"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 paintbox 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 A 1."
Noël 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.
