"How well you know it," exclaimed Anita.
"There is scarce a spot which I have not visited. I have walked its length and breadth, and know its most secluded corners. We shall have to have some good walks, all of us. You will like to see Hastings and Battle Abbey, the great castle at Arundel and you will like to go to Brighton. We shall have to plan a lot of excursions this summer."
"But first we must find Pepé," declared Anita.
"Our finding him will not interfere with the excursions," replied Mr. Kirkby with a smile. "By to-morrow we can find out whether or not he is in Chichester. It does not take long to exhaust the possibilities of a town of that size."
"And then what next?" inquired Anita.
"We shall advertise in several papers, London ones as well as others, and if necessary get a detective at work."
"But won't that cost a great deal?" asked Anita anxiously.
The rector looked down at her with a fatherly smile. "That is something you don't have to bother your little head about. Now, then, let's look at that bank of primroses; it's as fine a one as I have seen. You've come at a lovely time of year to old England, a time of poetry and beauty. There is a fine flock of sheep over there. You know the May Queen, of course: 'And in the fields all round I hear the bleating of the lambs.' Do you remember? Tennyson had a country home at Blackdown, you know, not so very far from where I live. You will like to go there some day."
Anita looked off to where a flock of sheep whitened the green field like a moving drift of soiled snow. She thought it a picturesque sight. But suddenly her attention was arrested by the sight of a little lamb tottering along on feeble legs and smeared with blood. "Look, look," she cried, "something has torn that poor little lamb. Could it be dogs? Don't the shepherds watch them more carefully than that?"
Mr. Kirkby looked in the direction she indicated, put on his glasses and looked again, then burst into a hearty laugh. "She doesn't know our sheep country, does she Lillian?" he said to the latter who had just come up with Mrs. Beltrán. "Poor little lamb, it is dreadfully torn, isn't it Lillian?"