It began with the pig dying--it was the one we had for the circus, but it having behaved so badly that day had nothing to do with its illness and death, though the girls said they felt remorse, and perhaps if we hadn’t made it run so that day it might have been spared to us. But Oswald cannot pretend that people were right just because they happen to be dead, and as long as that pig was alive we all knew well enough that it was it that made us run--and not us it.
The pig was buried in the kitchen garden. Bill, that we made the tombstone for, dug the grave, and while he was away at his dinner we took a turn at digging, because we like to be useful, and besides, when you dig you never know what you may turn up. I knew a man once that found a gold ring on the point of his fork when he was digging potatoes, and you know how we found two half-crowns ourselves once when we were digging for treasure.
Oswald was taking his turn with the spade, and the others were sitting on the gravel and telling him how to do it.
Alice said, ‘I wish we were in a book. People in books never dig without finding something. I think I’d rather it was a secret passage than anything.’
Oswald stopped to wipe his honest brow ere replying.
‘A secret’s nothing when you’ve found it out. Look at the secret staircase. It’s no good, not even for hide-and-seek, because of its squeaking. I’d rather have the pot of gold we used to dig for when we were little.’ It was really only last year, but you seem to grow old very quickly after you have once passed the prime of your youth, which is at ten, I believe.
‘How would you like to find the mouldering bones of Royalist soldiers foully done to death by nasty Ironsides?’ Noel asked, with his mouth full of plum.
‘If they were really dead it wouldn’t matter,’ Dora said. ‘What I’m afraid of is a skeleton that can walk about and catch at your legs when you’re going upstairs to bed.’ ‘Skeletons can’t walk,’ Alice said in a hurry; ‘you know they can’t, Dora.’
And she glared at Dora till she made her sorry she had said what she had. The things you are frightened of, or even those you would rather not meet in the dark, should never be mentioned before the little ones, or else they cry when it comes to bed-time, and say it was because of what you said.