I am sorry to say Daisy said, ‘Never mind, Alice, dear. WE didn’t sow the nasty things, did we, Dora?’
But Denny told her it was just the same. It was WE had done it, so long as it was any of us, especially if it got any of us into trouble. Oswald was very pleased to see that the Dentist was beginning to understand the meaning of true manliness, and about the honour of the house of Bastable, though of course he is only a Foulkes. Yet it is something to know he does his best to learn.
If you are very grown-up, or very clever, I daresay you will now have thought of a great many things. If you have you need not say anything, especially if you’re reading this aloud to anybody. It’s no good putting in what you think in this part, because none of us thought anything of the kind at the time.
We simply stood in the road without any of your clever thoughts, filled with shame and distress to think of what might happen owing to the dragon’s teeth being sown. It was a lesson to us never to sow seed without being quite sure what sort it is. This is particularly true of the penny packets, which sometimes do not come up at all, quite unlike dragon’s teeth.
Of course H. O. and Noel were more unhappy than the rest of us. This was only fair.
‘How can we possibly prevent their getting to Maidstone?’ Dickie said. ‘Did you notice the red cuffs on their uniforms? Taken from the bodies of dead English soldiers, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘If they’re the old Greek kind of dragon’s-teeth soldiers, they ought to fight each other to death,’ Noel said; ‘at least, if we had a helmet to throw among them.’
But none of us had, and it was decided that it would be of no use for H. O. to go back and throw his straw hat at them, though he wanted to. Denny said suddenly--
‘Couldn’t we alter the sign-posts, so that they wouldn’t know the way to Maidstone?’
Oswald saw that this was the time for true generalship to be shown.
‘Fetch all the tools out of your chest--Dicky go too, there’s a good chap, and don’t let him cut his legs with the saw.’ He did once, tumbling over it. ‘Meet us at the cross-roads, you know, where we had the Benevolent Bar. Courage and dispatch, and look sharp about it.’
When they had gone we hastened to the crossroads, and there a great idea occurred to Oswald. He used the forces at his command so ably that in a very short time the board in the field which says ‘No thoroughfare. Trespassers will be prosecuted’ was set up in the middle of the road to Maidstone. We put stones, from a heap by the road, behind it to make it stand up.