Wilfred Everard Berkeley, Peter Everard Berkeley, Robin Everard Berkeley.
'P.S.--Kit isn't in it, because he raised objections and we shunted him. So your lifelong gratitude need not be extended to him.'
'But when are you going to give Jill the letter?' asked Barbara, looking extremely puzzled, as she came to the end of this elaborate composition.
'We're not going to give it to her,' explained Peter. 'It's going to be dropped into the barn through a hole in the roof, as soon as Robin has coaxed her to go inside. The letter is to explain why we've locked her----'
He did not finish his sentence, for Wilfred called him from below, and he seized the sheet of paper and scampered off with it.
Barbara was left in a great state of bewilderment. Something was evidently going to happen to Jill, and it was apparently intended to save her from something that was much worse; but what it all meant was a mystery to her, and there was no one about to give her any more details. The three conspirators were careful to keep out of her way, and she did not see any more of them until after lunch, when they raced out of the front door and disappeared in the direction of the nine-acre field.
'I'm going to leave you for half an hour,' said Jill, when Barbara had finished her midday meal. 'Bobbin has been worrying me all dinner-time to go and look at a baby rabbit he has found, so I promised to run down to the barn and meet him there. Do you mind?'
Barbara said she did not mind at all; and she was left behind, consumed with curiosity as to whether Jill was really going to be locked into the barn, and whether it really could be for her good, as the boys had said, and whether Jill would be angry with them for doing it or would give them her lifelong gratitude. Somehow, Babs did not believe in the lifelong gratitude much; it did not seem likely that Jill would be grateful to any one for shutting her up in a dark and dirty barn for a whole afternoon, even if it was to save her from an awful fate that still remained to be explained. As she thought about it, Babs even began to wonder if she had been right in promising not to warn Jill. But then, if it _was_ to save her from an awful fate, as Peter declared it was, it would have been very unkind to keep her from going down to the barn.