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“What for?” said Oswald.

“Why, so that we shouldn’t warn the other army, you silly,” Alice said, and Oswald was so upset by what she said that he forgot to be properly angry with her for the wrong word she used.

“But we ought to warn them at home,” she said; “suppose the Moat House was burned down, and all the supplies commandeered for the foe?”

Alice turned boldly to the soldier. ” Do you burn down farms?” she asked.

“Well, not as a rule,” he said, and he had the cheek to wink at Oswald, but Oswald would not look at him. “We’ve not burned a farm since–oh, not for years.”

“A farm in Greek history it was, I expect,” Denny murmured.

“Civilized warriors do not burn farms nowadays,” Alice said, sternly, “whatever they did in Greek times. You ought to know that.”

The soldier said things had changed a good deal since Greek times. So we said good-morning as quickly as we could: it is proper to be polite even to your enemy, except just at the moments when it has really come to rifles and bayonets or other weapons.

The soldier said, “So long!” in quite a modern voice, and we retraced our footsteps in silence to the ambush–I mean the wood. Oswald did think of lying in the ambush then, but it was rather wet, because of the rain the night before, that H. O. said had brought the army-seed up. And Alice walked very fast, saying nothing but “Hurry up, can’t you!” and dragging H. O. by one hand and Noel by the other. So we got into the road.

Then Alice faced round and said, “This is all our fault. If we hadn’t sowed those dragon’s teeth there wouldn’t have been any invading army.”

I am sorry to say Daisy said, “Never mind, Alice, dear. We didn’t sow the nasty things, did we, Dora?”

But Denny told her it was just the same. It was we had done it, so long as it was any of us, especially if it got any of us into trouble. Oswald was very pleased to see that the Dentist was beginning to understand the meaning of true manliness, and about the honor of the house of Bastable, though of course he is only a Foulkes. Yet it is something to know he does his best to learn.

If you are very grown-up, or very clever, I dare say you will now have thought of a great many things. If you have you need not say anything, especially if you’re reading this aloud to anybody. It’s no good putting in what you think in this part, because none of us thought anything of the kind at the time.

We simply stood in the road without any of your clever thoughts, filled with shame and distress to think of what might happen owing to the dragon’s teeth being sown. It was a lesson to us never to sow seed without being quite sure what sort it is. This is particularly true of the penny packets, which sometimes do not come up at all, quite unlike dragon’s teeth.

Of course H. O. and Noel were more unhappy than the rest of us. This was only fair.

“How can we possibly prevent their getting to Maidstone?” Dicky said. “Did you notice the red cuffs on their uniforms? Taken from the bodies of dead English soldiers, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“If they’re the old Greek kind of dragon’s-teeth soldiers they ought to fight each other to death,” Noel said; “at least, if we had a helmet to throw among them.”

But none of us had, and it was decided that it would be no use for H. O. to go back and throw his straw hat at them, though he wanted to.

Denny said, suddenly:

“Couldn’t we alter the sign-posts, so that they wouldn’t know the way to Maidstone?”

Oswald saw that this was the time for true generalship to be shown. He said: