"I say, they are slow finding us. I should think it must be quite tea-time, shouldn't you? How would it be if we came out now?"
"Yes, let's," said Alex, trying to keep the mortification out of her voice.
They emerged into the sunlight again, and Noel pulled out his watch.
"It's only a quarter past four. I thought it would be much later," he remarked candidly. "I wonder where they all are. I expect they'll want to know where we've been hiding, but you won't give it away, will you? It's a jolly good place, and the others don't know about it."
"I won't tell."
Alex revived a little at the idea of being entrusted with a secret.
"Do you often play hide-and-seek?"
"Oh, just to amuse the girls, in the summer holidays. They've spent the last three summers with us, you know. Next year I suppose they'll go to America, lucky kids!"
"I'd love to go to America, wouldn't you?" Alex asked, with considerable over-emphasis.
"Pretty well. I tell you what I'd really like to do—I shall do it one day, too—make a regular tour of England, with a camera. I don't know whether you'll think it's nonsense, of course, but my idea has always been that people go rushing abroad to see other countries before they really know their own. Now, my plan would be that I'd simply start at Land's End, in Cornwall, just taking each principal town as it came on my way, you know, and exploring thoroughly. I shouldn't mind going off the main track, you know, if I heard of any little place that had an old church or castle or something worth looking at. I don't know whether you're at all keen on old buildings?"