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some time, and the station-master interfered in the end.
When we got home he was all right with us. He had had time to see it was not our faults, whatever he thought at the time.
He refused to talk about it. Only he said—
"I'm going to take it out of that porter. You leave me alone. I shall think of something presently."
"Revenge is very wrong," said Dora; but even Alice asked her kindly to dry up. We all felt that it was simply piffle to talk copy-book to one so disappointed as our unfortunate brother.
"It is wrong, though," said Dora.
"Wrong be blowed!" said Dicky, snorting; "who began it I should like to know! The station's a beastly awkward place to take it out of any one in. I wish I knew where he lived."
"I know that," said Noël. "I've known it a long time—before Christmas, when we were going to the Moat House."
"Well, what is it, then?" asked Dicky savagely.
"Don't bite his head off," remarked Alice. "Tell us about it, Noël. How do you know?"
"It was when you were weighing yourselves on the weighing machine. I didn't because my weight isn't worth being weighed for. And there was a heap of hampers and turkeys and hares and things, and there was a label on a turkey and brown-paper parcel; and that porter that you hate so said to the other porter——"
"Oh, hurry up, do!" said Dicky.
"I won't tell you at all if you bully me," said Noël, and Alice had to coax him before he would go on.
"Well, he looked at the label and said, 'Little mistake here, Bill—wrong address; ought to be 3, Abel Place, eh?'
"And the other one looked, and he said, 'Yes; it's got your name right enough. Fine turkey, too, and his chains in the parcel. Pity they ain't more careful about addressing things, eh?' So when they had done laughing about it I looked at the label and it said, 'James Johnson, 8, Granville Park.' So I knew it was 3, Abel Place, he lived at, and his name was James Johnson."
"Good old Sherlock Holmes!" said Oswald.
"You won't really hurt him," said Noël, "will you? Not Corsican revenge with knives, or poisoned bowls? I wouldn't do more than a good booby-trap, if I was you."
When Noël said the word "booby-trap," we all saw a strange, happy look come over Dicky's face. It is called a far-away look, I believe, and you can see it in the picture of a woman cuddling a photograph-album with her hair down, that is in all the shops, and they call it "The Soul's Awakening."
Directly Dicky's soul had finished waking up he shut his teeth together with a click. Then he said, "I've got it."
Of course we all knew that.
"Any one who thinks revenge is wrong is asked to leave now."
Dora said he was very unkind, and did he really want to turn her out?
"There's a jolly good fire in Father's study," he said. "No, I'm not waxy with you, but I'm going to have my revenge, and I don't want you to do anything you thought wrong. You'd only make no end of a fuss afterwards."
"Well, it is wrong, so I'll go," said Dora. "Don't say I didn't warn you, that's all!"
And she went.
Then Dicky said, "Now, any more conscious objectors?"
And when no one replied he went on: "It was you saying 'Booby-trap' gave me the idea. His name's James Johnson, is it? And he said the things were addressed wrong, did he? Well, I'll send him a Turkey-and-chains."
"A Turk in chains," said Noël, growing owley-eyed at the thought—"a live Turk—or—no, not a dead one, Dicky?"
"The Turk I'm going to send won't be a live one nor yet a dead one."
"How horrible! Half dead. That's worse than anything," and Noël became so green in the face that Alice told Dicky to stop playing the goat, and tell us what his idea really was.
"Don't you see yet?" he cried; "I saw it directly."
"I daresay," said Oswald; "it's easy to see your own idea. Drive ahead."
"Well, I'm going to get a hamper and pack it full of parcels and put a list of them on the top—beginning Turk-and-chains, and send it to Mister James Johnson, and when he opens the parcels there'll be nothing inside."
"There must be something, you know," said H.O., "or the parcels won't be any shape except flatness."
"Oh, there'll be something right enough," was the bitter reply of the one who had not been to the Hippodrome, "but it won't be the sort of something he'll expect it to be. Let's do it now. I'll get a hamper."
He got a big one out of the cellar and four empty bottles with their straw cases. We filled the bottles with black ink and water, and red ink and water, and soapy water, and water plain. And we put them down on the list—
1 bottle of port wine.
1 bottle of sherry wine.
1 bottle of sparkling champagne.
1 bottle of rum.
The rest of the things we put on the list were—
1 turkey-and-chains.
2 pounds of chains.
1 plum-pudding.
4 pounds of mince-pies.
2 pounds of almonds and raisins.
1 box of figs.
1 bottle of French plums.
1 large cake.
And we made up parcels to look outside as if their inside was full of the delicious attributes described in the list. It was rather difficult to get anything the shape of a turkey but with coals and crushed newspapers and firewood we did it, and when it was done up with lots of string and the paper artfully squeezed tight to the firewood to look like the Turk's legs it really was almost lifelike in its deceivingness. The chains, or sausages, we did with dusters—and not clean ones—rolled tight, and the paper moulded gently to their forms. The plum-pudding was a newspaper ball. The mince-pies were newspapers too, and so were the almonds and raisins. The box of figs was a real fig-box with cinders and ashes in it damped to keep them from rattling about. The French-plum bottle was real too. It had newspaper soaked in ink in it, and the cake was half a muff-box of Dora's done up very carefully and put at the bottom of the hamper. Inside the muff-box we put a paper with—
"Revenge is not wrong when the other people begin. It was you began, and now you are jolly well served out."
We packed all the bottles and parcels into the hamper, and put the list on the very top, pinned to the paper that covered the false breast of the imitation Turk.
Dicky wanted to write—"From an unknown friend," but we did not think that was fair, considering how Dicky felt.
So at last we put—"From one who does not wish to sign his name."
And that was true, at any rate.
Dicky and Oswald lugged the hamper down to the shop that has Carter Paterson's board outside.
"I vote we don't pay the carriage," said Dicky, but that was perhaps because he was still so very angry about being pulled off the train. Oswald had not had it done to him, so he said that we ought to pay the carriage. And he was jolly glad afterwards that this honourable feeling had arisen in his young bosom, and that he had jolly well made Dicky let it rise in his.
We paid the carriage. It was one-and-five-pence, but Dicky said it was cheap for a high-class revenge like this, and after all it was his money the carriage was paid with.
So then we went home and