It was plain that all disagreeableness was at an end, and, to show this even to the stupidest, she instantly asked us to lunch. Before we could politely accept H.O. shoved his oar in as usual and said _he_ would stop no matter how little there was for lunch because he liked her very much. So she laughed, and Mr. Red House laughed, and she said they wouldn't interfere with the papers, and they went away and left us. Of course Oswald and Dicky insisted on going on with the papers; though the girls wanted to talk about Mrs. Red House, and how nice she was, and the way her dress was made. Oswald finished his paper, but later he was sorry he had been in such a hurry, because after a bit Mrs. Red House came out, and said she wanted to play too. She pretended to be a very ancient antiquary, and was most jolly, so that the others read their papers to her, and Oswald knows she would have liked his paper best, because it _was_ the best, though I say it. Dicky's turned out to be all about that patent screw, and how Nelson would not have been killed if his ship had been built with one. Daisy's paper was about Lady Jane Grey, and hers and Dora's were exactly alike, the dullest by far, because they had got theirs out of books. Alice had not written hers because she had been helping Noel to copy his. Denny's was about King Charles, and he was very grown-up and fervent about this ill-fated monarch and white roses. Mrs. Red House took us into the summer-houses, where it was warmer, and such is the wonderful architecture of the Red House gardens that there was a fresh summer-house for each paper, except Noel's and H.O.'s, which were read in the stable. There were no horses there. Noel's was very long, and it began-- "This is the story of Agincourt. If you don't know it you jolly well ought. It was a famous battle fair, And all your ancestors fought there That is if you come of a family old. The Bastables do; they were always very bold. And at Agincourt They fought As they ought; So we have been taught." And so on and so on, till some of us wondered why poetry was ever invented. But Mrs. Red House said she liked it awfully, so Noel said-- "You may have it to keep. I've got another one of it at home." "I'll put it next my heart, Noel," she said. And she did, under the blue stuff and fur. H.O.'s was last, but when we let him read it he wouldn't, so Dora opened his envelope and it was thick inside with blotting-paper, and in the middle there was a page with "1066 WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR," and nothing else. "Well," he said, "I said I'd write all I knew about 1066, and that's it. I can't write more than I know, can I?" The girls said he couldn't, but Oswald thought he might have tried.