Welcome to Litsy!

It's about a group of siblings who overhear that their family's "fortunes have fallen," so they decide to restore them by various get-rich-quick schemes: digging for treasure, going into business, rescuing wealthy old men, etc. All plans work about as well as you'd expect, most get them in trouble, some nearly kill someone. What makes it great is the narrator's voice and the author's distaste for moralizing. It's a hoot.

You get me, Edith Nesbit!

"I am afraid the last chapter was rather dull. It is always dull in books when people talk and talk, and don't do anything, but I was obliged to put it in, or else you wouldn't have understood all the rest. The best part of books is when things are happening."