you which: only at the very end perhaps I will. While the story is
going on you may be trying to guess, only I bet you don't. It was
Oswald who first thought of looking for treasure. Oswald often thinks of
very interesting things. And directly he thought of it he did not keep
it to himself, as some boys would have done, but he told the others, and
said--

'I'll tell you what, we must go and seek for treasure: it is always
what you do to restore the fallen fortunes of your House.'

Dora said it was all very well. She often says that. She was trying to
mend a large hole in one of Noel's stockings. He tore it on a nail when
we were playing shipwrecked mariners on top of the chicken-house the day
H. O. fell off and cut his chin: he has the scar still. Dora is the
only one of us who ever tries to mend anything. Alice tries to make
things sometimes. Once she knitted a red scarf for Noel because his
chest is delicate, but it was much wider at one end than the other, and
he wouldn't wear it. So we used it as a pennon, and it did very well,
because most of our things are black or grey since Mother died; and
scarlet was a nice change. Father does not like you to ask for new
things. That was one way we had of knowing that the fortunes of the
ancient House of Bastable were really fallen. Another way was that
there was no more pocket-money--except a penny now and then to the
little ones, and people did not come to dinner any more, like they used
to, with pretty dresses, driving up in cabs--and the carpets got holes
in them--and when the legs came off things they were not sent to be
mended, and we gave _up_ having the gardener except for the front garden,
and not that very often. And the silver in the big oak plate-chest that
is lined with green baize all went away to the shop to have the dents
and scratches taken out of it, and it never came back. We think Father