BEING editors is not the best way to wealth. We all feel this now, and highwaymen are not respected any more like they used to be.

I am sure we had tried our best to restore our fallen fortunes. We felt their fall very much, because we knew the Bastables had been rich once. Dora and Oswald can remember when Father was always bringing nice things home from London, and there used to be turkeys and geese and wine and cigars come by the carrier at Christmas‐time, and boxes of candied fruit and French plums in ornamental boxes with silk and velvet and gilding on them. They were called prunes, but the prunes you buy at the grocers are quite different. But now there is seldom anything nice brought from London, and the turkey page: 134 and the prune people have forgotten Father’s address.

“How can we restore those beastly fallen fortunes?” said Oswald. “We’ve tried digging and writing and princesses and being editors.”

“And being bandits,” said H.O.

“When did you try that?” asked Dora quickly. “You know I told you it was wrong.”

“It wasn’t wrong the way we did it,” said Alice, quicker still, before Oswald could say, “Who asked you to tell us anything about it?” which would have been rude, and he is glad he didn’t. “We only caught Albert‐next‐door.”

“Oh, Albert‐next‐door!” said Dora contemptuously, and I felt more comfortable; for even after I didn’t say, “Who asked you, and cetera,” I was afraid Dora was going to come the good elder sister over us. She does that a jolly sight too often.

Dicky looked up from the paper he was reading and said, “This sounds likely,” and he read out—

￡100 secures partnership in lucrative business for sale of useful patent. ￡10 weekly. No personal attendance necessary. Jobbins, 300, Old Street Road.
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“I wish we could secure that partnership,” said Oswald. He is twelve, and a very thoughtful boy for his age.

Alice looked up from her painting. She was trying to paint a fairy queen’s frock with green bice, and it wouldn’t rub. There is something funny about green bice. It never will rub off; no matter how expensive your paint‐box is—and even boiling water is very little use.

She said, “Bother the bice! And, Oswald, it’s no use thinking about that. Where are we to get a hundred pounds?”

“Ten pounds a week is five pounds to us,” Oswald went on—he had done the sum in his head while Alice was talking—“because partnership means halves. It would be A1.”

No?l sat sucking his pencil—he had been writing poetry as usual. I saw the first two lines—

I wonder why Green Bice Is never very nice.

Suddenly he said, “I wish a fairy would come down the chimney and drop a jewel on the table—a jewel worth just a hundred pounds.”

“She might as well give you the hundred pounds while she was about it,” said Dora.
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“Or while she was about it she might as well give us five pounds a week,” said Alice.

“Or fifty,” said I.

“Or five hundred,” said Dicky.

I saw H.O. open his mouth, and I knew he was going to say, “Or five thousand,” so I said—

“Well, she won’t give us fivepence, but if you’d only do as I am always saying, and rescue a wealthy old gentleman from deadly peril he would give us a pot of money, and we could have the partnership and five pounds a week. Five pounds a week would buy a great many things.”

Then Dicky said, “Why shouldn’t we borrow it?”

So we said, “Who from?” and then he read this out of the paper—

MONEY PRIVATELY WITHOUT FEES. THE BOND STREET BANK. Manager, Z. Rosenbaum.

Advances cash from ￡20 to ￡10,000 on ladies” or gentlemen’s note of hand alone, without security. No fees. No inquiries. Absolute privacy guaranteed.

“What does it all mean?” asked H.O.

“It means that there is a kind gentleman who has a lot of money, and he doesn’t know page: 137 enough poor people to help, so he puts it in the paper that he will help them, by lending them his money—that’s it, isn’t it, Dicky?”

Dora explained this and Dicky said, “Yes.” And H.O. said he was a Generous Benefactor, like in Miss Edgeworth. Then No?l wanted to know what a note of hand was, and Dicky knew that, because he had read it in a book, and it was just a letter saying you will pay the money when you can, and signed with your name.

“No inquiries!” said Alice. “Oh—Dicky—do you think he would?”

“Yes, I think so,” said Dicky. “I wonder Father doesn’t go to this kind gentleman. I’ve seen his name before on a circular in Father’s study.”

“Perhaps he has.” said Dora.

