Arthur groaned.
"I want to talk to Lee and Gay," he said. "My sisters—an advertisement in a magazine—for drummers and newsboys to make jokes about——"
He grew white and whiter, until his innocent sisters were thoroughly frightened. Then he started out of the playroom in search of Lee and Gay.
In or about The Camp they were not to be found. Nobody had seen them since breakfast. With this information, he returned to the playroom.
"They've run away," he said, "and I'm going after them."
"I wouldn't," said Mary. "The harm's been done. You can't very well spank them. I wish you could. You can only scold—and what earthly good will that do them, or you?"
"I don't know that anything I may say," said Arthur, "will do them any good. I live in hopes."
"Have you any idea where they've gone?"
"I'll cast about in a big circle and find their tracks."
When Arthur, mittened and snow-shoed, had departed in search of Lee and Gay, the remaining sisters gathered about the full-page advertisement in The Four Seasons, and passed rapidly from anger to mild hysterics. Mary was the last to laugh.