"Does it belong to Scotland?" asked Christina. "I ought to know about it I expect!"
"I don't know what it has to do with Scotland, but the cleverest policemen live in it; and if anything is lost, they take it there. Dad lost his best umbrella in a train, and he took me there, and we got it again."
"Would they have taken me there?" questioned Christina anxiously.
"No," interrupted Puggy, "I told him they wouldn't. I know London as well as Dawn does, and if any one is found wandering about the streets with no home, they're taken straight off to prison by the police, and made to sleep there all night!"
"Oh!" gasped Christina. "Just suppose a policeman had caught hold of me! How thankful I am he didn't!"
"Such fun!" went on Dawn with a chuckle. "Puggy got a shove from some one in the fog and he hit him in the face, and it was a bobby! We flew for our lives, and then we went to Scotland Yard."
"They'd just brought a huge bunch of keys in," put in Puggy, "and they were quite interested about you. We made up a long story about you. We told them you were the daughter of a millionaire, that we fancied you had been kidnapped in the fog for the sake of your dress and jewellery; we told them bills were going to be printed about you, and if they wished to get the reward, they'd better be quick and find you."
"I told them," said Dawn importantly, "that my father was painting a picture of you which was going to be put in the Academy, so that made them think you were very grand indeed. But then they began to want to know too much, and asked us so many questions that we got tired and came away."
The children were talking together in the lounge of the hotel. They were interrupted now by the appearance of Mr. Maclahan, who gave both boys a sharp scolding, and told Dawn he had better go home.
"Yes," he said, shaking back his curls with a saucy gesture, "and I shall invite Tina to spend the day with me, and then get dad to scold her well, and send her home without any tea."