THE DRAGON'S TEETH
ginning to understand the meaning of true manliness, and about the honor 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 dare say 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 Noël were more unhappy than the rest of us. This was only fair.
"How can we possibly prevent their getting to Maidstone?" Dicky 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," Noël said; "at least, if we had a helmet to throw among them."
But none of us had, and it was decided that it
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