At last, finding the others did not come back to them, Poppy and Penelope got up and prepared to follow them. "I suppose they don't mean to go any farther in this direction," said Penelope. "Are my eyes all right, Poppy?"
Poppy assured her, truthfully, that no one would know she had shed a tear, and Esther and Angela, seated on a boulder waiting for them, saw no trace on either face, and suspected nothing of the storm that had come and gone since they parted.
"I am frantically hungry, aren't you?" called Penelope gaily, as they drew near.
They were all ravenous.
"Let's go back and have lunch at once," suggested Esther. "Did you get away from that horrid old thing pretty soon?"
They all understood who the 'horrid old thing' was without explanation, and none of them felt inclined to quarrel with the description.
"Oh yes, pretty soon," said Penelope, in an off-hand way, as she stooped to pick some sweet wild thyme.
"I shall never like her any more," said Angela emphatically. "She was so horrid to Esther."
"I wouldn't be taught by her for something," said Esther. "I don't envy you, Pen."
Pen felt a big sinking at her heart at the thought of her music lessons, and Miss Row's last words to her; but she made a brave effort to be cheerful. "She—she can be very nice," she said lamely.