She had dressed even to her collar--and made Noel do it too--but the rest of us were in blankets with just a few odd things put on anyhow underneath.
The robber frowned and sighed.
'No,' he said, 'I was brought up to the law.

I was at Balliol, bless your hearts, and that's true anyway.' He sighed again, and looked hard at the fire.
'That was my Father's college,' H.O.was beginning, but Dicky said--'Why did you leave off being a pirate ?' 'A pirate ?' he said, as if he had not been thinking of such things.
'Oh, yes; why I gave it up because--because I could not get over the dreadful sea-sickness.' 'Nelson was sea-sick,' said Oswald.
'Ah,' said the robber; 'but I hadn't his luck or his pluck, or something.

He stuck to it and won Trafalgar, didn't he?
"Kiss me, Hardy"-- and all that, eh?
_I_ couldn't stick to it--I had to resign.

And nobody kissed _me_.' I saw by his understanding about Nelson that he was really a man who had been to a good school as well as to Balliol.
Then we asked him, 'And what did you do then ?' And Alice asked if he was ever a coiner, and we told him how we had thought we'd caught the desperate gang next door, and he was very much interested and said he was glad he had never taken to coining.
'Besides, the coins are so ugly nowadays,' he said, 'no one could really find any pleasure in making them.

And it's a hole-and-corner business at the best, isn't it ?--and it must be a very thirsty one--with the hot metal and furnaces and things.' And again he looked at the fire.
Oswald forgot for a minute that the interesting stranger was a robber, and asked him if he wouldn't have a drink.