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Alice nudged Oswald and said something about Sir Philip Sidney and the tramp’s need being greater than his, so Oswald was obliged to go to the hole in the top of the wall where we store provisions during sieges, and get out the bottle of ginger-beer which he had gone without when the others had theirs so as to drink it when he got really thirsty.

Meanwhile Alice said:

“We’ve got some ginger-beer; my brother’s getting it. I hope you won’t mind drinking out of our glass. We can’t wash it, you know–unless we rinse it out with a little ginger-beer.”

“Don’t ye do it, miss,” he said, eagerly; “never waste good liquor on washing.”

The glass was beside us on the wall. Oswald filled it with ginger-beer and handed down the foaming tankard to the tramp. He had to lie on his young stomach to do this.

The tramp was really quite polite–one of Nature’s gentlemen, and a man as well, we found out afterwards. He said:

“Here’s to you!” before he drank. Then he drained the glass till the rim rested on his nose.

“Swelp me, but I was dry,” he said. “Don’t seem to matter much what it is, this weather, do it? so long as it’s suthink wet. Well, here’s thanking you.”

“You’re very welcome,” said Dora; “I’m glad you liked it.”

“Like it?” said he. “I don’t suppose you know what it’s like to have a thirst on you. Talk of free schools and free libraries, and free baths and wash-houses and such! Why don’t some one start free drinks ? He’d be a ‘ero, he would. I’d vote for him any day of the week and one over. Ef yer don’t objec I’ll set down a bit and put on a pipe.”

He sat down on the grass and began to smoke. We asked him questions about himself, and he told us many of his secret sorrows–especially about there being no work nowadays for an honest man. At last he dropped asleep in the middle of a story about a vestry he worked for that hadn’t acted fair and square by him like he had by them, or it (I don’t know if vestry is singular or plural), and we went home. But before we went we held a hurried council and collected what money we could from the little we had with us (it was ninepence halfpenny), and wrapped it in an old envelope Dicky had in his pocket and put it gently on the billowing middle of the poor tramp’s sleeping waistcoat, so that he would find it when he woke. None of the dogs said a single syllable while we were doing this, so we knew they believed him to be poor but honest, and we always find it safe to take their word for things like that.

As we went home a brooding silence fell upon us; we found out afterwards that those words of the poor tramp’s about free drinks had sunk deep in all our hearts, and rankled there.

After dinner we went out and sat with our feet in the stream. People tell you it makes your grub disagree with you to do this just after meals, but it never hurts us. There is a fallen willow across the stream that just seats the eight of us, only the ones at the end can’t get their feet into the water properly because of the bushes, so we keep changing places. We had got some liquorice root to chew. This helps thought. Dora broke a peaceful silence with this speech:

“Free drinks.”

The words awoke a response in every breast.

“I wonder some one doesn’t,” H. O. said, leaning back till he nearly toppled in, and was only saved by Oswald and Alice at their own deadly peril.

“Do for goodness sake sit still, H. O.,” observed Alice. “It would be a glorious act! I wish we could.”