THE WOULDBEGOODS
Alice told me afterwards she should have been afraid if it had been dark. But the moonlight made it as bright as day is in your dreams.
Oswald had taken the spade and a sheet of newspaper.
We did not take all the pots Alice had found—but just the two that weren't broken—two crooked jugs, made of stuff like flower-pots are made of. We made two long cuts with the spade and lifted the turf up and scratched the earth under, and took it out very carefully in handfuls on to the newspaper, till the hole was deepish. Then we put in the jugs, and filled it up with earth and flattened the turf over. Turf stretches like elastic. This we did a couple of yards from the place where the mound was dug into by the men, and we had been so careful with the newspaper that there was no loose earth about.
Then we went home in the wet moonlight—at least, the grass was very wet—chuckling through the peppermint, and got up to bed without any one knowing a single thing about it.
The next day the Antiquities came. It was a jolly hot day, and the tables were spread under the trees on the lawn, like a large and very grand Sunday-school treat. There were dozens of different kinds of cake, and bread-and-butter, both white and brown, and gooseberries and plums and jam sandwiches. And the girls decorated the tables with flowers—blue larkspur and white canterbury bells. And at about three there was a noise of people walking in the road, and presently
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