“You are to go quietly home,” said Flower, speaking in a voice of authority. “You are to go quietly home, and leave this matter in my hands. I know all about it, and just what David has done. He has bound you by a sort of oath, you poor little thing—you dear, brave little thing! Never mind, Fly; you leave David to me. I expect I shall find him now—that is, if you don’t keep me too long talking. Go home, and leave matters to me.”
“But Flower—Flower, you do comfort me a little; but Flower, it will soon be three o’clock, and then—and then—oh, dear father! Oh, it is so dreadful!”
“No, you silly mite; it is not dreadful at all. Polly is in charge of the Doctor. She is sitting with him now, and the door is locked, and the key is in Polly’s pocket, and she has promised me not to open that door to any one—no, Fly, not to a hundred of your Aunt Marias—until I bring David home.”
Fly’s face underwent a transformation. Her big eyes looked full up into Flower’s. A smile flitted across her quivering lips. With a sudden, passionate gesture, she stooped down and kissed Flower’s fingers, then ran obediently back in the direction of Sleepy Hollow.
“She is a perfect little darling!” said Flower to herself. “If Master David does not rue it for making her suffer, my name is not Flower Dalrymple.”
She ran on swiftly. She was always very quick and light in her movements. Soon she came to the place where David had to all appearance disappeared. She did not stay there long. She ran on to where the bracken grew thick and long, then suddenly lay flat down on the ground, and pressed her ear close to Mother Earth. What she heard did not satisfy her. She rose again, repeating the same process several times. Suddenly her eyes brightened; she raised her head, and listened attentively, then she whistled a long peculiar note. There was no answer, but Flower’s face retained its watchful, intent expression. She laid her head down once more close to the ground, and began to speak, “David, David, I know you are there; there is no use in your hiding. Come here, I want you, I, Flower. I will give you two minutes, David; if you don’t come then I’ll keep the threat I made when you made me angry with you at Ballarat.”
A perfect silence followed Flower’s words. She still lay flat on the ground. One of the minutes flew by.
“I’ll keep my word, David!” she said again. “You know me; you know what my threat means. Three-quarters of a minute more, half a minute, then I’ll go home, and I’ll do what I said I would do when you made me angry at Ballarat.”
Again there was silence, but this time quickly broken; a boy’s black head appeared above the bracken, a little brown hand was held out, and David, without troubling himself to move a hair’s breadth, looked full into his sister’s face.
“I don’t want to lose you, Flower!” he said. “You are the only person in all the world I care two-pence about. Now what’s the row?”