'Oh!' said Ernest, quite out loud; and, dropping the hymn-book, held out his hands, or began to hold them out. For before he had done more than sketch the gesture, he remembered that marble does not move and that one must not be silly. All the same, marble _had_ moved. Also Ernest had 'spoken out loud' in church. Unspeakable disgrace! He was taken home in conscious ignominy, treading in all the puddles to distract his mind from his condition. He was put to bed early, as a punishment, instead of sitting up and learning his catechism under the charge of one of the maids while the aunts went to evening church. This, while it was terrible to Ernest, was in the nature of a reprieve to the housemaid, who found means to modify her own consequent loneliness. Far-away whispers and laughs from the back or kitchen windows assured Ernest that the front or polite side of the house was unguarded. He got up, simulated the appearance of the completely dressed, and went down the carpeted stairs, through the rosewood-furnished drawing-room, rose-scented and still as a deathbed, and so out through the French windows to the lawn, where already the beginnings of dew lay softly. His going out had no definite aim. It was simply an act of rebellion such as, secure from observation, the timid may achieve; a demonstration akin to putting the tongue out behind people's backs. Having got himself out on the lawn, he made haste to hide in the shrubbery, disheartened by a baffling consciousness of the futility of safe revenges. What is the tongue put out behind the back of the enemy without the applause of some admirer? The red rays of the setting sun made splendor in the dripping shrubbery. 'I wish I hadn't,' said Ernest. But it seemed silly to go back now, just to go out and to go back. So he went farther into the shrubbery and got out at the other side where the shrubbery slopes down into the wood, and it was nearly dark there--so nearly that the child felt more alone than ever. And then quite suddenly he was not alone. Hands parted the hazels and a face he knew looked out from between them. He knew the face, and yet the child he saw was not any of the children he knew. 'Well,' said the child with the face he knew; 'I've been watching you. What did you come out for?' 'I was put to bed.' 'Do you not like it?' 'Not when it's for punishment.' 'If you'll go back now,' said the strange child, 'I'll come and play with you after you're asleep.' 'You daren't. Suppose the aunts catch you?' 'They won't,' said the child, shaking its head and laughing. 'I'll race you to the house!' Ernest ran. He won the race. For the other child was not there at all when he reached the house.