“Well, she was, anyway. I would have stopped the trap but I was so frightfully late. I’ve been trying to tell you for ages, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“And you let her go on?” Margot was crimson. “Stella, how could you? Gretta, what could Sybil have been doing? Sybil—a mile away!”
“I can’t imagine.” Gretta was shaking with anxiety; the match was forgotten, and she turned for help to her cousin. “Margot, have you any idea? Could she be unhappy and be trying to get home? I never thought—Oh, how selfish I’ve been.”
“You’ve not,” said Margot, thinking rapidly. “I know what it is. She’s off to the ‘Little House’; that’s where she’s gone; and it’s my fault, not yours. She’ll get there, too, if she was a mile away when Stella saw her. She must have started the minute after dinner. Oh, Gretta, and she’ll be terrified if she really meets that old man, and goes to his house and——”
“Well, I didn’t know,” began Stella, rather shamefacedly.
“Look here, Stella, is your trap waiting?” burst in Margot. “I’m going after her. May I ask your boy to drive me? I’ll catch her up, perhaps, before she gets there, and bring her back.”
“I suppose you can,” Stella was beginning rather doubtfully, but Gretta and Josy burst in: “Look here, Margot, let’s ask Miss Read what to do. We’re not allowed——”
“There isn’t any time,” said Margot angrily; “and you know that Miss Read said she’d be busy all the afternoon. I’m going this instant, whatever you say, and I don’t care if I am breaking rules—there’s nothing else to do.”
She rushed across the field as she spoke to the path that led to the school entrance, leaving the others to look after her with anxious faces.