wasting our time, not trying to rescue the old gentleman in deadly peril. Come—buck up! Do let's do something!"
It was dinner-time, and Pincher was going round getting the bits off the plates. There were plenty because it was cold-mutton day. And Alice said—
"It's only fair to try Oswald's way—he has tried all the things the others thought of. Why couldn't we rescue Lord Tottenham?"
Lord Tottenham is the old gentleman who walks over the Heath every day in a paper collar at three o'clock—and when he gets halfway, if there is no one about, he changes his collar and throws the dirty one into the furze-bushes.
Dicky said, "Lord Tottenham's all right—but where's the deadly peril?"
And we couldn't think of any. There are no highwaymen on Blackheath now, I am sorry to say. And though Oswald said half of us could be highwaymen and the other half rescue party, Dora kept on saying it would be wrong to be a highwayman—and so we had to give that up.
Then Alice said, "What about Pincher?"
And we all saw at once that it could be done.
