It seemed so impossible that a boy of eight, supposed to have left home only that morning with little or no money, could have gone very far, and yet how was it, if he were anywhere in the neighbourhood, that nobody had yet succeeded in finding him?
There were no rivers within several miles of Woodsleigh, and even the horse-ponds were shallow, so that Micky could not well have been drowned; if he had been run over by a motor-car his mangled body would surely have been discovered before now; and as to the possibility of his having been stolen by gipsies, a raid upon the Baddicomb van had made it clear that that theory, at least, was without foundation. Under the circumstances it seemed extraordinary, not to say magical, that the boy had so utterly and absolutely disappeared.
Now, as a matter of fact, there was nothing magical or even extraordinary in the business. Micky had simply gone to Eastwich, and he had travelled there not on a broom-stick, but part of the way on his own legs, and the other part hanging on to the back of a cart, which was taking some noisily aggrieved pigs for their last sad drive to the pork butcher’s.
The real reason why nobody had managed to track him was twofold—firstly, he had had about twelve hours’ more start than his friends fancied, having left home not on Wednesday morning, but at half-past seven on Tuesday evening; and secondly, people were on the look out for one little gentleman, whereas it should have been for two little tramps!
‘Don’t I make a splendid beggar?’ Micky had demanded triumphantly, the evening before, when he had jumped out to join Diamond Jubilee, who was waiting just underneath his window—and the boast was no vain one. It is wonderful how a quick-witted boy can transform himself by dint of changing a neat sailor-suit for a ragged old coat and pair of knickers put away in the lumber-room, dispensing with collar, shoes, and stockings, and muddying his face and hands with flower-bed earth (‘you have to lick it to make it stick,’ Micky was careful to explain when he told the story afterwards); and all these things Micky had done, with the result that he looked every bit as much of a little tramp as Diamond Jubilee himself.
‘It isn’t many men who’d have thought of waiting quietly in bed till the servants were safe out of the house,’ Micky had remarked complacently, as he and Diamond Jubilee were setting out, ‘and I don’t suppose most people would have known how to disguise themselves so well. It’s really a beautifully managed adventure.’
In Diamond Jubilee’s eyes the adventure had needed only one improvement.
‘I could do with a bit of something to eat afore we starts,’ he had suggested.
‘But Jane said I wasn’t to have my proper supper to-night, and of course we can’t take anything, for that would be stealing,’ said Micky, not in the least meaning to lecture, but simply to state a matter of fact.
‘You are a softy!’ said Diamond Jubilee, but he spoke in quite an affectionate tone and did not press the point further. It was strange how different he was when alone with Micky, from what he was when Emmeline was trying to improve him.