The girls had got the letter the Maidstone Antiquarian Society and Field Clubs Secretary had sent to Albert's uncle--H.O. said they kept it for a momentum of the day--and we altered the dates and names in blue chalk and put in a piece about might we skate on the moat, and gave it to Noel, who had already begun to make up his poetry about Agincourt, and so had to be shaken before he would attend. And that evening, when Father and our Indian uncle and Albert's uncle were seeing the others on the way to Forest Hill, Noel's poetry and pencil were taken away from him and he was shut up in Father's room with the Remington typewriter, which we had never been forbidden to touch. And I don't think he hurt it much, except quite at the beginning, when he jammed the "S" and the "J" and the thing that means per cent. so that they stuck--and Dicky soon put that right with a screwdriver. He did not get on very well, but kept on writing MOR7E HOAS5 or MORD6M HOVCE on new pieces of paper and then beginning again, till the floor was strewn with his remains; so we left him at it, and went and played Celebrated Painters--a game even Dora cannot say anything about on Sunday, considering the Bible kind of pictures most of them painted. And much later, the library door having banged once and the front door twice, Noel came in and said he had posted it, and already he was deep in poetry again, and had to be roused when requisite for bed. It was not till next day that he owned that the typewriter had been a fiend in disguise, and that the letter had come out so odd that he could hardly read it himself. "The hateful engine of destruction wouldn't answer to the bit in the least," he said, "and I'd used nearly a wastepaper basket of Father's best paper, and I thought he might come in and say something, so I just finished it as well as I could, and I corrected it with the blue chalk--because you'd bagged that B.B. of mine--and I didn't notice what name I'd signed till after I'd licked the stamp." The hearts of his kind brothers and sisters sank low. But they kept them up as well as they could, and said-- [Illustration: IT WAS NOT TILL NEXT DAY THAT HE OWNED THAT THE TYPEWRITER HAD BEEN A FIEND IN DISGUISE.] "What name _did_ you sign?" And Noel said, "Why, Edward Turnbull, of course--like at the end of the real letter. You never crossed it out like you did his address." "No," said Oswald witheringly. "You see, I did think, whatever else you didn't know, I did think you knew your own silly name." Then Alice said Oswald was unkind, though you see he was not, and she kissed Noel and said she and he would take turns to watch for the postman, so as to get the answer (which of course would be subscribed on the envelope with the name of Turnbull instead of Bastable) before the servant could tell the postman that the name was a stranger to her.