"Well, that's the quare thing," said Lull, "for I've hunted the length and breadth of the house, an' can't lay my han' on them at all."
Again they declared they had not seen them. This time Patsy spoke with the others, but Jane noticed that he put his hand on the back of a chair as he spoke. After dinner she told Mick. "It was Patsy tuk yer black coat an' hat," she said.
"An' how do ye know that?" Mick asked.
"Didn't I see him touch wood when he said he niver seen it?" she said. "I wonder what he's done with it, though," she added. The more she thought about it the more bewildered she grew. But of one thing she was sure: that if she could find out where he went, and what he did on those long days away from home, she would have a key to the other mystery. So she set herself to find out. The only thing to do was to follow him some day; but Patsy seemed to know what was in her mind, for he guarded his departures so carefully that each time it was not until he had got a good start of her that she discovered he was gone.
One morning at breakfast Jane saw by the look on Patsy's face that he meant to be off that day, and she made up her mind that this time he should not slip through her fingers.
Patsy got up from the table with a yawn. "Who's seen the wee babby rabbits?" he said. No one had.
"Well, first there gets the pick," he said, and they flew to the hutches. But when they got there no baby rabbits were to be seen, and, in a fury of disappointment, Jane realised that Patsy had got the better of her again. She was so angry that she slapped Fly and Honeybird for daring to laugh at the joke, and their cries brought Lull out into the yard. Lull dried their tears on her apron, scolding and comforting at the same time.
"There now, ye're not kilt," she said. "Shame on ye, Jane, to lift yer han' again them. If ye lay finger on them more I'll tell yer mother." This was always Lull's threat, and though she never kept her word it never failed to have the same effect on the children. The thought of making their mother unhappy was the most dreadful punishment they could imagine. Jane walked out of the yard with her nose in the air and a miserable feeling in her heart. But, once out of sight, she ran to her favourite hiding-place among the sallies at the top of the garden, and sitting down with her back to the convent wall she cried with disappointment, and with repentance too. It was wicked to have slapped Fly and Honeybird, but they had no business to laugh at her; and that little brute of a Patsy was off again all by himself, and she didn't know where he was. By-and-by she heard Mick calling her. She knew he would be sure to look in the sallies for her, so she dried her eyes, and crept along by the wall, and under the fence at the top of the garden, out into the field. No good could come of letting Mick find her; for she was still in a bad temper, and she knew it would only mean more fights if she went home before her temper had gone. She wandered through the fields in an aimless way, till she began to get bored, and not any better tempered for that.
It was all Patsy's fault; if he had not put her in a temper she might have been working at the pigeon-house with Mick; but now the whole day was spoilt, for she could not, with dignity, go home before tea-time. Soon she found herself in a lane, and had to stop to choose which way she would go.
One way led to the village and the sea, the other to the big road that ran to Castle Magee and town. It was too cold to go to the sea, and she didn't want to go through the village with red eyes. Then the thought came into her mind that the snowdrops might be out in the church-yard at Castle Magee, so she turned that way.