We had found means to secrete a dish, and we now tried to dish the pudding up, but it stuck to the basin, and had to be dislodged with the chisel. The pudding was horribly pale. We poured the holly sauce over it, and Dora took up the knife and was just cutting it when a few simple words from H.O. turned us from happy and triumphing cookery artists to persons in despair. He said: "How pleased all those kind ladies and gentlemen would be if they knew _we_ were the poor children they gave the shillings and sixpences and things for!" We all said, "_What?_" It was no moment for politeness. "I say," H.O. said, "they'd be glad if they knew it was us was enjoying the pudding, and not dirty little, really poor children." "You should say 'you were,' not 'you was,'" said Dora, but it was as in a dream and only from habit. "Do you mean to say"--Oswald spoke firmly, yet not angrily--"that you and Alice went and begged for money for poor children, and then _kept_ it?" "We didn't keep it," said H.O., "we spent it." "We've kept the _things_, you little duffer!" said Dicky, looking at the pudding sitting alone and uncared for on its dish. "You begged for money for poor children, and then _kept_ it. It's stealing, that's what it is. I don't say so much about you--you're only a silly kid--but Alice knew better. Why did you do it?" He turned to Alice, but she was now too deep in tears to get a word out. H.O. looked a bit frightened, but he answered the question. We have taught him this. He said-- "I thought they'd give us more if I said poor children than if I said just us." "_That's_ cheating," said Dicky--"downright beastly, mean, low cheating." "I'm not," said H.O.; "and you're another." Then he began to cry too. I do not know how the others felt, but I understand from Oswald that he felt that now the honour of the house of Bastable had been stamped on in the dust, and it didn't matter what happened. He looked at the beastly holly that had been left over from the sauce and was stuck up over the pictures. It now appeared hollow and disgusting, though it had got quite a lot of berries, and some of it was the varied kind--green and white. The figs and dates and toffee were set out in the doll's dinner service. The very sight of it all made Oswald blush sickly. He owns he would have liked to cuff H.O., and, if he did for a moment wish to shake Alice, the author, for one, can make allowances. Now Alice choked and spluttered, and wiped her eyes fiercely, and said, "It's no use ragging H.O. It's my fault. I'm older than he is." H.O. said, "It couldn't be Alice's fault. I don't see as it was wrong." "That, not as," murmured Dora, putting her arm round the sinner who had brought this degrading blight upon our family tree, but such is girls' undetermined and affectionate silliness. "Tell sister all about it, H.O. dear. Why couldn't it be Alice's fault?" H.O. cuddled up to Dora and said snufflingly in his nose--