“Won’t I punish him!” cried Mrs. Grape, in her relieved feelings: and she too went to the gate.
Dolly’s hopeful eagerness had misled her. It was not Tom. But it was one of Tom’s schoolfellows, young Thorn, whom they all knew. He halted to explain that he had been to a boys’ party in the Bath Road, and expected to “catch it” at home for staying so late. Dolly interrupted him to speak of Tom.
“What an odd thing!” cried the lad. “Oh, he’ll come home presently, safe enough. Which of our fellows are named Bill, you ask, Miss Grape? Let’s see. There’s Bill Stroud; and Bill Hardwick—that is, William——”
“It was neither Stroud nor Hardwick; I should have known the voices of both,” interrupted Mrs. Grape. “This lad cannot, I think, be in your school at all, Thorn: he said his school was to have holiday on Monday because it would be a Saint’s Day.”
“Holiday, because it was a Saint’s Day!” echoed Thorn. “Oh then, he must have been one of the college boys. No other school goes in for holidays on the Saints’ Days but that. The boys have to attend service at college, morning and afternoon, so it’s not a complete holiday: they can get it easily, though, by asking leave.”
“I don’t think Tom knows any of the college boys,” debated Dolly.
“Yes, he does; our school knows some of them,” replied Thorn. “Good-night: I can’t stay. He is sure to turn up presently.”
But Tom Grape did not turn up. At midnight his mother put on her bonnet and shawl and started out to look for him in the now deserted streets of the town. Now and again she would inquire of some late wayfarer whether he had met a boy that night, or perhaps two boys, and described Tom’s appearance; but she could learn nothing. The most feasible idea she could call up, and the most hopeful, was that Tom had really gone home with the other lad and that something must have happened to keep him there; perhaps an accident. Dolly felt sure it must be so. Elizabeth Deavor, running in at breakfast-time next morning to ask for news, laughingly said Tom deserved to be shaken.
But when the morning hours passed and did not bring the truant or any tidings of him, this hope died away. The first thing to be done was to find out who the other boy was, and to question him. Perhaps he had also disappeared!
Getting from young Thorn the address of those of the college boys—three—who, as he chanced to know, bore the Christian name of William, Mrs. Grape went to make inquiries at their houses. She could learn nothing. Each of the three boys disclaimed all knowledge of the affair; their friends corroborating their assertion that they had not been out on the Saturday night. Four more of the King’s scholars were named William, they told her; two of them boarding in the house of the head-master, the Reverend Allen Wheeler.