because Alice had to wait till Dora was quiet and then creep out very
slowly, for fear of the boards creaking. The girls sleep with their
room-door open for fear of burglars. Alice had kept on her clothes
under her nightgown when Dora wasn't looking, and presently we got down,
creeping past Father's study, and out at the glass door that leads on to
the veranda and the iron steps into the garden. And we went down very
quietly, and got into the chestnut-tree; and then I felt that we had
only been playing what Albert's uncle calls our favourite instrument--I
mean the Fool. For the house next door was as dark as dark. Then
suddenly we heard a sound--it came from the gate at the end of the
garden. All the gardens have gates; they lead into a kind of lane that
runs behind them. It is a sort of back way, very convenient when you
don't want to say exactly where you are going. We heard the gate at the
end of the next garden click, and Dicky nudged Alice so that she would
have fallen out of the tree if it had not been for Oswald's
extraordinary presence of mind. Oswald squeezed Alice's arm tight, and
we all looked; and the others were rather frightened because really we
had not exactly expected anything to happen except perhaps a light. But
now a muffled figure, shrouded in a dark cloak, came swiftly up the path
of the next-door garden. And we could see that under its cloak the
figure carried a mysterious burden. The figure was dressed to look like
a woman in a sailor hat.

We held our breath as it passed under the tree where we were, and then
it tapped very gently on the back door and was let in, and then a light
appeared in the window of the downstairs back breakfast-room. But the
shutters were up.

Dicky said, 'My eye!' and wouldn't the others be sick to think they
hadn't been in this! But Alice didn't half like it--and as she is a