“Well, I don’t care, it must be cleaned. There’s no excuse for cobwebs. Now I must go and tidy up. I hope they haven’t wakened the baby. Oh, here’s Daisy.”
Daisy and Mr. Collins came in, laughing, and Mr. Collins declared he had found Miss Dow hanging out the third-story window by her finger-tips.
“Nothing of the sort,” said Daisy. “I was out on a kind of little balcony place, that’s on top of a bay-window or something,—but I put my hands over the sill inside, so that I could say I was still in the house. Wasn’t that fair?”
“Well, it’s fair enough, as long as I found you,” said Mr. Collins. “But when I saw your hands, I really thought you were hanging from the sill!”
“Where’s Patty?” asked Daisy, “and Mr. Van Reypen? Are they still finding each other?”
“I saw Phil,” said Roger, “standing guard at the nursery door, as he said he would. He let us each go in and look around, on condition that we wouldn’t wake the baby. And the baby’s nurse was also asleep on the sofa, so I looked around and sneaked out as fast as I could.”
Just then Van Reypen came downstairs. “I’ve been delayed,” he said, “because I held the fort for the baby, until every man-jack of you had been in the nursery. Now I’m going to begin my search. Who is there left to find?”
“Oh, who, indeed?” said Jim, looking wise. “Oh, nobody in particular! Nobody but that little Fairfield girl, and of course you wouldn’t want to find her!”
“Patty!” exclaimed Philip, as he looked around at the group. “Why, she isn’t here, is she? Where can that little rascal be? You fellows have been all over the house, I suppose?”
“Every nook and cranny,” declared Mr. Hoyt. “It was as a very last resort that I went to the coal-bin and captured Mrs. Kenerley.”