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 have once passed the prime of your youth, which is at ten, I believe.

"How would you like to find the mouldering bones of Royalist soldiers foully done to death by nasty Ironsides?" Noël asked, with his mouth full of plum.

"If they were really dead it wouldn't matter," Dora said. "What I'm afraid of is a skeleton that can walk about and catch at your legs when you're going up-stairs to bed."

"Skeletons can't walk," Alice said in a hurry; "you know they can't, Dora."

And she glared at Dora till she made her sorry she had said what she had. The things you are frightened of, or even those you would rather not meet in the dark, should never be mentioned before the little ones, or else they cry when it comes to bedtime, and say it was because of what you said.

"We sha'n't find anything. No jolly fear," said Dicky.

And just then my spade I was digging with struck on something hard, and it felt hollow. I did really think for one joyful space that we had found that pot of gold. But the thing, whatever it was, seemed to be longish; longer, that is, than a pot of gold would naturally be. And as I uncovered it I saw that it was not at all pot-of-gold-color, but like a bone Pincher has buried. So Oswald said:

"It is the skeleton."

The girls all drew back, and Alice said, "Oswald, I wish you wouldn't."