THE WOULDBEGOODS
are always much nervouser about firearms than we are.
It was Denny's idea getting it; and Oswald owns it surprised him, but the boy was much changed in his character. We got it while the others were grubbing at the pastry-cook's in the High Street, and we said nothing till after tea, though it was hard not to fire at the birds on the telegraph wires as we came home in the train.
After tea we called a council in the straw-loft, and Oswald said:
"Denny and I have got a secret."
"I know what it is," Dicky said, contemptibly. "You've found out that shop in Maidstone where peppermint rock is four ounces a penny. H. O. and I found it out before you did."
Oswald said, "You shut up. If you don't want to hear the secret you'd better bunk. I'm going to administer the secret oath."
This is a very solemn oath, and only used about real things, and never for pretending ones, so Dicky said:
"Oh, all right; go ahead! I thought you were only rotting."
So they all took the secret oath. Noel made it up long before, when he had found the first thrush's nest we ever saw in the Blackheath garden:
"I will not tell, I will not reveal,
I will not touch, or try to steal;
And may I be called a beastly sneak.
If this great secret I ever repeat."
182
