James Blake stirred again and awakened then with a start. He looked around. “Auld fool!” he muttered. “Sleeping, when ye’d set yourself to watch those lassies.” He got up and walked around the room. Everything seemed to be all right. Stiff from his night in the chair he stretched, threw a knotted log of wood on the fire, and then rang for a servant.
“The young lassies upstairs are tired,” he said. “See that everything is kept quiet so they will sleep until late. Before the day is over, they will be off to Edinburgh.” So it was not until hours after she had slipped through the door, walked down the road past the bushes that had seemed such a menace the night before, and passed through the gate, that Nan’s disappearance was discovered.
It was Bess who missed her first. Awakening much later than Nan, she lay for some time enjoying the luxury of the room in which she slept. She noted every detail of the furnishings and determined that when she returned to school in the fall, nothing of all this would be lost in the telling. She half hoped that she would have the opportunity to tell Linda Riggs. In her mind’s eye, she picked out one or two others that she would like to impress. No one that she knew, she thought with satisfaction, had ever even seen such a place as this old castle, much less stayed in one.
The more she thought of it, the grander it seemed. A little feeling of envy came over her. Why was it that the nice things that happened to Nan never happened to her? Why couldn’t her father or mother have a place like this? Bess was a thoughtless unappreciative little person at times. Though her father and mother gave her everything within their means, she was still dissatisfied. Her hand touched the satin cover that was over her. As quickly as the feeling of envy had come, it went. She listened for sounds. Was Nan awake in the next room?
She got up and stuck her head in through the door. The bed was empty! Was everyone except herself up? She went across the hall to Laura’s room, and found her still sleeping. She looked in the big double room where Amelia and Grace were. They were sleeping too. So was Rhoda. She debated once as to whether or not she should look into Dr. Prescott’s apartment. “I don’t dare to do that,” she decided, “Nan’s probably downstairs waiting for us. Maybe she will come up, if I stay here.”
She went back into her own room, and because she was cold, she crawled back into bed. But then her curiosity as to Nan’s whereabouts got the better of her. Maybe Nan was out exploring! It would be fun to walk around the castle grounds!
She dressed almost as quickly as Nan had, slipped out quietly too, and went downstairs.
“Weel, lassie,” James Blake greeted her as she entered the big hall. “Ye’re up bright and early this morning.”
“But I’m not the first,” Bess smiled back, “Where’s Nan?”
“Why, the lass is still asleep,” he began heartily, and then noting the puzzled expression on Bess’s face, he added, “Isn’t she?” A world of possibilities came to his mind as he asked the question and he repeated it before Bess could answer. “Tell me quickly, isn’t she upstairs? Isn’t she with her other friends, with the school mistress? Isn’t she about up there some place?”