"Here I am again!" he said. "I don't know whether I am a fool, Austin—I hope I am—but there's something I want you to hear." He shut the door behind him, glanced at the clock, and went on quickly. "Do you know a sandy-haired boy who wears a red cap and rides a girl's bicycle?"
"Yes," I answered. "That's Powers's boy—Alban Powers."
"I thought I remembered the young beggar. That boy brought a note up to Aunt Sarah while we were having tea—about a quarter past five, it must have been, I think. Aunt Sarah pounced on the note, read it, said there was no answer, and then handed the note over to my father. 'Who's it from?' he asked peevishly. 'You'll see if you read it,' she said. I asked if I was de trop, but my father signed to me to sit where I was. He read the note, and handed it back to Aunt Sarah. 'What are you going to do?' she asked. 'Nothing,' he said. She pursed up her lips and shrugged her shoulders—she made it pretty plain what she thought of that answer. 'Nothing!' she sort of whispered, throwing her eyes up to the ceiling. Then he broke out: 'I've forbidden the subject to be mentioned!'—but he looked very unhappy and uncomfortable. Nobody said anything for a bit; Aunt Sarah looked obstinate-silent and my father unhappy-silent. I tried to talk about something or other, but it was no good. Then the man came in with another note, saying a groom had brought it for his lordship. Well, he read that—and it seemed to please him a bit better."
"Well it might!" I remarked. "It was from Miss Driver and it said what he wanted."
"Wait a bit, Austin. He sat with this note—Miss Driver's—in his hand, turning it over and over. He didn't offer to show it to either of us, but he kept looking across at Aunt Sarah. I took up a paper, but I watched them from behind it. He was weighing something in his mind; she wouldn't look at him—playing sulky still over the business of the first note, the one that boy in the red cap had brought. At last he got up and went over to her. He spoke rather low, but I heard—well, he could have sent me away, or gone away with her himself, if he hadn't wanted me to hear. 'A note I've had from Miss Driver makes it very proper for me to call on her this evening,' he said. Aunt Sarah looked up, wide awake in a minute. 'You'll go this evening—to Breysgate?' she asked. 'Yes, at seven.' 'At seven,' she repeated after him with a nod. 'But perhaps she'll be out.' 'That's possible,' he answered. 'But I shall wait for her—she must come in before dinner.' Aunt Sarah looked hard at him. 'They'll probably know where she's gone if she is out. You could go and meet her,' she said to him. I can't give you the way they talked—it was all as if what they said meant something different, or something more, at any rate. When Aunt Sarah suggested that he might go and meet Miss Driver, he started a little, then thought it over. At last he said, 'I shall try to find her to-night.' 'You're sensible at last!' she said—and added something in a whisper. My father nodded, and walked out of the room, pocketing his letter. Aunt Sarah went to the fire and burned hers. I wish I could have got a look at it!"
"So do I," I said. "It's just on seven now."
I was thinking hard. The boy with the red cap—Powers's boy—the note—the subterranean quarrel over it—the strange half-spoken half-suppressed conversation that followed—these gave plenty of matter for thought when I added to them my sore doubts of the way in which Jenny in truth meant to spend the evening.
"Of course it may be all nothing. I'm afraid all the time of being infernally officious."
"Your father will pretty nearly be at Breysgate by now."
"And she's there, I suppose, isn't she?" His question was full of hesitation.