Then we went on home. Dinner was ready and so were Alice and Daisy, but Dora was not there.
"She's got a—well, she's not coming to dinner anyway," Alice said when we asked. "She can tell you herself afterwards what it is she's got."
Oswald thought it was headache, or pain in the temper, or in the pinafore, so he said no more, but as soon as Mrs. Pettigrew had helped us and left the room he began the thrilling tale of the forsaken perambulator. He told it with the greatest thrillingness any one could have, but Daisy and Alice seemed almost unmoved. Alice said:
"Yes, very strange," and things like that, but both the girls seemed to be thinking of something else. They kept looking at each other and trying not to laugh, so Oswald saw they had got some silly secret, and he said:
"Oh, all right! I don't care about telling you. I only thought you'd like to be in it. It's going to be a real big thing, with policemen in it, and perhaps a judge."
"In what?" H. O. said; "the perambulator?"
Daisy choked and then tried to drink, and spluttered and got purple, and had to be thumped on the back. But Oswald was not appeased. When Alice said, "Do go on, Oswald. I'm sure we all like it very much," he said:
"Oh no, thank you," very politely. "As it happens," he went on, "I'd just as soon go through with this thing without having any girls in it."
"In the perambulator?" said H. O. again.
"It's a man's job," Oswald went on, without taking any notice of H. O.