r, H. O. went in to
see if some pies were done that he had made out of a bit of putty the
man gave him. He had put the pies in the oven when the cook wasn't
looking. I think something must have been done to him, for he did not
return.

So Dicky and I were left. Dicky said:

'If I could get the ladder round to the roof of the stovehouse I believe
I should find my fives ball in the gutter. I _know_ it went over the
house that day.'

So Oswald, ever ready and obliging, helped his brother to move the
ladder round to the tiled roof of the stovehouse, and Dicky looked in
the gutter. But even he could not pretend the ball was there, because I
am certain it never went over at all.

When he came down, Oswald said:

'Sold again!'

And Dicky said:

'Sold yourself! You jolly well thought it was there, and you'd have to
pay for it.'

This unjustness was Oswald's reward for his kind helpingness about
moving the ladder. So he turned away, just saying carelessly over his
retiring shoulder:

'I should think you'd have the decency to put the ladder back where you
found it.' And he walked off.

But he has a generous heart--a crossing-sweeper told him so once when he
gave him a halfpenny--and when Dicky said, 'Come on, Oswald; don't be a
sneak,' he proved that he was not one, and went back and helped with the
ladder. But he was a little distant to Dicky, till all disagreeableness
was suddenly buried in a rat Pincher found in the cucumber frame.

Then the washing-hands-and-faces-for-dinner bell rang, and, of course,
we should have gone in directly, only just then the workmen came back
from their dinner, and we waited, because one of them had promised
Oswald some hinges for a ferrets' hutch he thought of making, and while
he was talking to this man the other one went up the ladder. And then
the most exciting and awful thing I ever saw happened, all in a minute,
before anyone could have said 'Jack Robinson,' even if they had thought
of him. The bottom part of the ladder slipped out along the smooth tiles
by the greenhouse, and there was a long, dream-like, dreadful time, when
Oswald knew what was going to happen; but it could only have been a
second really, because before anyone could do anything the top end of
the ladder slid softly, like cutting butter, off the top of the
greenhouse, and the man on the ladder fell too. I never saw anything
that made me feel so wrong way up in my inside. He lay there all in a
heap, without mo