froze their blood.
"Ah," said the Uncle, "but in India we learn how to freeze our blood and boil it at the same time."
In those hot longitudes, perhaps, the blood is always near boiling point, which accounts for Indian tempers, though not for the curry and pepper they eat. But I must not wander; there is no curry at all in this story. About temper I will not say.
The Uncle let us all go with him to the station when the fly came back for him; and when we said good-bye he tipped us all half a quid, without any insidious distinctions about age or considering whether you were a boy or a girl. Our Indian uncle is a true-born Briton, with no nonsense about him.
We cheered him like one man as the train went off, and then we offered the fly-driver a shilling to take us back to the four cross-roads, and the grateful creature did it for nothing because, he said, the gent had tipped him something like. How scarce is true gratitude! So we cheered the driver too for this rare virtue, and then went home to talk about what we should do with our money.
I cannot tell you all that we did with it, because money melts away "like snow-wreaths in thaw-jean," as Denny says, and somehow the more you have the more quickly it melts. We all went into Maidstone, and came back with the most beautiful lot of brown paper parcels, with things inside that supplied long-felt wants. But none of them belong to this narration, except what Oswald and Denny clubbed to buy.
This was a pistol, and it took all the money they both had, but when Oswald felt the uncomfortable inside sensation that reminds you who it is and his money that are soon parted he said to himself:
"I don't care. We ought to have a pistol in the house, and one that will go off, too—not those rotten flint-locks. Suppose there should be burglars and us totally unarmed?"
We took it in turns to have the pistol, and we decided always to practise with it far from the house, so as not to frighten the grown-ups, who are always much nervouser about firearms than we are.
It was Denny's idea getting it; and Oswald owns it surprised him, but the boy was much changed in his character. We got it while the others were grubbing at the pastry-cook's in the High Street, and we said nothing till after tea, though it was hard not to fire at the birds on the telegraph wires as we came home in the train.
After tea we called a council in the straw-loft, and Oswald said:
"Denny and I have got a secret."
"I know what it is," Dicky said, contemptibly. "You've found out that shop in Maidstone where peppermint rock is four ounces a penny. H. O. and I found it out before you did."
Oswald said, "You shut up. If you don't want to hear the secret you'd better bunk. I'm going to administer the secret oath."
This is a very solemn oath, and only used about real things, and never for pretending ones, so Dicky said:
"Oh, all right; go ahead! I thought you were only rotting."
So they all took the secret oath. Noël made it up long before, when he had found the first thrush's nest we ever saw in the Blackheath garden:
"I will not tell, I will not reveal,
I will not touch, or try to steal;
And may I be called a beastly sneak,
If this great secret I ever repeat."
It is a little wrong about the poetry, but it is a very binding promise. They all repeated it, down to H. O.
"Now then," Dicky said, "what's up?"
Oswald, in proud silence, drew the pistol from his breast and held it out, and there was a murmur of awful amazement and respect from every one of the council. The pistol was not loaded, so we let even the girls have it to look at.
And then Dicky said, "Let's go hunting."
And we decided that we would. H. O. wanted to go down to the village and get penny horns at the shop for the huntsmen to wind, like in the song, but we thought it would be more modest not to wind horns or anything noisy, at any rate not until we had run down our prey. But his talking of the song made us decided that it was the fox we wanted to hunt. We had not been particular which animal we hunted before that.
Oswald let Denny have first go with the pistol, and when we went to bed he slept with it under his pillow, but not loaded, for fear he should have a nightmare and draw his fell weapon before he was properly awake.
Oswald let Denny have it, because Denny had toothache, and a pistol is consoling though it does not actually stop the pain of the tooth. The toothache got worse, and Albert's uncle looked at it, and said it was very loose, and Denny owned he had tried to crack a peach-stone with it. Which accounts. He had creosote and camphor, and went to bed early, with his tooth tied up in red flannel.
Oswald knows it is right to be very kind when people are ill, and he forebore to wake the sufferer next morning by buzzing a pillow at him, as he generally does. He got up and went over to shake the invalid, but the bird had flown and the nest was cold. The pistol was not in the nest either, but Oswald found it afterwards under the looking-glass on the dressing-table. He had just awakened the others (with a hair-brush because they had not got anything the matter with their teeth), when he heard wheels, and, looking out, beheld Denny and Albert's uncle being driven from the door in the farmer's high cart with the red wheels.
We dressed extra quick, so as to get down-stairs to the bottom of the mystery. And we found a note from Albert's uncle. It was addressed to Dora, and said:
"Denny's toothache got him up in the small hours. He's off to the dentist to have it out with him, man to man. Home to dinner."
Dora said, "Denny's gone to the dentist."
"I expect it's a relation," H. O. said. "Denny must be short for Dentist."
I suppose he was trying to be funny—he really does try very hard. He wants to be a clown when he grows up. The others laughed.
"I wonder," Dicky said, "whether he'll get a shilling or half-a-crown for it."
Oswald had been meditating in gloomy silence, now he cheered up and said:
"Of course! I'd forgotten that. He'll get his tooth money, and the drive too. So it's quite fair for us to have the fox-hunt while he's gone. I was thinking we should have to put it off."
The others agreed that it would not be unfair.
"We can have another one another time if he wants to," Oswald said.
We know foxes are hunted in red coats and on horseback—but we could not do this—but H. O. had the old red football jersey that was Albert's uncle's when he was at Loretto. He was pleased.
"But I do wish we'd had horns," he said, grievingly. "I should have liked to wind the horn."
"We can pretend horns," Dora said; but he answered, "I didn't want to pretend. I wanted to wind something."
"Wind your watch," Dicky said. And that was unkind, because we all know H. O.'s watch is broken, and when you wind it, it only rattles inside without going in the least.
We did not bother to dress up much for the hunting expedition—just cocked hats and lath swords; and we tied a card
