_you_. You want your breakfast,
I suppose, no matter what's happened?'

'No, I don't,' said Philip, with extreme truth. 'I want to know what
_has_ happened?'

'Miss Lucy's lost,' said the cook heavily, 'that's what's happened. So
now you know. You run along and play, like a good little boy, and don't
make extry trouble for us in the trouble we're in.'

'Lost?' repeated Philip.

'Yes, lost. I expect you're glad,' said the nurse, 'the way you treated
her. You hold your tongue and don't let me so much as hear you breathe
the next twenty-four hours. I'll go and write that telegram.'

Philip thought it best not to let any one hear him breathe. By this
means he heard the telegram when nurse read it aloud to the cook.

'Peter Graham, Esq.,
Hotel Wagram,
Brussels.

Miss Lucy lost. Please come home immediately.

PHILKINS.

That's all right, isn't it?'

'I don't see why you sign it Philkins. You're only the nurse--I'm the
head of the house when the family's away, and my name's Bobson,' the
cook said.

There was a sound of torn paper.

'There--the paper's tore. I'd just as soon your name went to it,' said
the nurse. 'I don't want to be the one to tell such news.'

'Oh, my good gracious, what a thing to happen,' sighed the cook. 'Poor
little darling!'

Then somebody wrote the telegram again, and the nurse took it out to
the stable-yard, where Peppermint was already saddled.

'I thought,' said Philip, bold in the nurse's absence, 'I thought Lucy
was with her aunt.'

'She came back yesterday,' said the cook. 'Yes, after you'd gone to bed.
And this morning that nurse went into the night nursery and she wasn't
there. Her bed all empty and cold, and her clothes gone. Though how the
gipsies could have got in without waking that nurse is a mystery to me
and ever will be. She must sleep like a pig.'

'Or the seven sleepers,' said the coachman.

'But what would gipsies want her _for_?' Philip asked.

'What do they ever want anybody for?' retorted the cook. 'Look at the
heirs that's been stolen. I don't suppose there's a titled family in
England but what's had its heir stolen, one time and another.'

'I suppose you've looked all over the house,' said Philip.

'I suppose we ain't deaf and dumb and blind and silly,' said the cook.
'Here's that nurse. You be off, Mr. Philip, without you want a flea i