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—
