We got up to return to the house, my brain a-whirl with fresh conjecture, but as we drew level with the end of the garage and were approaching the little rose garden, I could have sworn that I heard movements in the hedge.
“Did you hear that?” I asked, holding Margaret back.
“No, what?”
“I’m certain I heard some one moving in the rose garden.” We went forward through the archway piercing the hedge as I spoke. At first we could see nothing and we were just coming away when Margaret grabbed me by the shoulder and pointed to the end of the hedge. Right at the end of it where it met the garden wall some one was standing—pressed well back between the hedge and the wall itself—apparently trying to hide. We went to see who it could be.
It was Miss Summerson.
“What is the matter? Whatever are you doing?” Margaret asked her.
She came a little forward out of the hedge and stood before us, her face scarlet, her breast heaving like a woman in a crisis in a picture play, obviously on the edge of tears, a pitiable object. There we stood, the three of us, Margaret and I exchanging glances of surprise, Miss Summerson looking first at one of us and then at the other and then at the ground, a study in furtive indecision.
At length she stammered, “I was trying to reach a rose in the hedge.”
I stepped forward to get it for her, pressing into the hedge where it grew thickly against the wall and where we had seen her standing, but no rose at all could I see.
“Whereabouts was the one you were after?” I asked, looking back over my shoulder to where she and Margaret stood.