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And with her to look after me, and Alice to fall in love with, and Harry to collaborate with, I was about as comfortable as a restless genius could be–that is, I should have been so had it not been for the damp and frigid influence of Aunt Sarah, who sympathised neither with genius nor youth, and certainly not with the two in combination. Twenty times a day she grieved me by calling me “silly little boy,” and twenty times a day she exasperated me by reminding Harry, and, through him, me, that “little boys should be seen and not heard.”

However, we decided to ignore this uncongenial influence, and bury our sorrows in “Our Novel.”

“Tell you what,” said Harry, as we walked on the pier the first evening, “we ought to look sharp and get our plot.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to settle on the characters and get the plot afterwards?”

“All serene!” said Harry; “can you suggest any one for a hero?”

Harry said this in a half significant, half off-hand manner, which made it evident to me he expected I should at once nominate him.

But, in my judgment, Harry hardly possessed all the qualifications necessary for the hero of our novel. So I replied, half significantly, half off-handedly too–

“Hadn’t you better think of some one?”

Here we were in a fix at the very start. For Harry insisted he would much rather that I should select, and I was equally anxious for him to do it.

At length we compromised the matter and decided we should make the hero a mixture of two fellows–the fellow Harry liked best and the fellow I liked best.

After this amicable arrangement it was comparatively clear sailing. We had not to look far for the heroine, and it occurred to both of us that it would be original as well as pleasant to make the villain a female and middle-aged. As for minor characters, we were able to draw on our acquaintance at Denhamby to supply them, and, failing that, Harry was magnanimous enough to offer his father and mother as “not bad for some of the side plots.”

We had got our characters. That one walk on the pier settled them all. We also stopped a bit to watch the people, we entered into conversation with a sailor (who turned out to be deaf), and insinuated ourselves into the front of a street row, all with a view to reproducing our observations on life into “Our Novel.”

The street row indeed furnished an inspiration for our plot. It was the arrest of a make-believe Italian female organ-grinder, whose offence appeared to be that she was carrying about in a cradle attached to the organ an infant that did not belong to her. And as the infant brought her in much more money than her music did, she protested in very strong English against having it removed.

With the quickness of genius we saw in this incident the pivot on which our novel should be made to turn.

The baby was the heroine, the organ-grinder the villain who had stolen her from her high-born station in life. Two of the characters fitted at a blow! We had even got the high-born parents ready if required, and when sixteen years later the little truant was to discover her noble station, we had our hero ready to take her home!

Between the pier-gate and Warrior Square we had the whole story worked out.

“What has kept you little boys out so late?” asked a voice as we entered Mr Hullock’s hall. “It’s not right. You should have been in bed by eight.”

It was Aunt Sarah! and we secretly condemned her on the spot to a public execution in our last chapter.

As we undressed that evening another point was cleared up.

“We can’t keep the hero hanging about sixteen years before we bring him in,” said Harry.