time," he said. "What's it now? Half-past three?"

"She may have had an accident," Olive suggested cheerfully.

"Or gone a lot farther than she originally meant to," Ronnie substituted;
the suggestion of an accident to Brenda obviously appearing less desirable
to him than it apparently did to Brenda's sister.

"It seems to me," Mr. Jervaise said, taking the lead for the first time,
"that there may very well be half a dozen reasons for her not having
returned; but I can't think of one that provides the semblance of an
excuse for her going in the first instance. Brenda must be--severely
reprimanded. It's intolerable that she should be allowed to go on like
this."

"She has always been spoilt," Olive said in what I thought was a slightly
vindictive aside.

"She's so impossibly headstrong," deplored Mrs. Jervaise.

Her husband shook his head impatiently. "There is a limit to this kind of
thing," he said. "She must be made to understand--_I_ will make her
understand that we draw the line at midnight adventures of this kind."

Mrs. Jervaise and Olive agreed warmly with that decision, and the three of
them drew a little apart, discussing, I inferred, the means that were to
be adopted for the limiting of the runaway, when she returned. But I was
puzzled to know whether they were finally convinced of the truth of the
theory they had so readily adopted. Were they deceiving, or trying very
hard, indeed, to deceive themselves into the belief that the whole affair
was nothing but a prank of Brenda's? I saw that my casual suggestion had a
general air of likelihood, but if I had been in their place, I should have
demanded evidence before I drew much consolation from so unsupported a
conclusion.

I joined young Turnbull.

"Good idea of yours, Melhuish," Ronnie said.

Frank grunted.

"I've no sort of grounds for it, you know," I explained. "It was only a
casual suggestion."

"Jolly convincing one, though," Turnbull congratulated me. "So exactly the
sort of thing she would do, isn't it, Frank?"

"Shouldn't have thought she'd have been gone so long," Jervaise replied.
He looked at me as he continued, "And how does it fit with that notion of
ours about Miss Banks having expected her?"

"That was only a guess," I argued.

"Better evidence for it than you had for your guess," he returned, and we
drifted into an indeterminate wrangle, each of us defending his own theory
rather because he had had the glory of originating it