The truth was that Tom was intoning a sentence from Henry's prize essay on streets. Tom had read the essay and pronounced it excellent, and till this very moment on the pavement of Oxford Street Henry had imagined Tom's verdict to be serious. He now knew that it was not serious. Tom continued to chant, with pauses: 'Some streets are longer than others.... Very few streets are straight.... But we read in the Bible of the street which is called Straight.... Oxford Street is nearly straight.... A street is what you go along.... It has a road and two footpaths.' Henry would have given his penknife not to have written that essay. The worst of Tom was that he could make anything look silly without saying that it was silly--a trick that Henry envied. Tom sang further: 'In the times before the French Revolution the streets of Paris had no pavements ... _e.g._, they were all road.... It was no infrequent occurrence for people to be maimed for life, or even seriously injured, against walls by passing carriages of haughty nobles.' 'I didn't put "haughty,"' Henry cried passionately. 'Didn't you?' Tom said with innocence. 'But you put "or even seriously injured."' 'Well?' said Henry dubiously. 'And you put "It was no infrequent occurrence." Where did you steal that from, my bold buccaneer?' 'I didn't steal it,' Henry asserted. 'I made it up.' 'Then you will be a great writer,' Tom said. 'If I were you, I should send a telegram to Tennyson, and tell him to look out for himself. Here's a telegraph-office. Come on.' And Tom actually did enter a doorway. But it proved to be the entrance to a large and magnificent confectioner's shop. Henry followed him timidly. 'A pound of marrons glaces,' Tom demanded. 'What are they?' Henry whispered up at Tom's ear. 'Taste,' said Tom, boldly taking a sample from the scales while the pound was being weighed out. 'It's like chestnuts,' Harry mumbled through the delicious brown frosted morsel. 'But nicer.' 'They are rather like chestnuts, aren't they?' said Tom. The marrons glaces were arranged neatly in a beautiful box; the box was wrapped in paper of one colour, and then further wrapped in paper of another colour, and finally bound in pink ribbon. 'Golly!' murmured Henry in amaze, for Tom had put down a large silver coin in payment, and received no change. They came out, Henry carrying the parcel. 'But will they do me any harm?' the boy asked apprehensively. The two cousins had reached Hyde Park, and were lying on the grass, and Tom had invited Henry to begin the enterprise of eating his birthday present. 'Harm! I should think not. They are the best things out for the constitution. Not like sweets at all. Doctors often give them to patients when they are getting better. And they're very good for sea-sickness too.' So Henry opened the box and feasted. One half of the contents had disappeared within twenty minutes, and Tom had certainly not eaten more than two marrons.