should like settled before entering more fully into the matter: why did
you call me Generous Benefactor?'

'Well, you see,' said Alice, smiling at him to show she wasn't
frightened, though I know really she was, awfully, 'we thought it was so
_very_ kind of you to try to find out the poor people who want money and
to help them and lend them your money.'

'Hum!' said the G. B. 'Sit down.'

He cleared the clocks and vases and candlesticks off some of the chairs,
and we sat down. The chairs were velvety, with gilt legs. It was like
a king's palace.

'Now,' he said, 'you ought to be at school, instead of thinking about
money. Why aren't you?'

We told him that we should go to school again when Father could manage
it, but meantime we wanted to do something to restore the fallen
fortunes of the House of Bastable. And we said we thought the lucrative
patent would be a very good thing. He asked a lot of questions, and we
told him everything we didn't think Father would mind our telling, and
at last he said--

'You wish to borrow money. When will you repay it?'

'As soon as we've got it, of course,' Dicky said.

Then the G. B. said to Oswald, 'You seem the eldest,' but I explained to
him that it was Dicky's idea, so my being eldest didn't matter. Then he