where they come to do the gas. The board’s loose. Dig an you value your lives, for ere sundown the dragon who guards this spoil will return in his fiery fury and make you his unresisting prey.’
So we dug — that is, we got the loose board up. And Alice threw up her arms and cried —
‘See the rich treasure — the gold in thick layers, with silver and diamonds stuck in it!’
‘Like currants in cake,’ said H. O.
‘It’s a lovely treasure,’ said Dicky yawning. ‘Let’s come back and carry it away another day.’
But Alice was kneeling by the hole.
‘Let me feast my eyes on the golden splendour,’ she said, ‘hidden these long centuries from the human eye. Behold how the magic rod has led us to treasures more — Oswald, don’t push so! — more bright than ever monarch — I say, there is something down there, really. I saw it shine!’
We thought she was kidding, but when she began to try to get into the hole, which was much too small, we saw she meant it, so I said, ‘Let’s have a squint,’ and I looked, but I couldn’t see anything, even when I lay down on my stomach. The others lay down on their stomachs too and tried to see, all but Noel, who stood and looked at us and said we were the great serpents come down to drink at the magic pool. He wanted to be the knight and slay the great serpents with his good sword — he even drew the umbrella ready — but Alice said, ‘All right, we will in a minute. But now — I’m sure I saw it; do get a match, Noel, there’s a dear.’
‘What did you see?’ asked Noel, beginning to go for the matches very slowly.
‘Something bright, away in the corner under the board against the beam.’
‘Perhaps it was a rat’s eye,’ Noel said, ‘or a snake’s,’ and we did not put our heads quite so close to the hole till he came back with the matches.
Then I struck a match, and Alice cried, ‘There it is!’ And there it was, and it was a half-sovereign, partly dusty and partly bright. We think perhaps a mouse, disturbed by the carpets being taken up, may have brushed the dust of years from part of the half-sovereign with his tail. We can’t imagine how it came there, only Dora thinks she remembers once when H. O. was very little Mother gave him some money to hold, and he dropped it, and it rolled all over the floor. So we think perhaps this was part of it. We were very glad. H. O. wanted to go out at once and buy a mask he had seen for fourpence. It had been a shilling mask, but now it was going very cheap because Guy Fawkes’ Day was over, and it was a little cracked at the top. But Dora said, ‘I don’t know that it’s our money. Let’s wait and ask Father.’
But H. O. did not care about waiting, and I felt for him. Dora is rather like grown-ups in that way; she does not seem to understand that when you want a thing you do want it, and that you don’t wish to wait, even a minute.
So we went and asked Albert-next-door’s uncle. He was pegging away at one of the rotten novels he has to write to make his living, but he said we weren’t interrupting him at all.
‘My hero’s folly has involved him in a difficulty,’ he said. ‘It is his own fault. I will leave him to meditate on the incredible fatuity — the hare-brained recklessness — which have brought him to this pass. It will be a lesson to him. I, meantime, will give myself unreservedly to the pleasures of your conversation.’
That’s one thing I like Albert’s uncle for. He always talks like a book, and yet you can always understand what he means. I think he is more like us, inside of his mind, than most grown-up people are. He can pretend beautifully. I never met anyone else so good at it, except our robber, and we began it, with him. But it was Albert’s uncle who first taught us how to make people talk like books when you’re playing things, and he made us learn to tell a story straight from the beginning, not starting in the middle like most people do.
So now Oswald remembered what he had been told, as he generally does, and began at the beginning, but when he came to where Alice said she was the priestess, Albert’s uncle said —
‘Let the priestess herself set forth the tale in fitting speech.’
So Alice said, ‘O high priest of the great idol, the humblest of thy slaves took the school umbrella for a divining-rod, and sang the song of inver — what’s-it’s-name?’
‘Invocation perhaps?’ said Albert’s uncle. ‘Yes; and then I went about and about and the others got tired, so the divining-rod fell on a certain spot, and I said, “Dig”, and we dug — it was where the loose board is for the gas men — and then there really and truly was a half-sovereign lying under the boards, and here it is.’
Albert’s uncle took it and looked at it.
‘The great high priest will bite it to see if it’s good,’ he said, and he did. ‘I congratulate you,’ he went on; ‘you are indeed among those favoured by the Immortals. First you find half-crowns in the garden, and now this. The high priest advises you to tell your Father, and ask if you may keep it. My hero has become penitent, but impatient. I must pull him out of this scrape. Ye have my leave to depart.’
Of course we know from Kipling that that means, ‘You’d better bunk, and be sharp about it,’ so we came away. I do like Albert’s uncle.
I shall be like that when I’m a man. He gave us our Jungle books, and he is awfully clever, though he does have to write grown-up tales.
We told Father about it that night. He was very kind. He said we might certainly have the half-sovereign, and he hoped we should enjoy ourselves with our treasure-trove.
Then he said, ‘Your dear Mother’s Indian Uncle is coming to dinner here tomorrow night. So will you not drag the furniture about overhead, please, more than you’re absolutely obliged; and H. O. might wear slippers or something. I can always distinguish the note of H. O.‘s boots.’
We said we would be very quiet, and Father went on —
‘This Indian Uncle is not used to children, and he is coming to talk business with me. It is really important that he should be quiet. Do you think, Dora, that perhaps bed at six for H. O. and Noel —’
But H. O. said, ‘Father, I really and truly won’t make a noise. I’ll stand on my head all the evening sooner than disturb the Indian Uncle with my boots.’
And Alice said Noel never made a row anyhow. So Father laughed and said, ‘All right.’ And he said we might do as we liked with the half-sovereign. ‘Only for goodness’ sake don’t try to go in for business with it,’ he said. ‘It’s always a mistake to go into business with an insufficient capital.’
We talked it over all that evening, and we decided that as we were not to go into business with our half-sovereign it was no use not spending it at once, and so we might as well have a right royal feast. The next day we went out and bought the things. We got figs, and almonds and raisins, and a real raw rabbit, and Eliza promised to cook it for us if we would wait till tomorrow, because of the Indian Uncle coming to dinner. She was very busy
