I turned to Miss Lally.
'He went up to sit with you, my dear, in the attic,' I said.
'I didn't see him,' said Miss Lally, and then she explained how Miss Bess had fetched her down ever so long ago. 'I daresay Francie's in his own room,' she went on. 'I'll run up and see, and I'll look in the attic too, for I left my work lying about.'
She ran off.
'Nurse,' said Miss Bess, 'do you think Francis got a very bad scolding? You saw him, didn't you? Did he seem very unhappy?'
'I'm afraid so, my dear, but I think it will come all right again. I've seen your mamma since, and she quite sees now that he didn't really mean to be disobedient.'
'I wish you had told mamma that before they spoke to Francis,' said Miss Bess, who I must say was rather a Job's comforter sometimes.
We waited anxiously till we heard Miss Lally's footsteps returning. She ran in alone, looking rather troubled.
'He's not there, not in his own room, or the attic, or nowhere, but he must have been in the attic, for my work's gone.'
A great fear came over me. Could the poor boy have run away in his misery at having again angered his uncle and aunt? for the look on his face had been strange, when he glanced in at the nursery door, asking for Miss Lally. Was he meaning perhaps to bid her good-bye before setting off in some wild way? And what she said of the knitting having gone made me still more uneasy. Had he perhaps taken it with him as a remembrance? for of all the queer mixtures of old-fashionedness and childishness that ever I came across, Master Francis was the strangest, though, as I have said, there was a good deal of this in all the children.