Dicky.

"Or cover it with leaves," said H. O., "like the robins."

We told him to shut up and not gibber, but afterwards we had to own that
even a young brother may sometimes talk sense by accident.

For we took the short cut home from the lane--it begins with a large gap
in the hedge and the grass and weeds trodden down by the hasty feet of
persons who were late for church and in too great a hurry to go round by
the road. Our house is next to the church, as I think I have said
before, some time.

The short cut leads to a stile at the edge of a bit of wood (the
Parson's Shave, they call it, because it belongs to him). The wood has
not been shaved for some time, and it has grown out beyond the stile;
and here, among the hazels and chestnuts and young dog-wood bushes, we
saw something white. We felt it was our duty to investigate, even if the
white was only the under side of the tail of a dead rabbit caught in a
trap. It was not--it was part of the perambulator. I forgot whether I
said that the perambulator was enamelled white--not the kind of
enamelling you do at home with Aspinall's and the hairs of the brush
come out and it is gritty-looking, but smooth, like the handles of
ladies' very best lace parasols. And whoever had abandoned the helpless
perambulator in that lonely spot had done exactly as H. O. said, and
covered it with leaves, only they were green and some of them had
dropped off.

The others were wild with excitement. Now or never, they thought, was a
chance to be real detectives. Oswald alone retained a calm exterior. It
was he who would not go straight to the police station.

He said: "Let's try and ferret out something for ourselves before we
tell the police. They 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