“Oh, I know you think it’s very grand to be a boy,” said Sophy, still keeping a watchful eye upon the extremely active hop toad which with other members of its family had come forth from beneath the piazza for a hop in the evening air; “but some girls know a good deal. I was asking Mr. Madison about it the other day, and he said some girls knew as much as boys did, and when they grew up some women knew as much as some men. I think Mr. Madison likes girls better than you do, Peter. I think he likes Honor and Katherine very much indeed. He is always coming here to get them to go somewhere.” “I know he is,” rejoined Peter. “I like Mr. Madison ever so much, and I think he’s a jolly good fellow, and I like the way he talks, usually, but he’s awfully silly about girls. We were having such an interesting talk the other day about animals and birds when Honor happened to come along, and he stopped right off short and walked off with her up to the house, and never came back to the trees where we were sitting at all! Oh, he’s downright silly about girls, and I don’t think you had better go by what he says about them.” The dialogue was interrupted at this point by Victoria. She came up across the grass from the barn to the steps at the end of the piazza. There she paused. “Peter,” said she, “have you seen Dave lately?” “No, I haven’t seen him since—oh, I can’t think when it was.” “Try and remember. I want to know particularly.” “I guess it was before dinner. I saw him go across the garden towards the Ashmont road. I wondered where he was going.” “I’m going around to the kitchen for a minute,” said Victoria, “and then I’ll come back.” She was absent for five or ten minutes. When she returned, it was with a very grave face. “Peter,” she said, “I’m very much afraid Dave has run away.” “Vic! What do you mean?” “Blanch says he hasn’t been in the kitchen since breakfast time. After the detective was here she saw him come out of the barn in very old clothes, and she thought he was going out to the farthest field to work. He went over in that direction.” “Yes,” said Peter, eagerly, “that’s the way I saw him go.” “He didn’t come in to dinner, and when she asked Wilson, the man who is working here to-day, you know, where he was, Wilson said that Dave said he had to go down to Fordham to get something, and he wouldn’t be home to dinner. Wilson supposed he was just going to take his noon hour to go down there, but he has never come back.” “Why didn’t they tell us before?” asked Peter, impatiently. “Oh, I don’t know,” said Victoria. “You know what B. Lafferty is. She is dreadfully stupid about such things, and when I said something about it,—that she ought to have told us,—she said she wasn’t going to let on to that proud and haughty person from Beacon Street that her suspicions were correct.” “Did she mean Aunt Sophia?” asked Sophy, who had forgotten her fear of the toads and was listening with eager attention.