"Well, an' what if they have?" he exclaimed, in his loud, hearty voice. "That needn't scare you. Aren't they always gettin' into trouble o' some kind or another, the pair o' them? Why, sure it's only the other day there that I found them wandered in Copsley Wood, like two motherless lambs! They were lost, the little 'un told me, quite lost! An' there they were sittin', the two o' them, on the stump o' an old tree, wrapped in one another's arms, for all the world like the babes in the wood—an' not more'n half a dozen yards from the highway!"
"An' that's where they are now, sure enough," said Mrs. Grey, in a tone of conviction. "They'll have gone back after them squirrels that led them such a dance on Friday! What do you think, Miss Perry?" she asked anxiously.
"I am certain of it too, now that you mention it," replied nurse, looking aghast at the thought. "Miss Joan was fair wild to get a squirrel; and Master Darby, he's that venturesome he would face anything. He doesn't know the meaning of fear for all he's so gentle and innocent-like. And Miss Joan follows him just like a dog. Dear, dear—to think of it!"
"You may well say that, for Copsley Wood's no place for them to be in by themselves," said Mrs. Grey, eyeing nurse with some disapproval in her glance.
"It's no place for decent people, let alone children," retorted Perry in her turn. "It was no further back than yesterday that the butcher's young man was telling me that a couple of gipsies or tramps have set up their tent there. He was pressing me to take a walk with him," she explained, hanging her head and playing with the fringe of baby's shawl; "and I said as how I'd never been in the wood. 'All the better,' says Jenkins, quite short, 'because that wood ain't no place for you, nor for any other nice young lady.' Oh, if they've gone and got kidnapped or murdered, what ever shall I do!" sobbed Perry, who was really a well-meaning woman, and good at heart in spite of a certain narrow-mindedness, not uncommon to her class, which hindered her from seeing at any time much further than her own nose.
Mrs. Grey had listened to nurse's speech with ill-concealed scorn.
"Young lady indeed!" she said afterwards to Mr. Grey, giving a contemptuous sniff. "Her a lady—and young too! Why, she's eight-and-twenty if she's a day! And a lad like Jim Jenkins! Sakes alive! the conceit o' some folks is sickenin'!"
Then when Perry began to weep and lament, the older woman watched her curiously in order to make sure how little of her feeling was real, how much assumed. But such distress was undoubtedly genuine, Mrs. Grey decided, and her eyes held a kindlier expression as she said soothingly,—
"Come now, cheer up! Takin' on that way won't do no manner o' good. You had better hurry home with the baby now. It's gettin' late for him to be out, pretty dear! Maybe you'll find the other two there before you, and famishin' for their tea."
"The missis is right," agreed Mr. Grey, rising from the table as he spoke, and wiping his mouth with a huge, red cotton pocket-handkerchief. "You get along as fast as ever you can, an' if the young shavers isn't at Firgrove afore you, send somebody up wi' a message. Then me an' Tom Brook 'll take a look round; an' if they're anywhere inside Copsley Wood, we'll bring them home to you afore bedtime yet, I'll be bound."