They ran back to the house and Edmund escorted Jane-Anne as far as the kitchen, where Mrs. Dew was standing at the fireplace dishing up.
"Jane-Anne came to see you, Mrs. Dew," Edmund announced loudly from the doorway, "but you'd just gone, so we asked her in to wait till you came back."
Mrs. Dew turned hastily and beheld her niece standing just behind her.
"But I've been back over an hour," Mrs. Dew exclaimed. "Wherever have you been since, Jane-Anne?"
"We asked her to play cricket with us," Edmund explained. "We never heard you come in. Good-bye, Jane-Anne, I must go and wash."
Wagging his curly head meaningly in token of the assignation for the morrow, Edmund departed and Jane-Anne was left face to face with her aunt.
"Well!" that good woman ejaculated. "You've given me a pretty turn. I couldn't think where you was gone; evening and all, and then to think you've been all this time playing with the young gentlemen like one of theirselves, and me never so much as dreaming where you was. What possessed you to come at all, Jane-Anne?"
"I was lonely, Aunt Martha, I wanted to see you."
"You might have seen me over an hour ago if you'd a' chose. Well, now you must run back home before it gets dark. I can't let you wait for me to take you, there's all them dinner things to wash up. How hot you are child! Mind you don't catch cold, and school beginning next week."
Jane-Anne looked wistfully at the sizzling cutlets in the frying-pan. She had started off before her tea and was very hungry. Her aunt had turned again to the range and was absorbed in lifting her cutlets out one by one and setting them to drain on a dish covered with white paper. As she carefully placed the last one, she turned and saw the flushed, wistful little face under the shadow of the inverted pie-dish.