Mademoiselle was in the drawing-room. She was sitting by the window in the waning light reading letters.
"Ah, vous voici!" she said unintelligibly. "You are again late; and my little Gerald, where is he?"
This was an awful moment. Jimmy's detective scheme had not included any answer to this inevitable question. The silence was unbroken till Jimmy spoke.
"He said he was going to bed because he had a headache." And this, of course, was true.
"This poor Gerald!" said Mademoiselle. "Is it that I should mount him some supper?"
"He never eats anything when he's got one of his headaches,"
Kathleen said. And this also was the truth.
Jimmy and Kathleen Went to bed, wholly untroubled by anxiety about their brother, and Mademoiselle pulled out the bundle of letters and read them amid the ruins of the simple supper.
"It is ripping being out late like this," said Gerald through the soft summer dusk.
"Yes," said Mabel, a solitary-looking figure plodding along the high-road. "I do hope auntie won't be very furious."
"Have another bun," suggested Gerald kindly, and a sociable munching followed.