"I think it's strange," said Jan, "and I think it'd be better to tell us. We might help, you know. Oh, of course I know we all work frightfully hard at school because we're to bring back the family fortunes, but there are things I want to know about. There's a gap in the gallery where a picture's been taken down,—in between the portraits of Dad and Aunt Agnes when they were children,—Mother wouldn't tell me why. Not that I'd ask again, but——"
"Perhaps the Lennoxes will know," suggested Peter.
"If they do, I'm not sure that we ought ——" Robin was beginning when the sound of a horn was heard. It was Mrs. Vaughan's signal to the children when they were on the Island that they were wanted at once at home. At its sound the three turned their steps back to the boat, and in a few minutes Robin and Peter were pulling across. "Oh, my dears," said their Mother, standing on the opposite bank, her face quite pale with anxiety, "such an unexpected thing has happened!"
CHAPTER II
"Whatever is it, mother?" asked Robin anxiously.
For Mrs. Vaughan's face was quite pale with worry as she stood on the bank while they rowed towards her. "Don't pull right in," she said. "Though I suppose it doesn't matter out of doors. It's—— Better not, perhaps, under the circumstances. Stay there—on the water, and I'll talk to you from here."
"Why! What—ever——!" The eyes of the three grew large and round. Then an awful idea struck Peter. "Mother, you don't mean to say that anything's happened. You talk as though we'd got the Plague! Whatever is it?" He racked his brain to think of some possible horror. "Well, it isn't that the Lennoxes have wired to say that they can't come, for, if so——!"
"It's—worse." Mrs. Vaughan laughed ruefully. "One of them has arrived. It's—Dick; but—oh, he's covered with spots! Came out in the train, so he says; and, poor boy, he's feeling pretty bad, I think. It's certain to be something infectious, particularly as Donald—so Dick says—has been kept at home for a day or two, because this morning he woke up with a terrible headache, and wasn't well enough to travel."
"Measles! Well, we've had them!" said