"You shouldn’t talk like that, Addie," she expostulated. "Pam doesn’t play ’tricks’. She isn’t that sort of girl. None of us are. There may be something up we don’t know about that sent her up to Folly Ho. Perhaps Mother wanted a message taken to Timothy Batt--one never knows! The thing I don’t understand is, how she’s managed to disappear, considering the road is about as straight as a ruler, and the moonlight is bang on it, and there’s only one way home."

Adrian said nothing; in silence, and at a quick walk they arrived opposite the shaded gate of Fuchsia Cottage. Here Christobel stopped again. "She can’t have sunk through the earth, Addie, and she wouldn’t have jumped the hedge! I believe she went in here. Mother may have given her a message to the Little Pilgrim--why not?"

"Why not, of course!" echoed Adrian dryly. "The sort of thing Mother would do--considering it’s just on ten o’clock."

There was so much truth in this, that Christobel did not make any reply to it--she said: "I’m just going to ask," and opened the gate.

They went up the path, mounted three short flights of brick steps that cut the three little terraces, and found themselves at a deep porch half buried in roses. Apparently Miss Lasarge heard them coming, for she appeared on the threshold of the pretty sitting-room-hall.

"This _is_ nice, dear children," she said in the eager sweet voice that was one of her attractions, "come into the dining-room--the cocoa is just ready."

That was the cottage. A good-sized sitting-room hall with windows looking two ways, and a cosy little dining-room. Three bedrooms above. There was also the kitchen, where reigned Lizzie Sprot, a sturdy west-country young woman, who had lived eleven years with Miss Anne--from the age of seventeen. Lizzie Sprot had gone to bed, she always went when she had taken in the cocoa, and left Miss Anne to sit up and write letters as a rule.

"Is Pam here?" asked Christobel, as they followed the slim, grey figure into the dining-room, yet even as she asked the question she felt instinctively it was a foolish one.

"Is who here, dear? Sit down now, both of you--that’s right. Two cups from the corner cupboard, please, Crow--that is delightful. Now, what is it you were asking--something about Pam?"

Christobel asked again. Adrian said nothing, except to corroborate his sister’s story.

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