New Treasure Seekers : The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune

WE Bastables have only two uncles, and neither of them, are our own natural-born relatives.

One is a great-uncle, and the other is the uncle from his birth of Albert, who used to live next door to us in the Lewisham Road.

When we first got to know him (it was over some baked potatoes, and is quite another story) we called him Albert-next-door's-Uncle, and then Albert's uncle for short.

But Albert's uncle and my father joined in taking a jolly house in the country, called the Moat House, and we stayed there for our summer holidays; and it was there, through an accident to a pilgrim with peas in his shoes-that's another story too-that we found Albert's uncle's long-lost love; and as she was very old indeed-twenty-six next birthday-and he was ever so much older in the vale of years, he had to get married almost directly, and it was fixed for about Christmas-time. And when our holidays came the whole six of us went down to the Moat House with Father and Albert's uncle.

We never had a Christmas in the country before.