Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: '"Don't break down the door! The villains may return any moment and destroy you."'--Page 115.]
_Illustrated by_ CHARLES E. BROCK AND H. R. MILLAR
_Published by Ernest Benn Limited Bouverie House · Fleet Street · London · EC4 and Coward-McCann Inc 210 Madison Avenue · New York 16 · NY_
MOLLY, THE MEASLES, AND THE MISSING WILL 123
SHOWING OFF; OR, THE LOOKING-GLASS BOY 181
THE CHARMED LIFE; OR, THE PRINCESS AND THE LIFT-MAN 224
'_Don't break down the door! The villains may return any moment and destroy you_' _Frontispiece_
_'Here is your prize,' said Oswald_ _facing page_ 30
_'Come into the kitchen,' said Oswald; 'you can drip there quite comfortably'_ 52
_We consented to carry the unfortunate bed-woman to it_ 76
_The room was a very odd shape_ _page_ 103
_A little person in a large white cap_ 121
_Molly had a splendid ride behind the groom_ _facing page_ 134
_The bicycle started, Billy in the saddle and Harold on the step_ 164
'_And what can we do for you to-day, Miss?_' 170
'_Your servant, Miss. Do I understand that you order me to mend this?_' 206
_The little girl had slapped Fina, and taken the pagoda away_ 214
'_We'll see if you are going to begin a-ordering of me about_' 218
_'Come by post, your Lordship,' said the footman_ 254
'_Speak to the dragon as soon as it arrives_' 262
_The two skated into each other's arms_ 270
_'Take that!' cried he, aiming an apple at the old man's head_ _facing page_ 306
_In the drawer was just one jewelled ring. It lay on a written page_ 346
_A black-winged monster, with hundreds and hundreds of eyes_ 350
_On the table stood the dazzling figure of a real full-sized princess_ 358
'_You've got a face as long as a fiddle_' 366
This happened a very little time after we left our humble home in Lewisham, and went to live at the Blackheath house of our Indian uncle, which was replete with every modern convenience, and had a big garden and a great many greenhouses. We had had a lot of jolly Christmas presents, and one of them was Dicky's from father, and it was a printing-press. Not one of the eighteenpenny kind that never come off, but a real tip-topper, that you could have printed a whole newspaper out of if you could have been clever enough to make up all the stuff there is in newspapers. I don't know how people can do it. It's all about different things, but it is all just the same too. But the author is sorry to find he is not telling things from the beginning, as he has been taught. The printing-press really doesn't come into the story till quite a long way on. So it is no use your wondering what it was that we did print with the printing-press. It was not a newspaper, anyway, and it wasn't my young brother's poetry, though he and the girls did do an awful lot of that. It was something much more far-reaching, as you will see if you wait.