PANIC AND THE SILENT PEOPLE
The following morning Captain Mumchance rode off to search Miss Primrose Crabapple's Academy for fairy fruit. And in his pocket was a warrant for the arrest of that lady should his search prove successful.
But when he reached the Academy he found that the birds had flown. The old rambling house was empty and silent. No light feet tripped down its corridors, no light laughter wakened its echoes. Some fierce wind had scattered the Crabapple Blossoms. Miss Primrose, too, had disappeared.
A nameless dread seized Captain Mumchance as he searched through the empty silent rooms.
He found the bedrooms in disorder—drawers half opened, delicately tinted clothing heaped on the floor—indicating that the flitting had been a hurried one.
Beneath each bed, too, he found a little pair of shoes, very down at heel, with almost worn-out soles, looking as if the feet that had worn them must have been very busy.
He continued his search down to the kitchen premises, where he found Mother Tibbs sitting smiling to herself, and crooning.
"Now, you cracked harlot," he cried roughly, "what have you been up to, I'd like to know? I've had my eye on you, my beauty, for a very long time. If I can't make you speak, perhaps the judges will. What's happened to the young ladies? Just you tell me that!"
But Mother Tibbs was more crazy than usual that day, and her only answer was to trip up and down the kitchen floor, singing snatches of old songs about birds set free, and celestial flowers, and the white fruits that grow on the Milky Way.
Mumchance was holding one of the little shoes, and catching sight of it, she snatched it from him, and tenderly stroked it, as if it had been a wounded dove.