‘Exceedingly nice!’ echoed Miss Finlayson, warmly. ‘I am only sorry there should be this delay in carrying out your plan. However, that is no reason why we should not have something to eat, while Barbara is making up her mind. It must be nearly midnight, and I am starving. Will one of you come and help me to forage?
Egbert volunteered, with a feeling of relief at having something to do; and he followed her out of the room. The moment the door closed, the children’s tongues were loosed.
‘Dear, dear Babs,’ cried Robin, dancing round her gleefully; ‘you will come away from the horrid, cross old thing, won’t you?’
‘Finny isn’t cross, Bobbin; it’s the others,’ remonstrated Babs.
‘Why, of course you’re coming, aren’t you?’ said Peter, who was impatient to have done with this inaction and to carry out the glorious rescue they had planned. The worst of it was that half its gloriousness seemed to have subsided before the pleasant manners of the head-mistress.
‘I should think she was coming, indeed!’ declared Wilfred. ‘You don’t suppose I’m going to lose two hours of bed for nothing, do you?’
Christopher, who had been silently observing Barbara all the while, shook his head slowly. ‘She won’t come,’ he said gruffly. ‘They’ve made her different already.’
A vague feeling of uneasiness crept over Barbara. Kit was always right; was she different already? She gave herself an involuntary shake. ‘Never mind about me!’ she exclaimed. ‘Tell me about Crofts, and what you’ve been doing since I left, and––everything. Do you mean to say your cold is better already, Kit?’
‘Ah!’ Wilfred hastened to tell her; ‘that’s because of the new doctor.’
‘There’s a new doctor just settled in this part of the world,’ explained Peter. ‘Your Finny thinks an awful lot of him, and that’s why Auntie Anna sent for him last night, when Kit got bad, instead of going to the old-fashioned chap who lives round the corner at Crofts. We don’t think anything of him at all, though; do we, boys?’