'Why, Will,' exclaimed Nell, 'you never gave me any message?'
'I forgot what it was,' Will explained cheerily; 'something about a ribbon, I think.'
'I did not hear the message given,' the captain said, in answer to Nell's look, 'but Miss Abinger had a headache, and I think Will said it had to do with that.'
'Oh, wait a bit,' said Will, 'I remember something about it now. Mary saw something in a Silchester paper, the Mirror, I think, that made her cry, and she thinks that if you saw it you would cry too. So she wants you to look at it.'
'The idea of Mary's crying!' said Nell indignantly. 'But did she not give you a note?'
'She was too much upset,' said Will, signing to the captain not to let on that they had refused to wait for the note.
'I wonder what it can be?' murmured Nell.
She hurried from the room to her father's den, and found him there surrounded by newspapers.
'Is there anything in the Mirror, father?' she asked.
'Nothing,' said Mr. Meredith, who had made the same answer to this question many hundreds of times; 'nothing except depression in the boot trade.'