The idea of being gipsies was due to Alice. She had not at all liked being entirely out of the smuggling affray, though Oswald explained to her that it was her own fault for having been born a girl. And, of course, after the event, Dicky and I had some things to talk about that the girls hadn't, and we had a couple of wet days. You have no idea how dull you can be in a house like that, unless you happen to know the sort of house I mean. A house that is meant for plain living and high thinking, like Miss Sandal told us, may be very nice for the high thinkers, but if you are not accustomed to thinking high there is only the plain living left, and it is like boiled rice for every meal to any young mind, however much beef and Yorkshire there may be for the young insides. Mrs. Beale saw to our having plenty of nice things to eat, but, alas! it is not always dinner-time, and in between meals the cold rice-pudding feeling is very chilling. Of course we had the splendid drawings of winged things made by our Flying Lodger, but you cannot look at pictures all day long, however many coloured chalks they are drawn with, and however fond you may be of them. Miss Sandal's was the kind of house that makes you wander all round it and say, "What shall we do next?" And when it rains the little ones get cross. It was the second wet day when we were wandering round the house to the sad music of our boots on the clean, bare boards that Alice said-- "Mrs. Beale has got a book at her house called 'Napoleon's book of Fate.' You might ask her to let you go and get it, Oswald. She likes you best." Oswald is as modest as any one I know, but the truth is the truth. "We could tell our fortunes, and read the dark future," Alice went on. "It would be better than high thinking without anything particular to think about." So Oswald went down to Mrs. Beale and said-- "I say, Bealie dear, you've got a book up at your place. I wish you'd lend it to us to read." "If it's the Holy Book you mean, sir," replied Mrs. Beale, going on with peeling the potatoes that were to be a radiant vision later on, all brown and crisp in company with a leg of mutton--"if it's the Holy Book you want there's one up on Miss Sandal's chest of drawerses." "I know," said Oswald. He knew every book in the house. The backs of them were beautiful--leather and gold--but inside they were like whited sepulchres, full of poetry and improving reading. "No--we didn't want that book just now. It is a book called 'Napoleon's book of Fate.' Would you mind if I ran up to your place and got it?" "There's no one at home," said Mrs. Beale; "wait a bit till I go along to the bakus with the meat, and I'll fetch it along." "You might let me go," said Oswald, whose high spirit is always ill-attuned to waiting a bit. "I wouldn't touch anything else, and I know where you keep the key."