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So he said, “What’s up?”

“I’ve got an idea,” the Dentist said. “Let’s call a council.” The Dentist had grown quite used to our ways now. We had called him Dentist ever since the fox-hunt day. He called a council as if he had been used to calling such things all his life, and having them come, too; whereas we all know that his former existing was that of a white mouse in a trap, with that cat of a Murdstone aunt watching him through the bars.

(That is what is called a figure of speech. Albert’s uncle told me.)

Councils are held in the straw-loft.

As soon as we were all there and the straw had stopped rustling after our sitting down, Dicky said:

“I hope it’s nothing to do with the Wouldbegoods?”

“No,” said Denny in a hurry: “quite the opposite.”

“I hope it’s nothing wrong,” said Dora and Daisy together.

“It’s–it’s ‘Hail to thee, blithe spirit–bird thou never wert,'” said Denny. “I mean, I think it’s what is called a lark.”

“You never know your luck. Go on, Dentist,” said Dick.

“Well, then, do you know a book called The Daisy Chain ?”

We didn’t.

“It’s by Miss Charlotte M. Yonge,” Daisy interrupted, “and it’s about a family of poor motherless children who tried so hard to be good, and they were confirmed, and had a bazaar, and went to church at the Minster, and one of them got married and wore black watered silk and silver ornaments. So her baby died, and then she was sorry she had not been a good mother to it. And–“

Here Dicky got up and said he’d got some snares to attend to, and he’d receive a report of the Council after it was over. But he only got as far as the trap-door, and then Oswald, the fleet of foot, closed with him, and they rolled together on the floor–while all the others called out “Come back! Come back!” like guinea-hens on a fence.

Through the rustle and bustle and hustle of the struggle with Dicky, Oswald heard the voice of Denny murmuring one of his everlasting quotations:

“‘Come back, come back!’ he cried in Greek,
‘Across the stormy water,
And I’ll forgive your Highland cheek,
My daughter, O my daughter!'”

When quiet was restored and Dicky had agreed to go through with the Council, Denny said:

” The Daisy Chain is not a bit like that really. It’s a ripping book. One of the boys dresses up like a lady and comes to call, and another tries to hit his little sister with a hoe. It’s jolly fine, I tell you.”

Denny is learning to say what he thinks, just like other boys. He would never have learned such words as “ripping” and “jolly fine” while under the auntal tyranny.

Since then I have read The Daisy Chain. It is a first-rate book for girls and little boys.

But we did not want to talk about The Daisy Chain just then, so Oswald said:

“But what’s your lark?”

Denny got pale pink and said:

“Don’t hurry me. I’ll tell you directly. Let me think a minute.”

Then he shut his pale pink eyelids a moment in thought, and then opened them and stood up on the straw and said very fast:

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears, or if not ears, pots. You know we’ve been told that they are going to open the barrow, to look for Roman remains to-morrow. Don’t you think it seems a pity they shouldn’t find any?”

“Perhaps they will,” Dora said. But Oswald saw, and he said, “Primus! Go ahead, old man.”

The Dentist went ahead.

“In The Daisy Chain,” he said, “they dug in a Roman encampment, and the children went first and put some pottery there they’d made themselves, and Harry’s old medal of the Duke of Wellington. The doctor helped them to some stuff to partly efface the inscription, and all the grown-ups were sold. I thought we might: