make it out. But there's Sir James a-waiting for me to come before him
with my complaint. What am I a-goin' to say to him?"

"Oh, anything," said Mrs. Red House; "surely some one else has done
something wrong that you can tell him about?"

"There was a matter of a couple of snares and some night lines," he said
slowly, drawing nearer to Mrs. Red House; "but I couldn't take no money,
of course."

"Of course not," she said; "I beg your pardon for offering it. But I'll
give you my name and address, and if ever I can be of any use to
you----"

She turned her back on us while she wrote it down with a stumpy pencil
he lent her; but Oswald could swear that he heard money chink, and that
there was something large and round wrapped up in the paper she gave
him.

"Sorry for any little misunderstanding," the Police now said, feeling
the paper with his fingers; "and my respects to you, miss, and your
young friends. I'd best be going."

And he went--to Sir James, I suppose. He seemed quite tamed. I hope the
people who set the snares got off.

"So _that's_ all right," said Mrs. Red House. "Oh, you dear children,
you must stay to lunch, and we'll have a splendid time."

"What a darling Princess you are!" Noel said slowly. "You are a witch
Princess, too, with magic powers over the Police."

"It's not a very pretty sort of magic," she said, and she sighed.

"Everything about you is pretty," said Noel. And I could see him
beginning to make the faces that always precur his poetry-fits. But
before the fit could break out thoroughly the rest of us awoke from our
stupor of grateful safeness and began to dance round Mrs. Red House in a
ring. And the girls sang--

"The rose is red, the violet's blue,
Carnation's sweet, and so are you,"

over and over again, so we had to join in; though I think "She's a jolly
good fellow would have been more manly and less like a poetry book."

Suddenly a known voice broke in on our singing.

"_Well!_" it said. And we stopped dancing. And there were the other two
ladies who had politely walked off when we first discovered Mrs. Red
House. And one of them was Mrs. Bax--of all people in the world! And she
was smoking a cigarette. So now we knew where the smell of tobacco came
from, in the White House.

We said, "_Oh!_" in one breath, and were silent.

"Is it possible," said Mrs. Bax, "that these are the Sunday-school
children I've been living with these three long days?"