“What do you mean, Dick? You don’t think they’ve—caught him?” whispered she in alarm.
“No, and I don’t think they will catch him. But when we leave this room we shall be just strangers for the rest of our lives.”
“But we shan’t! Oh, Dick, do you think I would ever treat you as a stranger?”
“You won’t be able to help yourself,” said he, looking up at her with a dreary smile. “You are so ridiculously ignorant of the world, little one, and you’ve been so neglected since you’ve been here that I don’t know how to explain the smallest thing to you without frightening you. But I assure you that after this escapade to-night you will never be allowed to go out by yourself again.”
“Escapade!”
“Yes. That is what you will hear your expedition called, and you will never be allowed to make another. Quite right too. If you had been left to run wild here, you would have been spoilt, and you would have begun to mix up right with wrong like the rest of us.”
“I don’t think so,” said Freda gently. “I should have been told the difference.”
“But who was there to tell you?”
“God would have told me.”
There was a pause, and then Dick said: