Last evening after tea the Imp asked Carol and myself to go for a walk with her, as she had something important she wanted to tell us. We suspected that she'd thought out something else about Louis, so we went quite willingly. Otherwise, I'm bound to confess, we'd have been bored stiff with the prospect of spending our time with her. It was quite true. She had thought of something new.
"Girls," she began, "has it occurred to you that if what we suspect about Monsieur and Louis is true, it's a very serious affair?"
We said we supposed so, but that we didn't see how we could help it.
"That's just it," she answered. "We ought to help it, somehow. I told you once that this was a matter that might affect the world, and you can easily see now that it is. Ought we to simply sit down and let it slide gaily along?"
"But what on earth can we do about it?" I demanded. "Just remember that we're nothing but three young girls, one not even out of public school, and that not a soul on earth would believe us if we were to make such fools of ourselves as to tell what, after all, we only suspect."
"History has sometimes been in the hands of as young people as ourselves," she remarked. I'm sure I don't know where the Imp gets all her information, and yet somehow I'm bound to believe her. I couldn't think of a single case where history had been in the hands of any one of our age, but I didn't dare say so, because she would probably have promptly pointed out half a dozen cases. So I said nothing.
"I haven't made up my mind what we ought to do," she went on, "but I'm sure something must be done, and pretty soon, too!"
"Suppose we begin by telling Father," I suggested. "He has a pretty level head about most things."
"Pooh!" she scoffed. "He'd just laugh his head off at us, and tell us to run away and play and forget all about it. You know Father doesn't take much stock in anything that isn't agriculture." This was quite true, and we saw at once that the Imp had the right of it.