"I don't know," said Rachel, reddening, in spite of herself, and her eyes falling guiltily before her questioner.
"Then he has not come with you?"
Regie's mind was what his father called "sure and steady." Mr. Gresley often said he preferred a child of that kind to one that was quick-witted and flashy.
"No, he has not come with me."
"Mary!" shrieked Regie, "he has not come."
"I knew he had not," said Mary. "When I saw he was not there I knew he was somewhere else."
Dear little Mary was naturally the Gresleys' favorite child. However thoroughly they might divest themselves of parental partiality, they could not but observe that she was as sensible as a grown-up person.
"I thought he might be somewhere near," explained Regie, "in a tree or something," looking up into the little yew. "You can't tell with a conjurer like Uncle Dick, can you, Auntie Hester, whatever Mary may say?"
"Mary is generally wrong," said Hester, "but she is right for once."
Mary, who was early acquiring the comfortable habit of hearing only the remarks that found an echo in her own breast, heard she was right, and said, shrilly: