THE WOULDBEGOODS
We were talking fishlikely as we went along down the lane and through the cornfield and the cloverfield, and then we came to the other lane where we had seen the Baby. The tramps were gone, and the perambulator was gone, and, of course, the Baby was gone too.
"I wonder if those gypsies had stolen the Baby," Noël said, dreamily. He had not fished much, but he had made a piece of poetry. It was this:
"How I wish
I was a fish.
I would not look
At your hook,
But lie still and be cool
At the bottom of the pool.
And when you went to look
At your cruel hook.
You would not find me there.
So there!"
"If they did steal the Baby," Noël went on, "they will be tracked by the lordly perambulator. You can disguise a baby in rags and walnut juice, but there isn't any disguise dark enough to conceal a perambulator's person."
"You might disguise it as a wheel-barrow," said Dicky.
"Or cover it with leaves," said H. O., "like the robins."
We told him to shut up and not gibber, but afterwards we had to own that even a young brother may sometimes talk sense by accident.
For we took the short cut home from the lane—it begins with a large gap in the hedge and the
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