"I think," said Beth, "that I'd better go and look for the table cloth."
"Wait one moment," said Jimmy, "till I get the luncheon basket out of the car and then I'll be with you. I feel sure it'll take two of us to find that table cloth."
"Am I to be left alone?" said Sir Evelyn. "I don't like it. If Mrs. Eames comes back and finds me unprotected—— Perhaps the best thing for me to do would be to join the vicar in the church. Do you suppose he took the pickaxe as a weapon of defence? I feel as if I should like something of the sort."
"Your aunt," said Jimmy, a few minutes later, "is perfectly priceless."
They were searching in the dining-room for the table cloth and so far had not come on a trace of it.
"There's a lot of go about her," said Beth.
"Go! I should think there was. I only wish there was half as much in the Pallas Athene. I wonder now, if I asked her very nicely, would she come over to Morriton St. James some day and take a look at that car. If anyone could get a move on the wretched thing it would be your aunt. She'd make anything in the world hop up and run about."
Chapter XIV
The rehearsal in the afternoon was a success, though tiring to all who took part in it.
Gladys, useless as housemaid or cook, showed that there was something she could do really well when she was turned into a messenger. Released quite unexpectedly from duties she detested, she sped joyfully round the village, summoning performers to the mouth of the cave at three o'clock. Her excited account of the ladies and gentlemen who had come from London to organise the pageant, roused fresh interest in an affair which the people were beginning to find a little tiresome.