But the rest of us were sure he hadn’t, because, of course, if he had, there would have been more money to buy nice things. Just then Pincher jumped up and knocked over the painting‐water. He is a very careless dog. I wonder why painting‐water is always such an ugly colour? Dora ran for a duster to wipe it up, and H.O. dropped drops of the water on his hands and said he had got the plague. So we played at the plague for a page: 138 bit, and I was an Arab physician with a bath‐towel turban, and cured the plague with magic acid‐drops. After that it was time for dinner, and after dinner we talked it all over and settled that we would go and see the Generous Benefactor the very next day. But we thought perhaps the G.B.—it is short for Generous Benefactor—would not like it if there were so many of us. I have often noticed that it is the worst of our being six—people think six a great many, when it’s children. That sentence looks wrong somehow. I mean they don’t mind six pairs of boots, or six pounds of apples, or six oranges, especially in equations, but they seem to think you ought not to have five brothers and sisters. Of course Dicky was to go, because it was his idea. Dora had to go to Blackheath to see an old lady, a friend of Father’s, so she couldn’t go. Alice said she ought to go, because it said, “Ladies and gentlemen,” and perhaps the G.B. wouldn’t let us have the money unless there were both kinds of us.

H.O. said Alice wasn’t a lady; and she said he wasn’t going, anyway. Then he called her a disagreeable cat, and she began to cry.

But Oswald always tries to make up quarrels, so he said—
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“You’re little sillies, both of you!”

And Dora said, “Don’t cry, Alice; he only meant you weren’t a grown‐up lady.”

Then H.O. said, “What else did you think I meant, Disagreeable?”

So Dicky said, “Don’t be disagreeable yourself, H.O. Let her alone and say you’re sorry, or I’ll jolly well make you!”

So H.O. said he was sorry. Then Alice kissed him and said she was sorry too; and after that H.O. gave her a hug, and said, ”Now I’m really and truly sorry,” so it was all right.

No?l went the last time any of us went to London, so he was out of it, and Dora said she would take him to Blackheath if we’d take H.O. So as there’d been a little disagreeableness we thought it was better to take him, and we did. At first we thought we’d tear our oldest things a bit more, and put some patches of different colours on them, to show the G.B. how much we wanted money. But Dora said that would be a sort of cheating, pretending we were poorer than we are. And Dora is right sometimes, though she is our elder sister. Then we thought we’d better wear our best things, so that the G.B. might see we weren’t so very poor that he couldn’t page: 140 trust us to pay his money back when we had it. But Dora said that would be wrong too. So it came to our being quite honest, as Dora said, and going just as we were, without even washing our faces and hands; but when I looked at H.O. in the train I wished we had not been quite so particularly honest.

Every one who reads this knows what it is like to go in the train, so I shall not tell about it—though it was rather fun, especially the part where the guard came for the tickets at Waterloo, and H.O. was under the seat and pretended to be a dog without a ticket. We went to Charing Cross, and we just went round to Whitehall to see the soldiers and then by St. James’s for the same reason—and when we’d looked in the shops a bit we got to Brook Street, Bond Street. It was a brass plate on a door next to a shop—a very grand place, where they sold bonnets and hats—all very bright and smart, and no tickets on them to tell you the price. We rang a bell and a boy opened the door and we asked for Mr. Rosenbaum. The boy was not polite; he did not ask us in. So then Dicky gave him his visiting card; it was one of Father’s really, but the name is the same, Mr. Richard Bastable, and we others wrote our names underneath. I happened to page: 141 have a piece of pink chalk in my pocket and we wrote them with that.

Then the boy shut the door in our faces and we waited on the step. But presently he came down and asked our business. So Dicky said—

“Money advanced, young shaver! and don’t be all day about it!”

And then he made us wait again, till I was quite stiff in my legs, but Alice liked it because of looking at the hats and bonnets, and at last the door opened, and the boy said—

“Mr. Rosenbaum will see you,” so we wiped our feet on the mat, which said so, and we went up stairs with soft carpets and into a room. It was a beautiful room. I wished then we had put on our best things, or at least washed a little. But it was too late now.

The room had velvet curtains and a soft, soft carpet, and it was full of the most splendid things. Black and gold cabinets, and china, and statues, and pictures. There was a pi............