'Well, what can we do?' said Dicky. 'You are so fond of saying "Let's
do something!" and never saying what.'

'We can't try the advertisement yet. Shall we try rescuing some one?'
said Oswald. It was his own idea, but he didn't insist on doing it,
though he is next to the eldest, for he knows it is bad manners to make
people do what you want, when they would rather not.

'What was Noel's plan?' Alice asked.

'A Princess or a poetry book,' said Noel sleepily. He was lying on his
back on the sofa, kicking his legs. 'Only I shall look for the Princess
all by myself. But I'll let you see her when we're married.'

'Have you got enough poetry to make a book?' Dicky asked that, and it
was rather sensible of him, because when Noel came to look there were
only seven of his poems that any of us could understand. There was the
'Wreck of the Malabar', and the poem he wrote when Eliza took us to hear
the Reviving Preacher, and everybody cried, and Father said it must have
been the Preacher's Eloquence. So Noel wrote:

O Eloquence and what art thou?
Ay what art thou? because we cried
And everybody cried inside
When they came out their eyes were red--
And it was your doing Father said.

But Noel told Alice he got the first line and a half from a book a boy
at school was going to write when he had time. Besides this there were
the 'Lines on a Dead Black Beetle that was poisoned'--