Leila and Chrissie looked at each other.
“Peter’s Place,” they both exclaimed.
It meant nothing to Jasper, of course, for he had not heard Mr Fortescue’s warning.
“I know,” he said. “It’s a funny little street near here. We could go home that way, or I could run down from the corner. I’se so solly, Chrissie, about your prayer-book. Is it your best one?”
“No,” said Chrissie, “I haven’t got a best one. It’s only Lell that has. No, it’s far, far worse. Japs,” she went on, “you won’t tell, for p’raps we’ll get it back and then it’ll be all right and I’ll never do such a thing again,” and seeing that there was now nothing else for it, she told Jasper the whole unhappy story.
He grew pale with sympathy: he was too sorry for her, much to blame though she had been, to say anything to hurt her. No one certainly could have called the little fellow a “prig” who had seen him then. His one idea was to “help.”
“Come along, quick,” he said. “I’ll show you the way to his house,” and he sprang forward.
“Chrissie,” whispered Leila, “we daren’t go—we mustn’t go. We promised.”
“I know,” Chrissie replied, “though I daresay Dads only said it for fear of our losing our way. As if we were so silly! But Japs didn’t promise, Lell?” Leila hesitated—the breaking a promise in the spirit, if not in the letter, does not come easy to honest consciences, such as these two little girls did really possess.
“There’s nothing else to be done,” persisted Christabel, trying to talk down her own misgivings. “We won’t go home that way, Lell, we’ll keep to the big street, and let Japs run round to the house. He knows where it is, and we’ll wait for him.”