The children, with a fine air of unconcern, abandoned the see-saw.
"Follow my leader!" Gerald cried, and ran along a barked oak trunk, the others following. In and out and round about ran the file of children, over heaps of logs, under the jutting ends of piled planks, and just as the policeman's heavy boots trod the towing-path Gerald halted at the end of a little landing-stage of rotten boards, with a rickety handrail, cried "Pax!" and blew his nose with loud fervour.
"Morning," said Johnson. "Got a cold, aint you?"
"Ah! I shouldn't have a cold if I'd got boots like yours," returned Gerald admiringly. "Look at them. Any one ud know your fairy footstep a mile off. How do you ever get near enough to any one to arrest them?" He skipped off the landing-stage, whispered as he passed Johnson, "Courage, promptitude, and despatch. That's the place," and was off again, the active leader of an active procession.
"We've brought a friend home to dinner," said Kathleen, when Eliza opened the door. "Where's Mademoiselle?"
"Gone to see Yalding Towers. To-day's show day, you know. An' just you hurry over your dinners. It's my afternoon out, and my gentleman friend don't like it if he's kept waiting."
"All right, we'll eat like lightning," Gerald promised. "Set another place, there's an angel."
They kept their word. The dinner--it was minced veal and potatoes and rice-pudding, perhaps the dullest food in the world--was over in a quarter of an hour.
"And now," said Mabel, when Eliza and a jug of hot water had disappeared up the stairs together, "where's the ring? I ought to put it back."
[Illustration: GERALD HALTED AT THE END OF A LITTLE LANDING-STAGE OF ROTTEN BOARDS.]
"I haven't had a turn yet," said Jimmy. "When we find it Cathy and I ought to have turns same as you and Gerald did."
"When you find it----?" Mabel's pale face turned paler between her dark locks.
"I'm very sorry--we're all very sorry," began Kathleen, and then the story of the losing had to be told.
"You couldn't have looked properly," Mabel protested. "It can't have vanished."
"You don't know what it can do--no more do we. It's no use getting your quills up, fair lady. Perhaps vanishing itself is just what it does do. You see, it came off my hand in the bed. We looked everywhere."