The voice enquired, "Has anybody seen my niece?"
Little Olwen jumped.
"Oh, it's my Uncle. Do open the shutters, Uncle! I'm out here, with Mr. Brown and Captain Ross," explained Olwen, hurriedly. "It's—it's ever so early, you know! We were all just thinking of going for a little walk——"
"No; I've got it," put in the unquenchable Mr. Brown. "What about a pull on the lagoon, to look at the phosphorescence? You too, Ross," he added, hospitably; guessing that Professor Howel-Jones was of an age that might allow its young nieces to go for moonlight rows in boats on lakes with two young men, but scarcely with one. "I saw a skiff drawn up by the jetty. You don't mind, Professor, do you?"
"At this hour?" demurred the Professor, looking out into the light that made of his massive old head the summit of Mynedd Mawr in a snowy December. "For you to take your death of cold, Olwen fach, in the night air?"
Little Olwen, pulling up her storm-collar, murmured appealingly above it. "Oh, darling! I shall be as warm as warm! Do let me go."
She did not know that in her coaxing she was helped by a girl long dead. It was to a certain note in the voice that she had from her mother that the Professor ceded now.
With a little nod he said, "Very well," and all but added "Mary." "Very well, Olwen fach. I trust you gentlemen not to keep her out long. I wish you a pleasant row; good night to you, good night!" And he went in.
"Come on; let's make a dash for it," said young Brown.
He led the way; followed by Olwen and Captain Ross, the latter in a worse temper than he had been in since he left the hospital.