The Story of the Treasure Seekers | Page 9

I say, he was buried after all. Why
shouldn't we let him have the odd somethings, and we'll have fourpence
each.'
We all agreed to do this, and told Albert-next-door we would bring his
share as soon as we could get the half-crown changed. He cheered up a
little at that, and his uncle wiped his face again--he did look hot--and
began to put on his coat and waistcoat.
When he had done it he stooped and picked up something. He held it

up, and you will hardly believe it, but it is quite true--it was another
half-crown!
'To think that there should be two!' he said; 'in all my experience of
buried treasure I never heard of such a thing!'
I wish Albert-next-door's uncle would come treasure-seeking with us
regularly; he must have very sharp eyes: for Dora says she was looking
just the minute before at the very place where the second half-crown
was picked up from, and SHE never saw it.
CHAPTER 3
BEING DETECTIVES
The next thing that happened to us was very interesting. It was as real
as the half-crowns--not just pretending. I shall try to write it as like a
real book as I can. Of course we have read Mr Sherlock Holmes, as
well as the yellow-covered books with pictures outside that are so
badly printed; and you get them for fourpence-halfpenny at the
bookstall when the corners of them are beginning to curl up and get
dirty, with people looking to see how the story ends when they are
waiting for trains. I think this is most unfair to the boy at the bookstall.
The books are written by a gentleman named Gaboriau, and Albert's
uncle says they are the worst translations in the world--and written in
vile English. Of course they're not like Kipling, but they're jolly good
stories. And we had just been reading a book by Dick
Diddlington--that's not his right name, but I know all about libel actions,
so I shall not say what his name is really, because his books are rot.
Only they put it into our heads to do what I am going to narrate.
It was in September, and we were not to go to the seaside because it is
so expensive, even if you go to Sheerness, where it is all tin cans and
old boots and no sand at all. But every one else went, even the people
next door--not Albert's side, but the other. Their servant told Eliza they
were all going to Scarborough, and next day sure enough all the blinds
were down and the shutters up, and the milk was not left any more.
There is a big horse-chestnut tree between their garden and ours, very

useful for getting conkers out of and for making stuff to rub on your
chilblains. This prevented our seeing whether the blinds were down at
the back as well, but Dicky climbed to the top of the tree and looked,
and they were.
It was jolly hot weather, and very stuffy indoors--we used to play a
good deal in the garden. We made a tent out of the kitchen
clothes-horse and some blankets off our beds, and though it was quite
as hot in the tent as in the house it was a very different sort of hotness.
Albert's uncle called it the Turkish Bath. It is not nice to be kept from
the seaside, but we know that we have much to be thankful for. We
might be poor little children living in a crowded alley where even at
summer noon hardly a ray of sunlight penetrates; clothed in rags and
with bare feet--though I do not mind holes in my clothes myself, and
bare feet would not be at all bad in this sort of weather. Indeed we do,
sometimes, when we are playing at things which require it. It was
shipwrecked mariners that day, I remember, and we were all in the
blanket tent. We had just finished eating the things we had saved, at the
peril of our lives, from the st-sinking vessel. They were rather nice
things. Two-pennyworth of coconut candy--it was got in Greenwich,
where it is four ounces a penny--three apples, some macaroni--the
straight sort that is so useful to suck things through--some raw rice, and
a large piece of cold suet pudding that Alice nicked from the larder
when she went to get the rice and macaroni. And when we had finished
some one said--
'I should like to be a detective.'
I wish to be quite fair, but I cannot remember exactly who said it.
Oswald thinks he said it, and Dora says it was Dicky, but Oswald is too
much of a man to quarrel about a little thing like that.
'I should like to