n people are ill, and he
forbore to wake the sufferer next morning by buzzing a pillow at him, as
he generally does. He got up and went over to shake the invalid, but
the bird had flown and the nest was cold. The pistol was not in the nest
either, but Oswald found it afterwards under the looking-glass on the
dressing-table. He had just awakened the others (with a hair-brush
because they had not got anything the matter with their teeth), when he
heard wheels, and, looking out, beheld Denny and Albert's uncle being
driven from the door in the farmer's high cart with the red wheels.

We dressed extra quick, so as to get downstairs to the bottom of the
mystery. And we found a note from Albert's uncle. It was addressed to
Dora, and said--

'Denny's toothache got him up in the small hours. He's off to the
dentist to have it out with him, man to man. Home to dinner.'

Dora said, 'Denny's gone to the dentist.'

'I expect it's a relation,' H. O. said. 'Denny must be short for
Dentist.'

I suppose he was trying to be funny--he really does try very hard. He
wants to be a clown when he grows up. The others laughed.

'I wonder,' said Dicky, 'whether he'll get a shilling or half-a-crown
for it.'

Oswald had been meditating in gloomy silence, now he cheered up and
said--

'Of course! I'd forgotten that. He'll get his tooth money, and the drive
too. So it's quite fair for us to have the fox-hunt while he's gone. I
was thinking we should have to put it off.'

The others agreed that it would not be unfair.

'We can have another one another time if he wants to,' Oswald said.

We know foxes are hunted in red coats and on horseback--but we could
not do this--but H. O. had the old red football jersey that was Albert's
uncle's when he was at Loretto. He was pleased.

'But I do wish we'd had horns,' he said grievingly. 'I should have liked
to wind the horn.'

'We can pretend horns,' Dora said; but he answered, 'I didn't want to
pretend. I wanted to wind something.'

'Wind your watch,' Dicky said. And that was unkind, because we all know
H. O.'s watch is broken, and when you wind it, it only rattles inside
without going in the least.

We did not bother to dress up much for the hunting expedition--just
cocked hats and lath swords; and we tied a card on to H. O.'s chest with
'Moat House Fox-Hunters' on it; and we tied red flannel round all the
dogs' necks to show they were fox-hounds. Yet it did not seem to show it
plainly; so