“We’ve got something to tell her,” Rosie went on swiftly. “And the most dreadful thing has happened,” Laura put in simultaneously. Then talking together in phrases that broke one against the other or overlapped, “A dreadful accident ... Silva Burle ... this morning ... she was on her bicycle ... man just learning to run an automobile ... knocked her off ... picked up senseless.... It happened in front of Fosdick house ... took her in ... there now....” “How is the poor choild?” Maida heard Granny ask compassionately. “Nothing broken,” Laura answered eagerly, “but it was a long time before she came to.” “She’s not unconscious any longer,” Rosie concluded the story. “She’s asleep, but she moans and mutters all the time.” Maida listened, horrified. She felt that she ought to go downstairs and talk with the girls. She felt that she ought to get on her bicycle, go at once to see Silva. Apparently Mrs. Dore said something to that effect; for Rosie answered promptly, “Oh no, nobody’s allowed to see her yet.” Somehow if she could not go to Silva, Maida did not feel like talking. Not yet at any rate. Why not get away from the house until her strange mood passed? CHAPTER XX MAIDA’S FIND Maida crept slowly out of her room; stole softly down the stairs; ran quietly to a side entrance; opened the screen door gently; closed it inaudibly; dashed down the trail to the Magic Mirror. She arrived at the boathouse panting. But she did not wait to recover her breath. Quickly she unlocked the door and pulled out one of the canoes, leaped into it so swiftly that she almost upset it, paddled as rapidly as she could towards the center of the lake. It was an unusually hot day. And paddling was hot work. The water looked tempting. Maida battled with a temptation, which she had never known before, to jump overboard just as she was in her fresh clean dress and take a long swim. But she knew that Granny Flynn would disapprove of this and she relinquished her project with a tired sigh. She did not stop paddling until she reached the other side of the lake. Then she drew the canoe in close to the shore, under an overhanging tree; lay down in it; stared vacantly up at the sky. “I know what’s the matter with me,” she thought suddenly. “I’m tired. I didn’t sleep well last night. I had a dreadful dream--Now what was that dream? It was a nightmare really and it seemed to last so long. What was it--Oh _what_ was it?” She groped in her memory in the way one does to remember a haunting but elusive dream. It was like trying, in pitch darkness, to pick out one rag from scores of others in a rag bag. Then suddenly a ray of light seemed to pierce that darkness and she put her hand on the right rag.