“I say, Ruby,” he whispered, “the room over here is quite—”
“I know,” she said. “So is the kitchen. They’re gone, Bertrand, quite gone, and we’ve had all our trouble for nothing. It’s too bad.”
“They!” repeated Bertrand, “you can’t say they, when you know that Winfried is locked up in the turret-room.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Ruby starting, “I quite forgot. He must have hidden his grandfather somewhere. And yet I don’t see how they could have managed it so quietly. We always know when any of the village people are moving their furniture; they send to borrow our carts.”
“Well,” said Bertrand, “there’s one thing certain. If you didn’t believe it before, you must now; I should think even Mavis would—the old fellow is a wizard, and so’s his precious grandson.”
“Shall we go into the house?” said Ruby, though she looked half afraid to do so.
“Isn’t the door locked?” said Bertrand, trying it as he spoke. It yielded to his touch; he went in, followed, though tremblingly, by Ruby.
But after all there was little or nothing to see; the three rooms, though scrupulously clean, even the windows shining bright and polished, were perfectly empty. As the children strolled back to the kitchen, annoyed and disappointed, feeling, to tell the truth, rather small, something caught Ruby’s eye in one corner of the room. It was a small object, gleaming bright and blue on the white stones of the floor. She ran forward and picked it up, it was a tiny bunch of forget-me-nots tied with a scrap of ribbon; the same large brilliant kind of forget-me-not as those which she and Mavis had so admired on their first visit to the now deserted cottage. She gave a little cry.
“Look, Bertrand,” she said, “they can’t have been long gone. These flowers are quite fresh. I wonder where they came from. They must have been growing in a pot in the house, for there are none in the garden. I looked as we came through.”
Bertrand glanced at the flowers carelessly.