. We all heard them. And voices. The author distinctly heard the words 'replete with every modern inconvenience,'