'Sneaking off!' repeated Lady Coke. 'Alan, what a way of speaking! What do you mean?'
'He ran away as soon as he saw we wanted him,' said Georgie. 'He tried to hide in the bushes, and I am sure he did not want us to see him.'
'He was sneaking off. We could all tell that,' added Marjorie, a tall, handsome girl of thirteen. 'But what does it matter? If he can come with us now, it is no business of ours what he was doing.'
Meanwhile, Estelle, a small, slender child of eleven, who looked much younger, was clinging to her great-aunt's hand, and murmuring continually, 'Are we going, Auntie? I do so want to go on the sea!'
'Here is Thomas,' said Colonel De Bohun, as the young gardener came towards the group, with a sulky expression on his red face.
'I want you to take the children out in the boat, Thomas,' said Lady Coke. 'I hope you are not particularly busy this afternoon?'
'I am at your service, my lady,' he replied. 'I will get—— '
'I will help you!' cried Alan, eagerly. 'We will have the boat ready in a jiffy.'
With an awkward touch of his cap, Thomas moved off, his sulky face revealing the wrath which was surging within. But no one was looking at him, nor was a second thought given to Alan's laughing assertion that he had been seen 'sneaking off up the Wilderness.' The wild joy of the children, and the many cautions as to their behaviour when on the water, which their elders impressed upon them, together with the preparations for the trip, made them all forget Thomas's queer manner. They were destined, however, before long, to remember it for many a day.
Colonel De Bohun made Alan fetch some cushions, that the boat might be made more comfortable for his cousin and his sister, and Lady Coke, drawing Marjorie aside, begged her to look well after Estelle, who was not so used to boating as she and her brothers were, and might endanger the safety of the young party by some sudden movement. Marjorie was to remember how easily a boat was upset.