So, about four o'clock on the day of Mr. Badger's visit, Christobel announced she was going for a walk, and "made tracks" for Fuchsia Cottage. Miss Anne was at home; she usually was at that hour; and she received the girl with pleasure visible in every line of her small pale face.
"Now of course you'll have tea with me, Crow; do you know, I was just beginning to pity myself for being all alone, and so you've saved me from a contemptible state of mind. I'll tell Lizzie--and what about the lawn?"
Christobel said it was rather windy; she did not want tea out of doors, it was too public. That settled it, because Miss Lasarge understood.
Everything went as is usual until the middle of the meal, when outside subjects of conversation had been exhausted; then Crow said:
"Little Pilgrim, I'm come really to ask you to help us----"
"Us?" questioned Miss Anne, undisturbed.
"Well, it affects us all, so I'd sooner say us. We are in a strange kind of morass--I don't know what to call it. We've never had such a horrible state of things in the family before; you know how happy we are?"
"I know," agreed Miss Anne; "and so something has happened to spoil it! Suppose you begin at the beginning and tell me. 'Trouble shared is trouble spared', isn't it?"
"I'm trying to remember when this trouble actually started," said Christobel, leaning her head back on the cushion, and gazing at the flowers on the table with unseeing eyes.
"It was about the time Mollie went. The first we knew of it was when Pam saved little Ensor. She said, and they said, that she did it alone--you remember. Adrian said it was impossible. Some days afterwards he went to look at the place, and he found a most lovely diamond brooch with two 'A's' for initials and a coronet over them----"