CHAPTER XVII.
Bedelia Takes a Sea Voyage.
THE absence of the twins caused a good deal of consternation in the nursery, and although Peter Pan had searched the house from attic to cellar on the night of their disappearance, he had, of course, discovered nothing. He now knew enough to turn out the lights, and so returned to the nursery, leaving no tracks behind him. Bedelia was frantic over the loss of her cubs. She stormed in private and went into hysterics in public, applying to her husband a series of appellations that were anything but conjugal. Moreover, she accused him of driving away her children by his cruelty, a charge which he could not truthfully refute.
In short, a lioness bereft of her cubs was as water to wine compared to Bedelia deprived of hers.
Peter Pan was driven almost to the verge of lunacy, not because he had any especial affection for either the cubs or Bedelia, but because his wife was managing to make things so very uncomfortable for him.
Naturally everybody sympathized with her attitude in regard to her children and Peter Pan began to discover that society was giving him the cold shoulder.
There was really no foundation for his ridiculous jealousy. His wife had a perfect right to make friends where she chose just the same as he did. This was the general verdict.
Peter Pan, who by this time was really very miserable, redoubled his efforts in searching and researching the house, but as his attempts at discovery met with no results whatever he was forced to discontinue them, hoping that chance which seemed to have spirited away the cubs would some day return them in an equally mysterious manner.
Meanwhile Bedelia pined and fretted incessantly. She refused to eat and grew thin and yellow. The loss of her appetite, which had always been a most robust one, was indeed an alarming symptom. And what to do to improve matters remained for some time a problem.