half bad on the edge of the shrubbery.

While he was doing this he suddenly said, or rather screamed, 'Oh?'

And we looked, and it was a creature with great horns and a fur
rug--something like a bull and something like a minotaur--and I don't
wonder Denny was frightened. It was Alice, and it was first-class.

Up to now all was not yet lost beyond recall. It was the stuffed fox
that did the mischief--and I am sorry to own it was Oswald who thought
of it. He is not ashamed of having THOUGHT of it. That was rather clever
of him. But he knows now that it is better not to take other people's
foxes and things without asking, even if you live in the same house with
them.

It was Oswald who undid the back of the glass case in the hall and got
out the fox with the green and grey duck in its mouth, and when the
others saw how awfully like life they looked on the lawn, they all
rushed off to fetch the other stuffed things. Uncle has a tremendous
lot of stuffed things. He shot most of them himself--but not the fox, of
course. There was another fox's mask, too, and we hung that in a bush to
look as if the fox was peeping out. And the stuffed birds we fastened on
to the trees with string. The duck-bill--what's its name?--looked very
well sitting on his tail with the otter snarling at him. Then Dicky had
an idea; and though not nearly so much was said about it afterwards as
there was about the stuffed things, I think myself it was just as bad,
though it was a good idea, too. He just got the hose and put the end
over a branch of the cedar-tree. Then we got the steps they clean
windows with, and let the hose rest on the top of the steps and run. It
was to be a waterfall, but it ran between the steps and was only wet and
messy; so we got Father's mackintosh and uncle's and covered the steps
with them, so that the water ran down all right and was glorious, and it
ran away in a stream across the grass where we had dug a little channel
for it--and the otter and the duck-bill-thing were as if in their native
haunts. I hope all this is not very dull to read about. I know it was
jolly good fun to do. Taking one thing with another, I don't know that
we ever had a better time while it lasted.

We got all the rabbits out of the hutches and put pink paper tails on
to them, and hunted them with horns made out of The Times. They got away
somehow, and before they were caught next day they had eaten a good
many lettuces and other things. Oswald is