"Ten to eight?"
"Well, why not? It was nearly dark, but the moon had begun--besides, we'd been mewed up indoors an awful lot with the rain."
Pamela was throwing out little feelers of excuse--as it were--for her wanderings round Woodrising, in case she had been seen. Somebody had told Christobel something, she believed firmly, and her defensive instinct made her rather stiff.
"Well, I was meaning about ten minutes to ten--not eight," said the elder girl.
They looked at each other searchingly.
"I was in bed before that," said Pamela. "I don't know the least what you are talking about, Crow, but you seem to have a lively maggot in your brain about me."
"It isn't anything in my brain--it's a question of the eyesight of two people."
"Who's the other person?"
"Addie. We both saw you----"
"Oh dear," ejaculated Pamela in an exasperated voice, "do you mean to say you think you saw me out of doors just before ten o'clock, because you may as well disabuse your mind of the idea at once. Addie doesn't count, he leaps to conclusions. He'd say the Little Pilgrim was me for two pins, and believe it if he was in an imaginative mood. Well, you did not see me, Crow."