CONTENTS
1. The Council of Ways and Means
2. Digging for Treasure
3. Being Detectives
4. Good Hunting
5. The Poet and the Editor
6. Noel's Princess
7. Being Bandits
8. Being Editors
9. The G. B.
10. Lord Tottenham
11. Castilian Amoroso
12. The Nobleness of Oswald
13. The Robber and the Burglar
14. The Divining-rod
15. 'Lo, the Poor Indian!'
16. The End of the Treasure-seeking
CHAPTER 1. THE COUNCIL OF WAYS AND MEANS
This is the story of the different ways we looked for treasure, and I
think when you have read it you will see that we were not lazy about the
looking.
There are some things I must tell before I begin to tell about the
treasure-seeking, because I have read books myself, and I know how
beastly it is when a story begins, "'Alas!" said Hildegarde with a deep
sigh, "we must look our last on this ancestral home"'--and then some one
else says something--and you don't know for pages and pages where the
home is, or who Hildegarde is, or anything about it. Our ancestral home
is in the Lewisham Road. It is semi-detached and has a garden, not a
large one. We are the Bastables. There are six of us besides Father. Our
Mother is dead, and if you think we don't care because I don't tell you
much about her you only show that you do not understand people at all.
Dora is the eldest. Then Oswald--and then Dicky. Oswald won the Latin
prize at his preparatory school--and Dicky is good at sums. Alice
and Noel are twins: they are ten, and Horace Octavius is my youngest
brother. It is one of us that tells this story--but I shall not tell you
which: only at the very end perhaps I will. While the story is going
on you may be trying to guess, only I bet you don't. It was Oswald
who first thought of looking for treasure. Oswald often thinks of very
interesting things. And directly he thought of it he did not keep it
to himself, as some boys would have done, but he told the others, and
said--
'I'll tell you what, we must go and seek for treasure: it is always what
you do to restore the fallen fortunes of your House.'
Dora said it was all very well. She often says that. She was trying to
mend a large hole in one of Noel's stockings. He tore it on a nail when
we were playing shipwrecked mariners on top of the chicken-house the day
H. O. fell off and cut his chin: he has the scar still. Dora is the only
one of us who ever tries to mend anything. Alice tries to make things
sometimes. Once she knitted a red scarf for Noel because his chest
is delicate, but it was much wider at one end than the other, and he
wouldn't wear it. So we used it as a pennon, and it did very well,
because most of our things are black or grey since Mother died; and
scarlet was a nice change. Father does not like you to ask for new
things. That was one way we had of knowing that the fortunes of the
ancient House of Bastable were really fallen. Another way was that there
was no more pocket-money--except a penny now and then to the little
ones, and people did not come to dinner any more, like they used to,
with pretty dresses, driving up in cabs--and the carpets got holes in
them--and when the legs came off things they were not sent to be mended,
and we gave _up_ having the gardener except for the front garden, and
not that very often. And the silver in the big oak plate-chest that is
lined with green baize all went away to the shop to have the dents
and scratches taken out of it, and it never came back. We think Father
hadn't enough money to pay the silver man for taking out the dents and
scratches. The new spoons and forks were yellowy-white, and not so heavy
as the old ones, and they never shone after the first day or two.
Father was very ill after Mother died; and while he was ill his
business-partner went to Spain--and there was never much money
afterwards. I don't know why. Then the servants left and there was only
one, a General. A great deal of your comfort and happiness depends on
having a good General. The last but one was nice: she used to make jolly
good currant puddings for us, and let us have the dish on the floor
and pretend it was a wild boar we were killing with our forks. But the
General we have now nearly always makes sago puddings, and they are
the watery kind, and you cannot pretend anything with them, not even
islands, like you do with porridge.
