Presently Sir Richard asked his daughter to accompany him into the garden to see the havoc the storm had worked there. The minute after they had left the room, Ruth's busy tongue began to chatter.
"Much good all our fine plans were for finding the secret passage!" she exclaimed. "I believe you boys thought you'd be sure to discover it!"
"We must have been near the entrances scores of times!" Lionel cried vexedly. "It would have been something to have been proud of if we had been successful in finding it!"
"I don't know," Dick responded; "I haven't thought so much about it lately—not since you were shot. That put it quite out of my head."
"Oh, but think how people would have talked about us if we had found the secret passage!" said Lionel, who set great store on public opinion. "I daresay it would have been put in the newspaper!"
"Well, they put all about your accident in the newspaper," Ruth reminded her brother. "I heard grandfather read it out to Susan Morecombe. It was headed in big print—'A Terrible Gun Accident,' and it said—"
"You've told me about that before," Lionel interposed hastily, mindful that the newspaper account had spoken of his ignorance of fire-arms, and desirous of hearing no more on that score; "you're such a magpie that you're bound to repeat the same things over and over again."
There was a little further conversation, and then Dick declared he must be going, for Aunt Mary Ann would expect him home in good time for the mid-day meal. Ruth suggested walking a short way with him, so after Dick had taken a farewell of Lionel and promised to come again shortly, and had found his aunt and grandfather in the garden, and had said good-bye to them, the two children started off together.
On reaching the lodge, Dick remarked to Ruth that she had better retrace her footsteps, but she elected to accompany him a little further; and he discovered her reason for doing so when she pulled him up at a gateway on one side of the road, and pointed to a small grey donkey complacently munching the fresh green herbage in the field within.
"That donkey belongs to an old woman who goes about selling scrubbing-sand," Ruth informed her cousin; "he's having a holiday now because his mistress is laid up with rheumatism. He's quite tame, and so good-tempered! Here, Neddy, Neddy!" And the little girl extended her hand coaxingly through the bars of the gate.