THE WOULDBEGOODS
always have a clue directly they hear about the finding of the body. And besides, we might as well let Alice be in anything there is going. And besides, we haven't had our dinners yet."
This argument of Oswald's was so strong and powerful—his arguments are often that, as I dare say you have noticed—that the others agreed. It was Oswald, too, who showed his artless brothers why they had much better not take the deserted perambulator home with them.
"The dead body, or whatever the clew is, is always left exactly as it is found," he said, "till the police have seen it, and the coroner, and the inquest, and the doctor, and the sorrowing relations. Besides, suppose some one saw us with the beastly thing, and thought we had stolen it; then they would say, 'What have you done with the Baby?' and then where should we be?"
Oswald's brothers could not answer this question, but once more Oswald's native eloquence and far-seeing discerningness conquered.
"Anyway," Dicky said, "let's shove the derelict a little further under cover."
So we did.
Then we went on home. Dinner was ready and so were Alice and Daisy, but Dora was not there.
"She's got a—well, she's not coming to dinner anyway," Alice said when we asked. "She can tell you herself afterwards what it is she's got."
Oswald thought it was headache, or pain in the temper, or in the pinafore, so he said no more, but as soon as Mrs. Pettigrew had helped us and
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