"I say, Bealie dear, you've got a book up at your place. I wish you'd
lend it to us to read."
"If it's the Holy Book you mean, sir," replied Mrs. Beale, going on with
peeling the potatoes that were to be a radiant vision later on, all
brown and crisp in company with a leg of mutton--"if it's the Holy Book
you want there's one up on Miss Sandal's chest of drawerses."
"I know," said Oswald. He knew every book in the house. The backs of
them were beautiful--leather and gold--but inside they were like whited
sepulchres, full of poetry and improving reading. "No--we didn't want
that book just now. It is a book called 'Napoleon's book of Fate.' Would
you mind if I ran up to your place and got it?"
"There's no one at home," said Mrs. Beale; "wait a bit till I go along
to the bakus with the meat, and I'll fetch it along."
"You might let me go," said Oswald, whose high spirit is always
ill-attuned to waiting a bit. "I wouldn't touch anything else, and I
know where you keep the key."
"There's precious little as ye don't know, it seems to me," said Mrs.
Beale. "There, run along do. It's on top of the mantelshelf alongside
the picture tea-tin. It's a red book. Don't go taking the 'Wesleyan
Conference Reports' by mistake, the two is both together on the mantel."
[Illustration: "I SAY, BEALIE DEAR, YOU'VE GOT A BOOK UP AT YOUR
PLACE."]
Oswald in his macker splashed through the mud to Mrs. Beale's, found the
key under the loose tile behind the water-butt, and got the book without
adventure. He had promised not to touch anything else, so he could not
make even the gentlest booby-trap as a little surprise for Mrs. Beale
when she got back.
And most of that day we were telling our fortunes by the ingenious means
invented by the great Emperor, or by cards, which it is hard to remember
the rules for, or by our dreams. The only blights were that the others
all wanted to have the book all the time, and that Noel's dreams were so
long and mixed that we got tired of hearing about them before he did.
But he said he was quite sure he had dreamed every single bit of every
one of them. And the author hopes this was the truth.
We all went to bed hoping we should dream something that we could look
up in the dream book, but none of us did.