I understand they deliberately teach these dashed Boy Scouts to cultivate their powers of observation and deduction and what-not. Devilish thoughtless and inconsiderate of them, I call it. Look at the trouble it causes.
'It sounds incredible,' said Uncle Willoughby, thereby bucking me up a trifle.
'Shall I go and look in his room?' asked young blighted Edwin. 'I'm sure the parcel's there.'
'But what could be his motive for perpetrating this extraordinary theft?'
'Perhaps he's a—what you said just now.'
'A kleptomaniac? Impossible!'
'It might have been Bertie who took all those things from the very start,' suggested the little brute hopefully. 'He may be like Raffles.'
'Raffles?'
'He's a chap in a book who went about pinching things.'
'I cannot believe that Bertie would—ah—go about pinching things.'