Lily stared at Larry with wide, horrified eyes. "No!" she said. "They couldn't have seen him. They couldn't!"
"Well, they did," said Larry. Lily stared at him for a moment, and then began to sob.
"Who could have seen him?" she said. "Mrs. Minns and her sister were here in the kitchen. Mr. Hick and the chauffeur were out. There wasn't any one about; I know there wasn't."
"How do you know, if you weren't here?" asked Larry,
"Well," said Lily, swallowing a sob. "Well, I'll tell you. I was here! Now don't you forget you've said honour bright you won't tell a soul! You see, this is what happened. I rode off to meet Horace, and when I met him he told me he'd left some of his things at Mr. Hick's, and he wanted them. But he didn't dare to go and ask Mr. Hick for them. So I said to him, 'Well, Horace,' I said, 'Mr. Hick's out, and why don't you come along and get them now, before he comes back?'"
The children listened breathlessly. They were getting the truth at last!
Lily went on, twisting her handkerchief round and round all the time. "So when we'd had a cup of tea, we rode off here, and we left our bikes behind the hedge up the lane. Nobody saw us. We walked down, behind the hedge, till we got to Mr. Hick's. Then we both slipped into lie bushes and waited a bit to see if any one was about."
The children nodded. The tramp had said that he had
heard Peeks whispering to some one - and that some one must have been Lily!
"I soon found out that Mrs. Mirhis had got her sister talking to her," went on Lily, "and I knew they'd sit there for ages. I said to Horace that I'd get his things for him if he liked, but he wanted to get them himself. Sol kept watch whilst he slipped into the house by an open window, got his things and came out into the bushes again. Then we went off on our bikes, without seeing a soul."