very desperate one. And just when I fell, Albert's uncle was getting
over the wall. Alice never screamed at all when Oswald fell, but Dicky
thinks he heard Albert's uncle say, 'Confound those kids!' which would
not have been kind or polite, so I hope he did not say it.

The people next door did not come out to see what the row was. Albert's
uncle did not wait for them to come out. He picked up Oswald and
carried the insensible body of the gallant young detective to the wall,
laid it on the top, and then climbed over and bore his lifeless burden
into our house and put it on the sofa in Father's study. Father was
out, so we needn't have _crept_ so when we were getting into the garden.
Then Oswald was restored to consciousness, and his head tied up, and
sent to bed, and next day there was a lump on his young brow as big as a
turkey's egg, and very uncomfortable.

Albert's uncle came in next day and talked to each of us separately. To
Oswald he said many unpleasant things about ungentlemanly to spy on
ladies, and about minding your own business; and when I began to tell
him what I had heard he told me to shut up, and altogether he made me
more uncomfortable than the bump did.

Oswald did not say anything to any one, but next day, as the shadows of
eve were falling, he crept away, and wrote on a piece of paper, 'I want
to speak to you,' and shoved it through the hole like a heart in the top
of the next-door shutters. And the youngest young lady put an eye to the
heart-shaped hole, and then opened the shutter and said 'Well?' very
crossly. Then Oswald said--

'I am very sorry, and I beg your pardon. We wanted to be detectives,
and we thought a gang of coiners infested your house, so we looked