THE WATER-WORKS
ing without grown-ups. But paddling in back waters was allowed. I say no more.
I have not enumerated Noël's birthday presents because I wish to leave something to the imagination of my young readers. (The best authors always do this.) If you will take the large, red catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores, and just make a list of about fifteen of the things you would like best—prices from 2s. to 25s.—you will get a very good idea of Noël's presents, and it will help you to make up your mind in case you are asked just before your next birthday what you really need.
One of Noël's birthday presents was a cricket-ball. He cannot bowl for nuts, and it was a first-rate ball. So some days after the birthday Oswald offered him to exchange it for a cocoanut he had won at the fair, and two pencils (new), and a brand-new note-book. Oswald thought, and he still thinks, that this was a fair exchange, and so did Noël at the time, and he agreed to it, and was quite pleased till the girls said it wasn't fair, and Oswald had the best of it. And then that young beggar Noël wanted the ball back, but Oswald, though not angry, was firm.
"You said it was a bargain, and you shook hands on it," he said, and he said it quite kindly and calmly.
Noël said he didn't care. He wanted his cricket-ball back.
And the girls said it was a horrid shame.
If they had not said that, Oswald might yet
89
