bottom of the stairs open by
their revolving bodies. And I should like to know whose fault it was
that Mrs. Pettigrew was just on the other side of that door at that very
minute? The door burst open, and the impetuous bodies of Noel and Denny
rolled out of it into Mrs. Pettigrew, and upset her and the tea-tray.
Both revolving boys were soaked with tea and milk, and there were one or
two cups and things smashed. Mrs. Pettigrew was knocked over, but none
of her bones were broken. Noel and Denny were going to be sent to bed,
but Oswald said it was all his fault. He really did this to give the
others a chance of doing a refined, golden deed by speaking the truth
and saying it was _not_ his fault. But you cannot really count on any
one. They did not say anything, but only rubbed the lumps on their
late-revolving heads. So it was bed for Oswald, and he felt the
injustice hard.

But he sat up in bed and read the _Last of the Mohicans_, and then he
began to think. When Oswald really thinks he almost always thinks of
something. He thought of something now, and it was miles better than the
idea we had decided on in the secret staircase, of advertising in the
_Kentish Mercury_ and saying if Albert's uncle's long-lost grandmother
would call at the Moat House she might hear of something much to her
advantage.

What Oswald thought of was that if we went to Hazelbridge and asked Mr.
B. Munn, grocer, that drove us home in the cart with the horse that
liked the wrong end of the whip best, he would know who the lady was in
the red hat and red wheels that paid him to drive us home that
Canterbury night. He must have been paid, of course, for even grocers
are not generous enough to drive perfect strangers, and five of them
too, about the country for nothing.

Thus we may learn that even unjustness and sending the wrong people to
bed may bear useful fruit, which ought to be a great comfort to every
one when they are unfairly treated. Only it most likely won't be. For if
Oswald's brothers and sisters had nobly stood by him, as he expected, he
would not have had the solitudy reflections that led to the great scheme
for finding the grandmother.

Of course when the others came up to roost they all came and squatted on
Oswald's bed and said how sorry they were. He waived their apologies
with noble dignity, because there wasn't much time, and said he had an
idea that would knock the council's plan into a cocked hat. But he would
not tell th