E. Nesbit

“ The girls instantly wanted to nurse the baby so we let them. And we explored the castle. We had never happened to explore one thoroughly before. We did not find the deepest dungeon below the castle moat, though we looked everywhere for it, but we found everything else you can think of belonging to castles—even the holes they used to pour boiling lead through into the eyes of besiegers when they tried to squint up to see how strong the garrison was in the keep—and the little slits they shot arrows through, and the mouldering remains of the portcullis. ”

“ You feel equivalent to meeting any one, and have "a heart for any fate," as it says in the poetry-book, and yet you are not starched and booted and stiffened and tightened out of all human feelings.
Lynwood Castle is in a hollow in the hills. ”

“ My own idea was to pluck a waggonette from the nearest bush. I suppose they grow freely in these parts?"
"There's one at the 'Ship,'" said Alice; "it costs seven-and-six to pluck it, just for going to the station."
"Well, then! And to stuff our waggonette with lunch and drive over to Lynwood Castle, and eat it there."
"A picnic!" fell in accents of joy from the lips of one and all.
"We'll also boil the billy in the castle courtyard, and eat buns in the shadow of the keep." ”

“ Games, however unusually splendid, have to come to an end. And when the games were over and it was tea, and the village children were sent away, and Oswald went to call Dora and the prisoner's son, he found nothing but Dora, and he saw at once, in his far-sighted way, that she had been crying. ”

“ Red House went on; "look here, our kids—who'll go and talk to the poor little chap?"
We all instantly said, "I will!"
The present author was chosen to be the one.
When you think about yourself there is a kind of you that is not what you generally are but that you know you would like to be if only you were good enough. Albert's uncle says this is called your ideal of yourself. I will call it your best I, for short. Oswald's "best I" was glad to go and talk to that boy whose father was in prison, but the Oswald that generally exists hated being out of the games. ”

“ You can't be poor and needy any way, whatever your——"
We hastily hushed him, stifling his murmurs with sand.
"I always think," said Mrs. Bax dreamily, "that 'the more the merrier,' is peculiarly true of picnics. So I have arranged—always subject to your approval, of course—to meet your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Red House, there, and——"
We drowned her conclusive remarks with a cheer. And Oswald, always willing to be of use, offered to go to the 'Ship' and see about the waggonette. I like horses and stable-yards, and the smell of hay and straw, and talking to ostlers and people like that. ”

“ Red House invited them all to join in games with us we knew we ought to be pleased. But village children are not taught rounders, and though we wondered at first why their teachers had not seen to this, we understood presently. Because it is most awfully difficult to make them understand the very simplest thing. ”