“This is his house,” she said to herself, “and the room is a beautiful one—heaps of air, big, lofty. If I don’t soon get tidings the police must be told that he’s not an ordinary little boy, but Sir Piers Pelham himself.”
Lady Pelham returned, and her face was pale.
“I have made inquiries,” she said, “but no little boy has arrived to-day. It is late, and I will give you a bed for the night. The child you have been taking care of may turn up in the morning, but I cannot possibly imagine why you should think he was coming here. Would you like to stay here for the night?”
“It’s late,” said Mrs. Ives, “and my bones, they do ache terrible. Ha’ you got a feather bed and a room without curtains and bare floor?”
Barbara could not help smiling.
“I daresay we can accommodate you with what you require in one of the attics,” she said.
“Then I will stay, for the child may come in the morning. Did you ask Mrs. Posset if the child had come?”
“Certainly, I went to Mrs. Posset first of all.”
“And what did she say?”
“Your description made her cry. I had to explain that——”