They tiptoed round to the verandah window again. But this time there was no sign whatever of the rebel though both doors were still locked on the outside. Miss Bibby flew back in terror to the door that opened into the hall; she had taken the key of the verandah doorway. But as her eyes went wildly searching among the furniture they fell upon a dusty little sandal with a brown little foot attached. The boy had crawled so completely underneath the low sofa that nothing more of him was visible.
Not a toe quivered.
Miss Bibby stooped down and laid a hand on the foot; the muscles of it lay soft and resistless beneath her fingers.
“Max,” she said again.
“Oh, oh,” said Lynn, whose nature was easily strung high, “is he dead! Oh, is he dead!” She leapt across the room.
But Miss Bibby was gently drawing more of the unresisting body into view—the scratched and chubby knees that succeeded the brown feet, and that were perfect little “calendars of distress,” the three-inch “trousers,” the crumpled tunic, the little smudgy face.
“Fast asleep!” she said tenderly, and gathered him very softly up into her arms.
“Fast asleep!” said Kate, and something stirred at her heart and made her long to gather up the chubby rogue herself.
“I will lay him down on the sofa,” whispered Miss Bibby, but made no haste to do so, so sweet was the sense of the warm, helpless child body in her arms.