‘It wasn’t silly,’ said Micky. ‘I pushed them right to the back of the kennel, where it’s all dark. Nobody would ever see them unless they stooped down and looked right in, and they’d never think of doing that.’
‘Well, perhaps not,’ said Emmeline doubtfully, ‘but I’m afraid they’ll be very dirty and smelly when they come out again.’
‘Oh, they’ll only smell rather doggy,’ said Micky cheerfully.
It struck Emmeline that Jane might not take it quite so calmly as Micky, if next time she went to prepare the spare-room for a visitor she found the best blankets smelling doggy. Still, it was to be hoped that next time was still a long way off, and meantime the kennel had one advantage as a storing-place—namely, that it would be possible to take the blankets out of it without being observed. Perhaps, after all, Micky had done the best that could be done under the circumstances. Emmeline felt quite bewildered with the new and unthought of difficulties and problems which were continually cropping up. She had never realised that the secret adoption of a child would prove so complicated a business.
‘Well, I think I’ll go out with the milk and see if I can find him,’ she said aloud, after a moment’s anxious reflection. ‘Even if I don’t I can always leave it in some safe outdoor place. Don’t either of you come with me. Aunt Grace may want us to go messages, and it would be awkward if you were out as well.’
Emmeline ran up to the schoolroom, took the glass of milk out of the cupboard, and hurried downstairs with it. When she had got it safely into the garden without anyone having noticed her, she began to breathe freely again.
Alas! An unforeseen danger was following her down the garden path. She had been thinking so much of escaping with her milk, unseen by Jane, Cook, or Aunt Grace, that she had forgotten all about Mr. Brown till now, when she heard his wheel-barrow grating on the gravel behind her. It was a dismaying sound, for Mr. Brown had inconveniently keen eyes, and if he saw the milk he would certainly wonder what she was doing with it out there. What was worse, he would wonder about it to Jane and Cook, for Mr. Brown’s standard of honour in not telling tales was not as high as it might have been. So Emmeline almost ran along the path, without daring so much as to look round, and, pushing open the garden door, fled through it and into the lane so hastily that a good deal of her milk splashed out on to her dress.
‘Hello!’ called a voice, as she was trying, without much success, to rub out the stain with her pocket-handkerchief. Looking up, startled, she saw Diamond Jubilee’s disreputable little figure leaning over the railings which fenced off the wood.
‘You should say “Good-morning,” not “Hulloa,”’ said Emmeline with dignity, as soon as she had recovered from her start. ‘See, I have brought you your breakfast. Drink it quickly, for I have to get back to—to my work.’ She had been on the point of saying ‘to lessons,’ but ‘work’ sounded more dignified.
‘Why, I reckoned you was a lady,’ said Diamond Jubilee, pausing between two gulps to give her one of his critical stares.