THE WOULDBEGOODS
time, it came over all of us, in a rush of blushes and uncomfortableness, that burying a fox is a suspicious act. I don't know why we felt this, but we did.
Noël said, dreamily:
"We found his murdered body in the wood,
And dug a grave by which the mourners stood."
But no one heard him except Oswald, because Alice and Dora and Daisy were all jumping about with the jumps of unstrained anguish, and saying, "Oh, call them off! Do! do!—oh, don't, don't! Don't let them dig!"
Alas! Oswald was, as usual, right. The ground of the grave had not been trampled down hard enough, and he had said so plainly at the time, but his prudent counsels had been overruled. Now these busy-bodying, meddling, mischief-making fox-terriers (how different from Pincher, who minds his own business unless told otherwise) had scratched away the earth and laid bare the reddish tip of the poor corpse's tail.
We all turned to go without a word, it seemed to be no use staying any longer.
But in a moment the gentleman with the whiskers had got Noël and Dicky each by an ear—they were nearest him. H. O. hid in the hedge. Oswald, to whose noble breast sneakishness is, I am thankful to say, a stranger, would have scorned to escape, but he ordered his sisters to bunk in a tone of command which made refusal impossible.
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