"Well, why not?" he asked, but he was hardly thinking of what he said. "I've left Lily on guard in there. Notya has gone to sleep."
"But she can't have," Helen said.
"She has, my child."
"Are you sure she's not—are you sure she is asleep?"
"Like a baby."
"Then we shall have to make a noise and wake her. She would never forgive us if she found out that we knew, so tell Lily to come out and then we must all burst in."
CHAPTER XVII
Lily and John went down the track: Mildred Caniper climbed slowly, but with dignity, up the stairs; Miriam was heard to bang her bedroom door and Rupert and Helen were left together in the schoolroom.
"I can't get the tinker out of my head," she told him.