"Pam was up as early as we were. I congratulate you, my dear girl--never saw anything so athletic in my life! Talk about our risks! They were jolly small compared to your plan of speeding about all over the Beak at sunrise--jolly slippy hour too."
Pamela sat up with a sort of a start, and sat staring at the speaker while a flush of colour crept over her face, saying nothing at first.
"No good you saying you were in bed--this time," continued Adrian with a good-natured emphasis on the last two words, "we saw you, as plain as we saw the old Beak--ripping it looked, too--didn't we, Crow?"
"We saw a girl climbing down the Beak--who looked exactly like Pam----"
"Well, who else could it be but Pam," interrupted Adrian, "need we haggle over a thing like that? If we were in London, or even Peterock, one might see a few samples of girls, but not in Bell Bay."
Everyone was looking at Pamela, and for one wild moment she contemplated saying she was the person seen, just to stop the conversation. Then she remembered that nothing is so silly--apart from wrong--as a fib, even a harmless fib, because you are bound to tangle yourself up in a network of bother, and afterwards, when you do tell the truth, people will not believe.
"I wasn't on the Beak this morning," she said; "I didn't get up till nearly eight."
There was silence of a tense kind. Adrian raised his eyebrows and looked at Christobel. Christobel winced, gazed at her plate and turned pink. Mrs. Romilly glanced from one face to the other, puzzled.
Hughie came to the rescue.
"Pam got up soon before eight. I know, because when she opened her door I heard."