"Oh, how awfully shabby and unkind you are!" she cried. "What can you mean to do with me?"
"Nothing; you shall help me to search the summerhouse."
"What for?"
"Just to see if, by any possibility, Kate's and Molly's conversation could have been overheard."
"I won't do it, Cecil Ross; I won't!"
"All right; you can sit in that corner, and I'll search by myself."
Cecil felt herself at that moment endowed with all Jimmy's detective qualities; she moved the simple furniture, and poked about for a time without success, but suddenly observing a row of bats on the wooden wall, just on a level with the bench on which she and Matilda had been seated, she removed them one by one. Behind one of the bats was a notch of wood, out of which a hard wood kernel had been carefully removed. A round hole was therefore distinctly visible, against which a person from outside might put either an ear or an eye.
"This hole looks rather suspicious," said Cecil. "Matilda, will you kindly come forward, and let me see if you are the right height to use such a peep-hole with advantage?"
"I won't! I daren't!" said Matilda. "I hate you, Cecil."