"Is that you, Essie? Come along! What a time you've been! We've got such things to tell you! Come on!"
Esther pushed open the boys' door, and entered the room where two small beds stood side by side, and a small boy occupied each. Puck was snuggled down in his, though his eyes were wide open; but Pickle was sitting up, quivering with excitement to tell his tale to more sympathetic ears than those of either Mr. Earle or Genefer.
"O Esther! why didn't you come before? We've such things to tell you! Where have you been?"
"Up with Mr. Trelawny at the Crag. He's hurt himself. I had to stay with him. O Pickle, what were you doing? The old fisherman's wife said you were on the little island, and couldn't get back. Did Mr. Earle come and fetch you?"
"Oh, she let on to somebody, did she? I didn't quite understand about that part of it. Well, perhaps it was a good thing she did. But, I say, Esther, we did have a jolly old time of it for a bit. We went such a sail by ourselves. If it hadn't been for that stupid storm coming up and spoiling it, we could have showed everybody that we could manage a boat first-rate."
"Bertie was sick," chimed in Puck from his nest, "and I didn't like it when we couldn't get to shore. I thought we were going to be upset and drowned once. I didn't like that part of it."
Esther looked from one to the other in some bewilderment and anxiety.
"O boys, what did you do?"
Then Pickle plunged headlong into the story. It was all rather mixed up and difficult for Esther to follow, but she began to understand that the boys had taken advantage of their liberty on Saturdays to go off regularly to the little island, and that they had kept this "city of refuge" quite as a secret of their own.
"I shouldn't have minded telling you," said Pickle, "only we thought perhaps you'd tell Mrs. Poll-parrot, or Pretty Polly, and then all the fun would have been gone."