Chapter Six.

There never was a more angry woman than Miss Fleet as she left the Rectory that afternoon.

Certainly, Mrs Hilchester had not been sympathetic. It is true she had followed her visitor into the hall, and had said by way of reassuring her:

“You need not be at all alarmed about your little girl—my children are often out hours and hours at a time, and I assure you that I never dream of fidgeting; they eventually come home, grubby perhaps, and with their clothes in disorder, but otherwise safe and sound. Naturally, in the country your little girl will do as others do. Sorry you cannot stay to help me with my cutting-out, but as you cannot, good-afternoon.”

Miss Fleet scarcely touched the hand which the Rector’s good lady vouchsafed. She got into the pony-cart and drove rapidly away.

“What next, indeed!” she said to herself; “to compare Phyllis, who has been cossetted and petted all her life, to those wild, bearish children. I am certainly extremely sorry we have come to live at the Hall. If only the Squire were at home I should give him a piece of my mind; as it is it will be my duty to punish Phyllis most severely when she does return. Poor Phyllis! I don’t wish to be hard on her, but still discipline at any cost must be sustained. Of course, she has returned long before now; but to have upset all my plans—a mere child like that!”

Miss Fleet had now returned to the Hall, and her first eager question was: “Is Miss Phyllis in? Has any one seen her, or does any one know anything about her?”

Alas! Miss Phyllis had not come back; no one had seen her—no one knew anything about her.

Miss Fleet now began to be really alarmed. She had not, as a rule, a vivid imagination, but certainly horrors now began to crowd before her mental vision. There was that deep pond just beyond the shrubbery. There were some late water-lilies still to be found on its surface. Suppose—oh! suppose Phyllis had gone to it and had tried to drag in the lilies, and had— Miss Fleet turned quite white.

Or suppose she had gone right outside the fir plantation, and had been seen and appropriated by the gipsies who were camping in the field just beyond. Altogether poor Miss Fleet had a sad afternoon, while Phyllis, the naughty and the reckless, enjoyed herself immensely. It sometimes does happen like that even in the lives of naughty children: they have their naughty time, and they thoroughly like it for the present.

Phyllis had been very angry, and had determined to take her own way; and now she was having it, and her laugh was loud and her merriment excessive. For she had not been long in the field at the back of the stables, and Ralph had not long been enjoying the sweet pleasure of her society all to himself, when three heads appeared above the hedge and three gay voices uttered a shout, and Susie, Rosie, and Ned dashed across the field.

“Oh! oh! oh!” said Susie, “now we know why he was smartening himself up.”

“Didn’t he scrub his hands just,” cried Rosie, “and didn’t we watch him through the keyhole!”

“Oh, shut up, shut up!” said Ralph. “Now that you have come I suppose you must stay; but it was to me Phyllis wrote.—Was it not to me you wrote, Phyllis?”

“Well, yes,” said Phyllis. “Yours was the first name that I thought of, but I wanted you all. It is all of you I like best. Now you have come we will have a gay time.”

“But where?” asked Rosie. “Are we to come to the house after all?”

“I wish we could,” said Phyllis. “I do earnestly wish we could. Perhaps—perhaps it would be safe.”

She stood for a minute holding her finger to her lips; then a bright light filled her grey eyes and smiles wreathed her lips.

“Could you go up one of the back ways, and take off your shoes, and slip upstairs and up and up?” she said in a tremulous whisper.

“Oh, couldn’t we just!” said Rosie, her eyes nearly dancing out of her head.

“Then I think we can manage,” said Phyllis. “All my toys are upstairs in the big, very big, big attic; and there is the baby-house that I said perhaps you could have; and there are the dolls’ cups and saucers; and if only we could smuggle something to eat!”

“Something to eat!” cried Ned. “I can run back to the Rectory and bring a lot of things—a whole basketful. No one will know; Mother is at her cutting-out for the poor, and trumpets would not turn her attention. I can get the things—I can and I will.”

“We must not let Miss Fleet know; she’ll never, never think of looking for us in the attic,” said Phyllis, “and it is so big and so very far away from all the other rooms that we won’t be found; the only danger is your being seen when you bring the basket.”

“I will go straight away this very minute,” said Ned, “and you had better wait until I return.”

“I know something still better than that,” said Phyllis. “Why go to the Rectory? Why don’t you go to the village and buy things there—nice unwholesome curranty and doughy things?”

“Oh, I say, scrumptious!” cried Rosie. “I’ll go with him. No one will see us. But, oh, I say, Phyllis, we have not got a single brass farthing amongst us!”

Ralph’s face turned very red; he felt awfully ashamed of Rosie.

“But I