"To give up this idiotic motor tour," said Kew. "And go back to London, and talk Jay out of her 'bus-ism. I want her to leave it off, and let the Family discover her romantically enjoying some passable imitation of her Secret World. I want the Family never to know of all that lay between. I do want it all to come right. I'm going off to-day, and I may not see her again. And I know hardly any trustable person but you."
"Right," said Mr. Russell.
He thought: It's too funny to be true, but if it isn't true, I shall be surprised.
Kew enlarged to him on the details of his mission.
On the breakfast table, when they returned, they found a letter from Jay, evidently written for private circulation in the Family.
Dear Kew—I have just come in from a walk almost as exciting as it was beautiful. We walked through our village, which clings to both sides of a crack-like harbour that might just contain a carefully navigated walnut-shell. The village is grey and white, all its walls are whitewashed, all its roofs are slate with cushions of stone-crop clinging to them. Sea-thistles grow outside its doors, seagulls are its only birds. The slope on which it stands is so steep that the main road is on a level with the roofs on one side, and if you were absentminded, you might walk on to a roof and fall down a chimney before you became aware that you had strayed from the street. But we were not absent-minded. We sang Loud Songs all the way. We ran across the grass after the shadows of the round clouds that bowled across the sky. In single file we followed the dog Trelawney after the seagulls. Everything was so clear that we could see the little rare island that keeps itself to itself on our horizon. I don't know its name; they say it bears a town and a post-office and a parson, but I don't think this is true. I think that island is an intermittent dream of ours. When you get beyond the village, the cliff leaves off indulging in coves and harbours and such frivolities, and decides to look upon itself seriously as a giant wall against a giant sea. Only it occasionally defeats its own object, because it stands up so straight that the sea finds it easier to knock down. On a point of cliff there was a Lorelei seagull standing, with its eye on Trelawney. It had pale eyes, and a red drop on its beak. And Trelawney, being a man-dog, did what the seagull meant him to do. He ran for it, he ran too far, and fell over the edge. Well, this is not a tragic incident, only an exciting one. Trelawney fell on to a ledge about ten foot below the top of the cliff, and sat there in perfect safety, shrieking for help. My Friend said: "This is a case of 'Bite my teeth and Go.'" It is a saying in this family, dating from the Spartan childhood of my Friend, that everything is possible to one who bites his teeth and goes. The less you like it, the harder you bite your teeth, and it certainly helps. My Friend said: "If we never meet again, remember to catch and hang that seagull for wilful murder. It would look rather nice stuffed in the hall." The cliff overhangs rather just there, and when he got over the edge, not being a fly or used to walking upside down, he missed his footing. We heard a yelp from Trelawney. But the seagull's conscience is still free of murder, my Friend only fell on to Trelawney's ledge. So it was all right, and we ate our hard-boiled eggs on the scene of the incident.
"I remember—" said Mr. Russell.
"That letter," said Anonyma, "ought to help us a bit."
She was quite bright, because Kew had conveyed to her the hope that the plot for the rescue of the Family was doing well. Cousin Gustus also, with no traces of a headache except a faint smell of Eau-de-Cologne, had come down hopefully to breakfast.
"Obviously the North coast of Cornwall," said Mrs. Russell. "The village might be Boscastle, and the island is surely Lundy…. Such an intensely funny name, Lundy, isn't it? Ha-ha! For some reason it amuses me more and more every time I hear it. It reminds me of learning geography with the taste of ink and bitten pen in my mouth. I used to catch my sister's eye—just as I'm catching yours now—and laugh ever so much, over Lundy. I used to be a terror to my governesses."