you cared about, and cream now and then, and cheese always on the
table for tea. Father told Mrs Pettigrew to get what meals she
liked, and she got these strange but attractive foods.

In a story about Wouldbegoods it is not proper to tell of times
when only some of us were naughty, so I will pass lightly over the
time when Noel got up the kitchen chimney and brought three bricks
and an old starling's nest and about a ton of soot down with him
when he fell. They never use the big chimney in the summer, but
cook in the wash-house. Nor do I wish to dwell on what H. O. did
when he went into the dairy. I do not know what his motive was.
But Mrs Pettigrew said SHE knew; and she locked him in, and said if
it was cream he wanted he should have enough, and she wouldn't let
him out till tea-time. The cat had also got into the dairy for
some reason of her own, and when H. O. was tired of whatever he
went in for he poured all the milk into the churn and tried to
teach the cat to swim in it. He must have been desperate. The cat
did not even try to learn, and H. O. had the scars on his hands for
weeks. I do not wish to tell tales of H. O., for he is very young,
and whatever he does he always catches it for; but I will just
allude to our being told not to eat the greengages in the garden.
And we did not. And whatever H. O. did was Noel's fault--for Noel
told H. O. that greengages would grow again all right if you did
not bite as far as the stone, just as wounds are not mortal except
when you are pierced through the heart. So the two of them bit
bites out of every greengage they could reach. And of course the
pieces did not grow again.

Oswald did not do things like these, but then he is older than his
brothers. The only thing he did just about then was making a