Elizabeth smiled patiently.
“Exactly,” she remarked, “but, without wishing to be pessimistic, I really cannot see that it will be in the smallest degree easier to find Molly than to find Master Antony.”
Mrs. Trimwell looked at her pityingly.
“Bless you, ma’am, I wasn’t going to give you a notion what was that jumbled there wasn’t no end to take hold of to unwind it by, so to speak. It’s little use a notion of that sort would be. I see Molly going by here about half-past seven or thereabouts, with a tin can, a brown paper parcel, a willow stick with a bit of string to it, and saying her prayers out of a morsel of a book.”
“Yes?” queried Elizabeth; while David looked his doubts. For the life of them they could see no connection between Molly passing the cottage at that hour, and any possible clue to the matter on hand.
Mrs. Trimwell smiled oracularly. She perceived their doubts well enough.
“The little book,” quoth she “meant that Molly was off to Mass. I ain’t known Molly from babyhood for nothing. The parcel meant as she was taking her dinner with her, being off on the spree like for the day. The tin and the willow stick means fishing in the river. Not that she ever catches anything as I knows on.”
“Oh!” said Elizabeth. She was beginning to see light. David laughed.
“Like as not she’ll have happened on the little master,” announced Mrs. Trimwell, “and took him along with her. Leastways I for one don’t believe he’s ever gone off on his own account. You try the river, and up the river, mind. I see Miss Rosamund and Mr. Mortimer going off down the river. ’Tis too wide and open there for Molly. She’ll go for the shallower parts up to Hurst Lea Woods, I’ll be bound.”
Here at least was something to go on, some conceivable possibility. Nay, to Elizabeth’s mind, and to David’s mind, it began to present itself in the light of a probability. At all events for present purposes it might be desirable to regard it as such.