"Courage, my dear!" Mr. Pettigrew said. "It is a painful duty, but it must be performed."
The three women stood silent beside the little corpse. Netta was the first to speak.
"I cannot identify the body as that of Walter Rivington," she said. "I don't think that it would be possible for anyone to do so."
"Is the hair of the same color?" the policeman who was in charge of the room asked.
"The hair is rather darker than his," Netta said; "but being so long in the water, and in such dirty water, it might have darkened."
"That was never Master Walter's hair!" the nurse exclaimed. "The darling had long, soft hair, and unless those who murdered him cut it short, it would not be like this. Besides, this hair is stiffer. It is more like the hair of a workhouse child than Master Walter's."
"That is so," Hilda said. "I declare that I not only do not recognize the body as that of my ward, but that I am convinced it is not his."
"Judging only by the hair," Mr. Pettigrew said, "I am entirely of your opinion, Miss Covington. I have stroked the child's head many times, and his hair was like silk. I have nothing else to go by, and am convinced that the body is not Walter Rivington's."
They then looked at the fragments of clothes. In two places they were marked "W. R."
"That is my marking, miss," the nurse said, after closely examining the initials. "I could not swear to the bits of clothes, but I can to the letters. You see, miss, I always work a line above the letters and another below them. I was taught to do it so when I was a girl in our village school, and I have always done it since. But I never saw anyone else mark them so. You see the letters are worked in red silk, and the two lines in white. The old woman who taught us said that it made a proper finish to the work. Yes, Miss Covington, I can swear to these things being Master Walter's."