Eh! What's that!" exclaimed the Squire, bending his heavy brows on her
with a terrific frown. "Do you think this is a time to play the
fool--with me? Off her oats! How dare you speak like that? We shall have
you running away next."

Joan's face began to pucker up. "I didn't mean anything, father," she
said in a tremulous voice. "I heard you say it the other day."

"There, there, child, don't cry," said the Squire. "What I may say and
what you may say are two very different things. Off her oats, eh? Well,
she'd better get _on_ her oats again as quick as possible. Now, I won't
have you children talking about this, do you understand?--or Miss Bird
either. It's a most disagreeable thing to have happened, and if it gets
out I shall be very much annoyed. I don't want the servants to know, and
I trust you two not to go about wagging your tongues, do you hear?"

"O father, we shouldn't think of saying anything about it to anybody,"
exclaimed Nancy.

"Eh? What? There's nothing to make a mystery about, you know. Cicely has
gone up to London to visit Walter and Muriel. No reason why anybody
should know more than that. There _isn't_ any more to know, except what
concerns me--and I won't have it. Now don't interrupt me any more. Go
off and behave yourselves and don't get in the way. You've got the whole
house to yourselves and I don't want you here. Ring the bell, Joan, I
want Porter to send a telegram."

The twins departed. They could now go up to their mother. "Don't want
the servants to know!" said Nancy as they went upstairs. "Is it the
camel or the dromedary that sticks its head in the sand?"

"The ostrich," said Joan. "It seems to me there's a great deal of fuss
about nothing. Cicely wanted to see her dear Muriel, so she went and
_saw_ her. I call it a touching instance of friendship."

"And fidelity," added Nancy.

Their view of the matter was not contradicted by anything that Mrs.
Clinton did or said when they went in to her. She was already dressed
and moving about the room, putting things to rights. It was a very big
room, so big that even with the bed not yet made nor the washstand set
in order, it did not look like a room that had just been slept in. It
was over the dining-room and had three windows, before one of which was
a table with books and writing materials on it. There were big,
old-fashioned, cane-seated and backed easy-chairs, with hard cushions
covered with chintz, other tables, a chintz-covered couch,