It excited the children.

From three o'clock till tea-time the sponge fight stormed up and down the pa.s.sages. The house was filled with the sound of thudding feet and shrill laughter.

Adeline lay on the sofa in the library. Eliot was with her there.

She was amused, but a little plaintive when they rushed in to her.

"It's perfectly awful the noise you children are making. I'm tired out with it."

Jerrold flung himself on her. "Tired? What must _we_ be?"

But he wasn't tired. His madness still worked in him. It sought some supreme expression.

"What can we play at next?" said Anne.

"What can we play at next?" said Colin.

"Something quiet, for goodness sake," said his mother.

They were very quiet, Jerrold and Anne and Colin, as they set the b.o.o.by-trap for Pinkney. Very quiet as they watched Pinkney's innocent approach. The sponge caught him--with a delightful, squelching flump--full and fair on the top of his sleek head.

Anne shrieked with delight. "Oh Jerry, did you _hear_ him say 'd.a.m.n'?"

They rushed back to the library to tell Eliot. But Eliot couldn't see that it was funny. He said it was a rotten thing to do.

"When he's a servant and can't do anything to _us_."

"I never thought of that," said Jerrold. (It _was_ pretty rotten.) ...

"I could ask him to bowl to me and let him get me out."

"He'd do that in any case."

"Still--I'll have _asked_ him."

But it seemed that Pinkney was in no mood to think of cricket, and they had to be content with begging his pardon, which he gave, as he said, "freely." Yet it struck them that he looked sadder than a b.o.o.by-trap should have made him.

It was just before bed-time that Eliot told them the awful thing.

"I suppose you know," he said, "that Pinkney's mother's dying?"

"I didn't," said Jerrold. "But I might have known. I notice that when you're excited, _really_ excited, something awful's bound to happen....

Don't cry, Anne. It was beastly of us, but we didn't know."

"No. It's no use crying," said Eliot. "You can't do anything."

"That's it," Anne sobbed. "If we only could. If we could go to him and tell him we wouldn't have done it if we'd known."

"You jolly well can't. It would only bother the poor chap. Besides, it was Jerry did it. Not you."

"It _was_ me. I filled the sponge. We did it together."

What they had done was beastly--setting b.o.o.by-traps for Pinkney, and laughing at him when his mother was dying--but they had done it together. The pain of her sin had sweetness in it since she shared it with Jerry. Jerry's arm was round her as she went upstairs to bed, crying. They sat together on her bed, holding each other's hands; they faced it together.

"You'd never have done it, Anne, if I hadn't made you."

"I wouldn't mind so much if we hadn't laughed at him."

"Well, we couldn't help _that_. And it wasn't as if we'd known."

"If only we could tell him--"

"We can't. He'd hate us to go talking to him about his mother."

"He'd hate us."

Then Anne had an idea. They couldn't talk to Pinkney but they could write. That wouldn't hurt him. Jerry fetched a pencil and paper from the schoolroom; and Anne wrote.

Dear Pinkney: We didn't know. We wouldn't have done it if we'd known. We are awfully sorry.

Yours truly,

ANNE SEVERN.

P.S. You aren't to answer this.

JERROLD FIELDING.

Half an hour later Jerrold knocked at her door.

"Anne--are you in bed?"

She got up and stood with him at the door in her innocent nightgown.

"It's all right," he said. "I've seen Pinkney. He says we aren't to worry. He knew we wouldn't have done it if we'd known."

"Was he crying?"

"No. Laughing.... All the same, it'll be a lesson to us," he said.

xii

"Where's Jerrold?"

Robert Fielding called from the dogcart that waited by the porch. Eliot sat beside him, very stiff and straight, painfully aware of his mother who stood on the flagged path below, and made yearning faces at him, doing her best, at this last moment, to destroy his morale. Colin sat behind him by Jerrold's place, tearful but excited. He was to go with them to the station. Eliot tried hard to look as if he didn't care; and, as his mother said, he succeeded beautifully.

It was the end of the holidays.

"Adeline, you might see where Jerrold is."