The Treasure Seekers

The story is narrated by one of six Bastable children — Dora, Oswald, Dicky, twins Alice and Noel, and the youngest, Horace Octavius (H. O.) — who live with their father in a modest semi-detached house on Lewisham Road. Their mother has died, and though the narrator does not dwell on this sadness, it becomes clear early on that the family has fallen on difficult financial times: their father's business partner left suddenly for Spain, money grew scarce, servants were let go one by one, furniture went unmended, and the household's fine silver and comforts quietly disappeared. The children even stopped attending school, and no one needs to be told outright that the "fortunes of the ancient House of Bastable" have fallen.

It is Oswald who first proposes a bold solution: since it is always "what you do to restore the fallen fortunes of your house," the children should go treasure-seeking. Rather than keeping the idea to himself, he shares it eagerly with his brothers and sisters, and the family holds a proper council — seated formally in the dining room, in the very chair scorched years earlier by a Guy Fawkes Day mishap — to decide exactly how they will go about finding this treasure and saving the family.

Each child is given time to think of a plan and then present it in turn, from the eldest down. Oswald suggests dramatically robbing people in the park dressed as highwaymen, an idea Dora immediately dismisses as wrong. Alice proposes using a divining rod to locate buried gold, while young H. O. enthusiastically suggests they all become bandits purely for the fun of pretending. Dicky, ever practical, points out newspaper advertisements promising easy money for simple home-based work, calculating that the children — now free from school — could easily earn a small fortune this way, though he stubbornly refuses to reveal a second idea he has been quietly considering.

Noel, the poetic twin, suggests they simply re-read all their old adventure books for fresh ideas, though the others suspect he mostly just wants an excuse to return to his beloved poetry, and shut him down. When Noel sulks and refuses to keep playing along, threatening instead to either publish his poems or marry a princess, the other children largely ignore his protest and press on. Finally, Dora — who has been holding back her own idea until last, as the eldest and most sensible of the group — stands up and insists it is her turn to decide: rather than any of these fanciful schemes, she proposes simply digging for treasure directly in the garden, arguing plainly that people who dig for treasure always eventually find it.