Page:The Story of the Treasure Seekers.djvu/76

54 was his own idea, but he didn't insist on doing it, though he is next to the eldest, for he knows it is bad manners to make people do what you want, when they would rather not.

"What was Noël's plan?" Alice asked.

"A Princess or a poetry book," said Noël sleepily. He was lying on his back on the sofa, kicking his legs. "Only I shall look for the Princess all by myself. But I'll let you see her when we're married."

"Have you got enough poetry to make a book?" Dicky asked that, and it was rather sensible of him, because when Noël came to look there were only seven of his poems that any of us could understand. There was the "Wreck of the Malabar", and the poem he wrote when Eliza took us to hear the Reviving Preacher, and everybody cried, and Father said it must have been the Preacher's Eloquence.

So Noël wrote:—

Oh Eloquence and what art thou? Ay what art thou? because we cried And everybody cried inside When they came out their eyes were red— And it was your doing Father said.

But Noël told Alice he got the first line and a half from a book a boy at school was going