"Where? Where?" cried Nan grasping Jean's shoulder.
"In that cab coming this way. Don't you see her?"
Nan waited till the cab stopped, then she rushed forward to see Jack clamber down from the side of the red-faced cocher, shake hands with two gaudily dressed women of the bourgeois class, and walk calmly off while the cab drove on.
"Jack Corner!" cried Nan, not refraining from giving the child a little shake, "where have you been? Do you know you have scared Jean and me nearly to death? Poor little Jean has been crying her eyes out about you."
"What for?" asked Jack with a look of surprise.
"Because she was afraid you had been run over or had fallen in the lake. Where have you been?"
"Just taking a ride around," said Jack nonchalantly. "You might have known, Nan," she went on in a tone of injured innocence, "that I wouldn't go anywhere without an older person when mother said we were not to, and there were three older persons with me."
"But didn't you realize that Jean wouldn't know where you had gone, and that she would be frightened about you?"
"I didn't think we would be gone so long," returned Jack. "You see I know the cocher quite well. He has a dear little dog he lets me play with sometimes. Aunt Helen always tries to have this man when she can, so to-day when he asked me if I didn't want to ride back with him, he was going back to the stand, you see, I said, Oui, monsieur, de tout mon cœur, and so I got up. Then just as we were going to start those two ladies came along."