“Lions, then, Miss Curiosity,” suggested Alan.
Pippa turned her shoulder towards him. “Imbécile, it is not a menagerie, but I have no interest in it, moi. If you wish to discover you can go and look for yourself.” And she proceeded to eat chicken delicately and haughtily with her fingers, disdaining further mention of the house within the wall.
After lunch they all lay down in the shade of the trees and went to sleep, lulled by the sleepy, liquid note of the wood-pigeons, and the humming of bees.
Barnabas was the first to awaken. When he did he discovered that Pippa was absent. He came out of the copse and looked down the little lane that ran between the trees on one side and a stretch of moorland on the other. To the left it would come out on the main road, to the right it led to the wall-enclosed house.
Seeing no sign of the child, and not caring to coo-ee to her on account of disturbing the sleepers, he went down towards the house, thinking it more than likely, from her remarks at lunch, that she had gone to investigate the place herself.
“Daughter of Eve,” said Barnabas to himself, as he strolled down the sunny lane, watching the butterflies flitting over the moorland.
He reached the garden wall and had strolled round two sides of it when he suddenly came to a standstill, arrested by the sound of Pippa’s voice from inside the garden.
He paused to listen. He could hear her words distinctly. She was narrating to some one the story of Philippe Kostolitz which he had told her only a couple of days previously.
“And so,” Pippa ended, in her clear voice, “I am looking for my language. What is yours?” There was a note of shameless coaxing in the words.
“That,” returned a deep voice.