THE WOULDBEGOODS
afterwards like All the Year Round Christmas numbers. Oh, do let's!"
Alice was wriggling so with earnestness that Dicky thumped her to make her calm.
"We might do it, just for one day," Oswald said, "but it wouldn't be much—only a drop in the ocean compared with the enormous dryness of all the people in the whole world. Still, every little helps, as the mermaid said when she cried into the sea."
"I know a piece of poetry about that," Denny said.
"'Small things are best.
Care and unrest
To wealth and rank are given.
But little things
On little wings—'
Do something or other, I forget what, but it means the same as Oswald was saying about the mermaid."
"What are you going to call it?" asked Noël coming out of a dream.
"Call what?"
"The Free Drinks game.
"'It's a horrid shame
If the Free Drinks game
Doesn't have a name.
You would be to blame
If any one came
And—'"
"Oh, shut up!" remarked Dicky. "You've been making that rot up all the time we've been
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