Oswald knows it is right to be very kind when 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.