"Are you coming to see us?" she asked.
"Eventually," I said.
"If you can find room inside," said Sonia from the box-seat, "we can drive you home in time for tea."
I wanted a word with Sonia privately, so I suggested that she and I should walk the rest of the way.
"We shall be frightfully late," she said dubiously as she descended from the box. Her rest-cure was doing her little good, to judge from her hollow cheeks and the dark rings round her eyes.
"Never mind," I said. "Right away! I say, Sonia, I'm a bird of ill-omen."
"What's the matter?" she asked anxiously.
"A friend of mine is missing—a friend of Raney and of us all. I was on my way to the school when you overtook me."
Sonia had stopped in the middle of the road and was looking at me with her big, beseeching eyes.
"You don't mean—Jim?" she said.