Page:The Story of the Treasure Seekers.djvu/26

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8
THE TREASURE SEEKERS

really did rattle because we always keep the bad sixpence in it for luck.

"Yes—but what shall we do?" said Dicky. "It's so jolly easy to say let's do something." Dicky always wants everything settled exactly. Father calls him the Definite Article.

"Let's read all the books again. We shall get lots of ideas out of them." It was Noël who suggested this, but we made him shut up, because we knew well enough he only wanted to get back to his old books. Noël is a poet. He sold some of his poetry once—and it was printed, but that does not come in this part of the story.

Then Dicky said, "Look here. We'll be quite quiet for ten minutes by the clock—and each think of some way to find treasure. And when we've thought we'll try all the ways one after the other, beginning with the eldest."

"I shan't be able to think in ten minutes, make it half an hour," said H. O. His real name is Horace Octavius, but we call him H. O. because of the advertisement, and it's not so very long ago he was afraid to pass the hoarding where it says "Eat H. O." in big letters. He says it was when he was a little boy, but I remember last Christmas but one, he woke in the middle of the night crying and