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“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.

“Do you really think so,” said Alice, “when there’s a baby in it?”

“But there isn’t,” said H. O., “if you mean in the perambulator.”

“Blow you and your perambulator,” said Oswald, with gloomy forbearance.

Alice kicked Oswald under the table and said:

“Don’t be waxy, Oswald. Really and truly Daisy and I have got a secret, only it’s Dora’s secret, and she wants to tell you herself. If it was mine or Daisy’s we’d tell you this minute, wouldn’t we, Mouse?”

“This very second,” said the White Mouse.

And Oswald consented to take their apologies.

Then the pudding came in, and no more was said except asking for things to be passed–sugar and water, and bread and things.

Then, when the pudding was all gone, Alice said:

“Come on.”

And we came on. We did not want to be disagreeable, though really we were keen on being detectives and sifting that perambulator to the very dregs. But boys have to try to take an interest in their sisters’ secrets, however silly. This is part of being a good brother.

Alice led us across the field where the sheep once fell into the brook, and across the brook by the plank. At the other end of the next field there was a sort of wooden house on wheels, that the shepherd sleeps in at the time of year when lambs are being born, so that he can see that they are not stolen by gypsies before the owners have counted them.

To this hut Alice now led her kind brothers and Daisy’s kind brother.

“Dora is inside,” she said, “with the Secret. We were afraid to have it in the house in case it made a noise.”

The next moment the Secret was a secret no longer, for we all beheld Dora, sitting on a sack on the floor of the hut, with the Secret in her lap.

It was the High-born Babe!

Oswald was so overcome that he sat down suddenly, just like Betsy Trotwood did in David Copperfield, which just shows what a true author Dickens is.

“You’ve done it this time,” he said. “I suppose you know you’re a baby-stealer?”

“I’m not,” Dora said. “I’ve adopted him.”

“Then it was you,” Dicky said, “who scuttled the perambulator in the wood?”

“Yes,” Alice said; “we couldn’t get it over the stile unless Dora put down the Baby, and we were afraid of the nettles for his legs. His name is to be Lord Edward.”

“But, Dora–really, don’t you think–“

“If you’d been there you’d have done the same,” said Dora, firmly. “The gypsies had gone. Of course something had frightened them, and they fled from justice. And the little darling was awake and held out his arms to me. No, he hasn’t cried a bit, and I know all about babies; I’ve often nursed Mrs. Simpkins’s daughter’s baby when she brings it up on Sundays. They have bread and milk to eat. You take him, Alice, and I’ll go and get some bread and milk for him.”