The course was empty.
“Tortoise got away with her!” laughed Wally.
“H’m,” said Jim. “We’ll track her to her lair.”
In her lair—the kitchen—Mrs. Brown was discovered, modestly hiding behind the door. The tortoise was on the table, apparently cheerful.
“Poor dear pet!” said Mrs. Brown. “He wouldn’t run. I don’t think he was awake to the situation, Master Jim, dear, so I just carried him over—I didn’t think it mattered which way I ran—and my scones were in the oven! They’re just out—perhaps you’d all try them?”—this insinuatingly. “I don’t think this tortoise comes of a racing family!”—and the great menagerie race concluded happily in the kitchen in what Wally called “a hot buttered orgy.”
CHAPTER IV.
JIM’S IDEA
Two hammocks, side by side, under a huge pine tree, swung lazily to and fro in the evening breeze. In them Norah and Harry rocked happily, too comfortable, as Norah said, to talk. They had all been out riding most of the day, and were happily tired. Tea had been discussed fully, and everything was exceedingly peaceful.
Footsteps at racing speed sounded far off on the gravel of the front path—a wide sweep that ran round the broad lawn. There was a scatter of stones, and then a thud-thud over the grass to the pine trees—sounds that signalised the arrival of Jim and Wally, in much haste. Jim’s hurry was so excessive that he could not pull himself up in time to avoid Harry. He bumped violently into the hammock, with the natural result that Harry swung sharply against Norah, and for a moment things were rather mixed.
“You duffer!” growled Harry, steadying his rocking bed. “Hurt you? “—this to Norah.
“No, thanks,” Norah laughed. “What’s the matter with you two?”