tions without him.

The scene of rejoinder was painful, at first because they were most
frightfully sick at us having been such an age away; but when we let
them look at the parrot, and told them about the fight, they agreed that
it was not our fault, and we really had been unavoidably detained.

But Dora said, "Well, you may say I'm always preaching, but I _don't_
think Father would like Alice to be fighting street boys in Millwall."

"I suppose _you'd_ have run away and let the old man be killed," said
Dicky, and peace was not restored till we were nearly at Greenwich
again.

We took the tram to Greenwich Station, and then we took a cab home (and
well worth the money, which was all we now had got, except
fourpence-halfpenny), for we were all dog-tired.

And dog-tired reminds me that we hadn't found Pincher, in spite of all
our trouble.

Miss Blake, who is our housekeeper, was angrier than I have ever seen
her. She had been so anxious that she had sent the police to look for
us. But, of course, they had not found us. You ought to make allowances
for what people do when they are anxious, so I forgive her everything,
even what she said about Oswald being a disgrace to a respectable house.
He owns we were rather muddy, owing to the fight.

And when the jaw was over and we were having tea--and there was meat to
it, because we were as near starving as I ever wish to be--we all ate
lots. Even the thought of Pincher could not thwart our bold appetites,
though we kept saying, "Poor old Pincher!" "I do wish we'd found him,"
and things like that. The parrot walked about among the tea-things as
tame as tame. And just as Alice was saying how we'd go out again
to-morrow and have another try for our faithful hound there was a
scratching at the door, and we rushed--and there was Pincher, perfectly
well and mad with joy to see us.

H.O. turned an abrupt beetroot colour.

"Oh!" he said.

We said, "What? Out with it."

And though he would much rather have kept it a secret buried in his
breast, we made him own that he had shut Pincher up yesterday in the
empty rabbit-hutch when he was playing Zoological Gardens and forgotten
all about it in the pleasures of our cousin having left us.

So we need not have gone over the water at all. But though Oswald pities
all dumb animals, especially those helplessly shut in rabbit-hutches at
the bottoms of gardens, he cannot be sorry that we had such a Celestial
adventure and got hold of