‘She never knew we were coming, till we came,’ added another voice. ‘We made up the plan because we heard she was jolly unhappy.’
‘We couldn’t possibly let her be unhappy another minute, or else we might have waited till Auntie Anna came back,’ chimed in a third.
Then followed a disappointed cry in Robin’s shrill tones. ‘But isn’t she going to escape, after all?’
Miss Finlayson waited till they had finished speaking, and her large clear eyes were brimming over with fun.
‘Of course she is going to escape, if she wants to,’ answered the head-mistress; ‘but at present she seems to be in some doubt about the matter. Supposing you come in and wait by the fire, while she thinks it over. You might help her, perhaps, to make up her mind. Will you climb through the window, or shall I unbolt the front door?’
Naturally, a rescue party five strong could not do anything so tame as to walk through a front door; so although the window was four or five feet from the ground, Robin was hoisted up first by Peter’s strong arms, and then they all scrambled after him, one by one, till the little procession was ready to follow Babs and her captor into the warm, cosy study. Certainly, no one could have said that Miss Finlayson’s room looked stiff or austere at night, when the curtains were drawn and the fire had burned down to a rich red glow.
There was something like an uncomfortable pause, as soon as they found themselves assembled there, with the light full on their faces. It was true that the expedition had not failed, and that the Babe was as free to escape now as she had been before Miss Finlayson came upon the scene; but, for all that, none of them could help feeling that Miss Finlayson, so far, had the game in her own hands, and that they were only making themselves look ridiculous. For they could all see that her face was overflowing with merriment, as she stooped down and poked the fire into a blaze.
Egbert cleared his throat, and tried to relieve the awkwardness of the position by making some sort of an apology. He knew quite well that, being the eldest, he ought to have suppressed the plot in the very beginning.
‘I am afraid you will think us rather mad,’ he began, ‘but the Babe’s letter put us all on our mettle; and we thought–that is, some of us thought she ought to be rescued. Of course, we hadn’t seen you then,’ he added desperately. Any apology for the rescue party certainly involved the most unflattering insinuations about his hostess; and Egbert in his confusion thought exceedingly bitter things about Kit and Peter, who had dragged him against his will on this wild adventure.
‘It was awfully nice of you to think of me,’ murmured Barbara, but her tone was not so enthusiastic as it might have been. If only Finny would stop being so obliging about it, she was sure she would find it so much easier to run away.