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." She went into the house and saw Anne and Jerrold coming slowly down the stairs together from the gallery. At the turn they stopped and looked at each other, and suddenly he had her in his arms. They kissed, with close, quick kisses and then stood apart, listening. Adeline went back. "The monkey," she thought; "and I who told her she didn't know how to do it." Jerrold ran out, very red in the face and defiant. He gave himself to his mother's large embrace, broke from it, and climbed into the dogcart. The mare bounded forward, Jerrold and Eliot raised their hats, shouted and were gone. Adeline watched while the long lines of the beech-trees narrowed on them, till the dogcart swung out between the ball-topped pillars of the Park gates. Last time their going had been nothing to her. Today she could hardly bear it. She wondered why. She turned and found little Anne standing beside her. They moved suddenly apart. Each had seen the other's tears. xiii Outside Colin's window the tree rocked in the wind. A branch brushed backwards and forwards, it tapped on the pane. Its black shadow shook on the grey, moonlit wall. Jerrold's empty bed showed white and dreadful in the moonlight, covered with a sheet. Colin was frightened. A narrow passage divided his room from Anne's. The doors stood open. He called "Anne! Anne!" A light thud on the floor of Anne's room, then the soft padding of naked feet, and Anne stood beside him in her white nightgown. Her hair rose in a black ruff round her head, her eyes were very black in the sharp whiteness of her face. "Are you frightened, Colin?" "No. I'm not exactly frightened, but I think there's something there."