did
want that Goat.

We were later for dinner than I ever remember our being, and Miss Blake
had not kept us any pudding; but Oswald bore up when he thought of the
Goat. But Dicky seemed to have no beautiful inside thoughts to sustain
him, and he was so dull Dora said she only hoped he wasn't going to have
measles.

It was when we had gone up to bed that he fiddled about with the studs
and old buttons and things in a velvety box he had till Oswald was in
bed, and then he said:

'Look here, Oswald, I feel as if I was a murderer, or next-door to. It
was our moving that ladder: I'm certain it was. And now he's laid up,
and his wife and children.'

Oswald sat up in bed, and said kindly:

'You're right, old chap. It _was_ your moving that ladder. Of course,
you didn't put it back firm. But the man's not killed.'

'We oughtn't to have touched it,' he said. 'Or we ought to have told
them we had, or something. Suppose his arm gets blood-poisoning, or
inflammation, or something awful? I couldn't go on living if I was a
doer of a deed like that.'

Oswald had never seen Dicky so upset. He takes things jolly easy as a
rule. Oswald said:

'Well, it is no use fuming over it. You'd better get out of your clothes
and go to bed. We'll cut down in the morning and leave our cards and
kind inquiries.'

Oswald only meant to be kind, and by making this amusing remark he
wished to draw his erring brother's thoughts from the remorse that was
poisoning his young life, and would very likely keep him awake for an
hour or more thinking of it, and fidgetting about so that Oswald
couldn't sleep.

But Dicky did not take it at all the way Oswald meant. He said:

'Shut up, Oswald, you beast!' and lay down on his bed and began to blub.

Oswald said, 'Beast yourself!' because it is the proper thing to say;
but he was not angry, only sorry that Dicky was so duffing as not to see
what he meant. And he got out of bed and went softly to the girls' room,
which is next ours, and said:

'I say, come in to our room a sec., will you? Dicky is howling fit to
bring the house down. I think a council of us elder ones would do him
more good than anything.'

'Whatever is up?' Dora asked, getting into her dressing-gown.

'Oh, nothing, except that he's a murderer! Come on, and don't make a
row. Mind the mats and our boots by the door.'

They came in, and Oswald said:

'Look here, Dicky, old boy, here are the girls, and we're going to have
a counc