“Well, you may be ‘sensible’ about it,” remarked Josy witheringly, “but you’re being jolly selfish as well! If you don’t, perhaps Margot and Sybil will get back in about half an hour, and no one will ever know anything about it. But, if you do——”
But Stella had already departed on her errand, which was to prove a lengthy and fruitless one, for, when she returned, the match was nearly over, and the house-mistress had not been found.
“She may have been in the mistress’s room, of course,” she concluded, after an account of her adventures; “but we’re not allowed in there, so I didn’t——”
“And that Jim of yours has been searching for you all round the field like a lost puppy, while you’ve been gone,” replied Josy, still feeling rather stand-offish, as she would have expressed it, on account of Stella’s “tell-tale ways!” “He’s gone back now; he wanted to ask you——”
At that instant two figures were seen approaching the little group from the two different school entrances. One was Jim, returning breathless and excited—a very different youth in appearance from the sulky, sheepish yokel who had, after scouring the playground, returned to where the rector’s trap had originally stood. Stella started towards him at a run, just as Gretta turned to fly joyfully in the direction of the second new-comer, Mrs. Fleming herself, who had evidently singled out her niece in spite of the crowd, and was bearing down upon her.
“Why, here you are, Gretta!” she exclaimed. “And where are the other two?”
“Then you haven’t——?” Gretta began feverishly, then stopped, for Stella and Josy, followed by Jim, with eyes full of despair, joined the pair breathlessly, excitement lending wings to any feelings of shyness that might otherwise have attacked them in the presence of a stranger. “She’s gone!” cried the two. “Margot’s gone! She’s taken the trap, and——!”
“Margot gone! But where?” inquired that damsel’s mother anxiously.
The tale was not a long one, but so involved did it become through the efforts of the three girls to tell it at one and the same moment, while near by shouted and clapped a crowd of hockey enthusiasts, that Mrs. Fleming was little wiser at the end of the recital than at the beginning.
“Let me hear one thing!” she begged anxiously. “Whatever Margot and Sybil may be doing, are they safe? Gretta, tell me the story again, and all alone, please. Then I shall understand better.”