Una used to wonder sometimes what made all the gentlemen who came to her father's house look so sad. All men did not look sad, she knew, for the baker's man who came to the house looked quite jolly, and had a round, red face which seemed always laughing; and Mr. Carew, her little friends' father, looked quite cheerful, too, quite different from her own grave father.
Poor little girl! It was sad for her, this mystery which hung about her life; and I think she would have grown into a very quiet, grave little maiden in those days if she had not had the little Carews to play and be merry with.
One day the children had been having a game on the terrace in the front of the house. It was a new game which Tom had made up, and which they all liked very much. One of them stood, blindfolded, in front of a heap of little sticks at one end of the terrace, and the others all had to hop on one leg and try to get the sticks, one by one, without the blindfolded one catching them; the fun of the game being that it was very difficult not to make a noise hopping on the gravel, and the "blind man" usually pretended not to hear, and then made a dash at the hopping thief just as he or she was carrying off a stick.
They had been playing so long at this game that they had made themselves quite tired and hot, and had sat down on the lawn to rest; and then it was that Una remembered that she had forgotten to shut up "Snoozy," as she had named the hedgehog, after she had given him his breakfast that morning, and now she could not think what had become of him.
The hedgehog had got so tame now that he would follow his little mistress about the garden, and come when she called or whistled; and Una generally let him have a run in the garden every morning, and then shut him up again when she went in to lessons.
To-day, however, although she called and whistled, and looked in all the little animal's usual haunts, she could not find him, and they had almost begun to think that he must have run away into the wood, when Tom thought of the drooping ash-tree at the end of the lawn, and wondered whether "Snoozy" might have hidden himself in there.
"How silly of us," cried Norah. "Why, of course, he must be there. Fancy not thinking of looking there before!"
"I don't know," said Una, "he has never hidden there before; but we can go and look," and they all raced across the lawn, and pushed their way through the drooping branches of the tree.
Yes, there was the hedgehog, curled up into a little ball against the trunk of the tree—thinking, no doubt, that evening had come round again; for the branches and leaves were so thick that it was quite dark under the ash-tree—and beside the hedgehog, leaning carelessly against the trunk of the tree, with folded arms and a scowl upon his face, was a tall, pale-faced, black-haired young man.