"We might try," Jane said; and they all put their tongues out as far as ever they could go, so that it quite stretched their throats, but it only seemed to make them thirstier than ever, besides annoying everyone who went by. So they took their tongues in again, just as Cyril came back with ginger-beer. "I had to pay for it out of my own money, though, that I was going to buy rabbits with," he said. "They wouldn't change the gold. And when I pulled out a handful the man just laughed and said it was card-counters. And I got some sponge-cakes too, out of a glass jar on the bar-counter. And some biscuits with caraways in." The sponge-cakes were both soft and dry and the biscuits were dry too, and yet soft, which biscuits ought not to be. But the ginger-beer made up for everything. "It's my turn now to try to buy something with the money," Anthea said; "I'm next eldest. Where is the pony-cart kept?" It was at The Chequers, and Anthea went in the back way to the yard, because they all knew that little girls ought not to go into the bars of beer-saloons. She came out, as she herself said, "pleased but not proud." "He'll be ready in a brace of shakes, he says," she remarked, "and he's to have one sovereign--or whatever it is--to drive us into Rochester and back, besides waiting there till we've got everything we want. I think I managed very well." "You think yourself jolly clever, I daresay," said Cyril moodily. "How did you do it?" "I wasn't jolly clever enough to go taking handfuls of money out of my pocket, to make it seem cheap, anyway," she retorted. "I just found a young man doing something to a horse's legs with a sponge and a pail. And I held out one sovereign, and I said--'Do you know what this is?' He said 'No,' and he'd call his father. And the old man came, and he said it was a spade guinea; and he said was it my own to do as I liked with, and I said 'Yes'; and I asked about the pony-cart, and I said he could have the guinea if he'd drive us into Rochester. And his name is S. Crispin. And he said, 'Right oh.'" It was a new sensation to be driven in a smart pony-trap along pretty country roads; it was very pleasant too (which is not always the case with new sensations), quite apart from the beautiful plans of spending the money which each child made as they went along, silently of course and quite to itself, for they felt it would never have done to let the old innkeeper hear them talk in the affluent sort of way in which they were thinking. The old man put them down by the bridge at their request. "If you were going to buy a carriage and horses, where would you go?" asked Cyril, as if he were only asking for the sake of something to say.