d, for I _had_
enjoyed it all very much. And I said as nicely as I could, that I'd like
to come again, only I hoped we didn't bother her. She beamed all over at
that, and Peterkin evidently approved of it too, for he grinned in a
queer patronising way he has sometimes, as if I was a baby compared to
him.

I was just going to pull him up for it after we had got on our coats and
caps, and were outside and the door shut, but before I had got farther
than--'I say, youngster,'--he startled me rather by saying, in a very
melancholy tone--

'It's too bad, Giles, isn't it? Her going away, and us hearing nothing
of the little girl. I really thought she'd have asked her to tea too.'

'How you muddle your "her's" and "she's"!' I said. But of course I
understood him. 'I think you muddle yourself too. If there's a mystery,
and you know you'd be very disappointed if there wasn't, you couldn't
expect the little girl to come to tea just as if everything was quite
like everybody else about her.'

'No, that's true,' said he, consideringly. 'P'raps she's invisible
sometimes, or p'raps she's like the "Light Princess," that they had to
tie down for fear she'd float away, or p'raps----'

'She's invisible to us, anyway,' I interrupted, for, as I said, I was
getting rather tired of Pete's fancies about the little girl, 'and
so----'

But just as I got so far, we both stopped--we were passing the railing
of the little girl's house at that moment, and voices talking rather
loudly caught our ears. Peterkin touched my arm, and we stood quite
still. No one could see us, it was too dark, and there was no lamp just
there, though some light was streaming out from the lower windows of the
house. One of them, the dining-room one, was a little open, even though
it was a chilly evening.

It was so queer, our hearing the voices and almost seeing into the room,
_just_ as we had been making up our minds that we'd never know anything
about the little girl; it seemed so queer, that we didn't, at first,
think of anything else. It wasn't for some minutes, or moments,
certainly, that it came into my head that we shouldn't stay there
peeping and listening. I'm afraid it wasn't a very gentlemanly sort of
thing to do. As for Peterkin, I'm pretty sure he never had the
slightest idea that we were doing anything caddish.

What we heard was this--

'No, I don't want any more tea. I'd better go to bed. It's so dull,
Nana.'

Then another voice replied--it cam