‘How could I? All among William and the Police?’
‘Well, go on.’
‘She’d got her pocket-book, and I wrote that letter. She thought of that too. And I gave her my hankey, and she carried my boots off in her hand, and when she got to the swampy place she put them on and made the footmarks.’
‘I stamped them in as deep as I could,’ Caroline broke in, ‘and I found the fence and got out and put the letter, and simply tore back round by the lodge. Didn’t you notice how hot I was? I saw the Murdstone man, but I’d got my sun-bonnet. He was cutting the heads off nettles with his stick like some one in the French Revolution.’
‘And she led them off the scent completely. They’d have been certain to find me here, with the fern all trampled about. She thought of that too,’ Rupert said.
‘But where were you then?’
‘Up that tree.’ He pointed to a leafy beech. ‘I saw you all go by, your Police with his nose on the ground like any old hound. Not one of you looked up. She’s a regular A1, first-class brick, if you ask me. And now if you can hide me a bit here till I’ve written to my people and got an answer—— Yes, she is a brick. And I shall always stand up for it that bricks are bricks even if they’re only girls.’
‘You do make such a fuss,’ said Caroline, delighted with his praise and trying not to be, and feeling it the duty of a modest heroine to turn the subject. ‘And now I thought we’d be the Royal Order of the Secret Rose. The rose is the emblem of secrecy. Two buds and a full-blowner you have to wear. It’s the badge.’
She chose flowers and buds from the crimson heap and presented them to the others. The needed pins she produced from the front of her pinafore.
‘I’ve got one too,’ said Rupert, grinning from his covert. ‘A badge, I mean, and——’