CHAPTER 4
THE TOWER OF MYSTERY

It was very rough on Dora having her foot bad, but we took it in
turns to stay in with her, and she was very decent about it. Daisy
was most with her. I do not dislike Daisy, but I wish she had been
taught how to play. Because Dora is rather like that naturally,
and sometimes I have thought that Daisy makes her worse.

I talked to Albert's uncle about it one day, when the others had
gone to church, and I did not go because of ear-ache, and he said
it came from reading the wrong sort of books partly--she has read
Ministering Children, and Anna Ross, or The Orphan of Waterloo, and
Ready Work for Willing Hands, and Elsie, or Like a Little Candle,
and even a horrid little blue book about the something or other of
Little Sins. After this conversation Oswald took care she had
plenty of the right sort of books to read, and he was surprised and
pleased when she got up early one morning to finish Monte Cristo.
Oswald felt that he was really being useful to a suffering
fellow-creature when he gave Daisy books that were not all about
being good.

A few days after Dora was laid up, Alice called a council of the
Wouldbegoods, and Oswald and Dicky attended with darkly-clouded
brows. Alice had the minute-book, which was an exercise-book that
had not much written in it. She had begun at the other end. I
hate doing that myself, because there is so little room at the top
compared with right way up.