o be disturbed.

The interring was over. We folded up Dora's bloodstained pink cotton
petticoat, and turned to leave the sad spot.

We had not gone a dozen yards down the lane when we heard footsteps and
a whistle behind us, and a scrabbling and whining, and a gentleman with
two fox-terriers had called a halt just by the place where we had laid
low the 'little red rover'.

The gentleman stood in the lane, but the dogs were digging--we could see
their tails wagging and see the dust fly. And we SAW WHERE. We ran back.

'Oh, please, do stop your dogs digging there!' Alice said.

The gentleman said 'Why?'

'Because we've just had a funeral, and that's the grave.'

The gentleman whistled, but the fox-terriers were not trained like
Pincher, who was brought up by Oswald. The gentleman took a stride
through the hedge gap.

'What have you been burying--pet dicky bird, eh?' said the gentleman,
kindly. He had riding breeches and white whiskers.

We did not answer, because now, for the first time, it came over all of
us, in a rush of blushes and uncomfortableness, that burying a fox is a
suspicious act. I don't know why we felt this, but we did.

Noel said dreamily--

'We found his murdered body in the wood, And dug a grave by which the
mourners stood.'

But no one heard him except Oswald, because Alice and Dora and Daisy
were all jumping about with the jumps of unrestrained anguish, and
saying, 'Oh, call them off! Do! do!--oh, don't, don't! Don't let them
dig.'

Alas! Oswald was, as usual, right. The ground of the grave had not been
trampled down hard enough, and he had said so plainly at the time,
but his prudent counsels had been overruled. Now these busy-bodying,
meddling, mischief-making fox-terriers (how different from Pincher, who
minds his own business unless told otherwise) had scratched away the
earth and laid bare the reddish tip of the poor corpse's tail.

We all turned to go without a word, it seemed to be no use staying any
longer.

But in a moment the gentleman with the whiskers had got Noel and Dicky
each by an ear--they were nearest him. H. O. hid in the hedge. Oswald,
to whose noble breast sneakishness is, I am thankful to say, a stranger,
would have scorned to escape, but he ordered his sisters to bunk in a
tone of command which made refusal impossible.

'And bunk sharp, too' he added sternly. 'Cut along home.'

So they cut. The white-whiskered gentleman now encouraged his angry
fox-terriers