“This ought to be passed round.”
“Go ’long!” she replied; but, she didn’t budge an inch when Jupp put his arm round her, and nobody knows what happened before Mr Vernon had composed himself and turned round again!
Chapter Three.
At the Vicarage.
Three little girls were flattening their respective little noses against the panes of glass as they stood by one of the low French windows of the old red brick house at the corner of the lane commanding the approach from the village; and three little pairs of eager eyes, now big with expectation, were peering anxiously across the snow-covered lawn through the gathering evening gloom towards the entrance gate beyond—the only gap in the thick and well-nigh impenetrable laurel hedge, some six feet high and evenly cropped all round at the top and square at the sides, which encircled the vicarage garden, shutting it in with a wall of greenery from the curious ken of all passers-by without.
With eager attention the little girls were watching to see who would be the first of the trio to herald the return of the missing Master Teddy and those who had gone forth in search of him; but, really, seekers and sought alike had been so long absent that it seemed as if they were all lost together and never coming back!
The little girls were weary almost of waiting, and being thus kept in suspense with hope deferred.
Besides that, they were overcome with a sense of loneliness and desertion, everyone in the house but old Molly the cook and themselves having started off early in the afternoon in different directions in quest of the truant Teddy; so, as the time flew by and day drew to a close, without a sight or sound in the distance to cheer their drooping spirits, their little hearts grew heavy within them.