ad by
a very large policeman. The boy had stolen a loaf, Philip was told.
Philip could never forget that boy's face; he always thought of it in
church when it said 'prisoners and captives,' and still more when it
said 'desolate and oppressed.'

'I do hope it's not _that_,' he said.

And slowly he got himself to leave the shelter of the red-brick buttress
and to follow to the house those voices and those footsteps that had
gone by him.

He followed the sound of them to the kitchen. The cook was there in
tears and a Windsor arm-chair. The kitchenmaid, her cap all on one side,
was crying down most dirty cheeks. The coachman was there, very red in
the face, and the groom, without his gaiters. The nurse was there, neat
as ever she seemed at first, but Philip was delighted when a more
careful inspection showed him that there was mud on her large shoes and
on the bottom of her skirt, and that her dress had a large
three-cornered tear in it.

'I wouldn't have had it happen for a twenty-pun note,' the coachman was
saying.

'George,' said the nurse to the groom, 'you go and get a horse ready.
I'll write the telegram.'

'You'd best take Peppermint,' said the coachman. 'She's the fastest.'

The groom went out, saying under his breath, 'Teach your grandmother,'
which Philip thought rude and unmeaning.

Philip was standing unnoticed by the door. He felt that thrill--if it
isn't pleasure it is more like it than anything else--which we all feel
when something real has happened.

But what _had_ happened. What?

'I wish I'd never come back,' said the nurse. 'Then nobody could pretend
it was _my_ fault.'

'It don't matter what they pretend,' the cook stopped crying to say.
'The thing is what's happened. Oh, my goodness. I'd rather have been
turned away without a character than have had this happen.'

'And I'd rather _any_thing,' said the nurse. 'Oh, my goodness me. I wish
I'd never been born.'

And then and there, before the astonished eyes of Philip, she began to
behave as any nice person might--she began to cry.

'It wouldn't have happened,' said the cook, 'if the master hadn't been
away. He's a Justice of the Peace, he is, and a terror to gipsies. It
wouldn't never have happened if----'

Philip could not bear it any longer.

'_What_ wouldn't have happened if?' he asked, startling everybody to a
quick jump of surprise.

The nurse stopped crying and turned to look at him.

'Oh, _you_!' she said slowly. 'I forgot