But Joan was a long time gone. The dome of pines took on an uncanny stillness; the moving patches of sun seemed furtive and unnatural; the ferns swayed without noise. In the midst of it, patient and nervous, sat Joyce, watching always that spot in the bushes where a blue overall and a brown head had disappeared. The undernote of alarm which stirred her senses died down; a child finds it hard to spin out a mood; she simply sat, half-dreaming in the peace of the morning, half-watching the wood. Time slipped by her and presently there came mother, smiling and seeking through the trees for her babies. “Isn’t there a clock inside you that tells you when it’s lunch-time?” asked mother. “You’re ever so late. Where’s Joan?” Joyce rose among the ferns, delicate and elfin, with a shy perplexity on her face. It was difficult to speak even to mother about wood-ladies without a pretence of scepticism. “I forgot about lunch,” she said, taking the slim cool hand which mother held out to her. “Joan’s in there.” She nodded at the bushes. “Is she?” said mother, and called aloud in her singing-voice, that was so clear to hear in the spaces of the wood. “Joan! Joan!” A cheeky bird answered with a whistle and mother called again. “She _said_,” explained Joyce—“she _said_ she saw a wood-lady and then she went in there to show me she wasn’t afraid.” “What’s a wood-lady, chick?” asked mother. “The rascal!” she said, smiling, when Joyce had explained as best she could. “We’ll have to go and look for her.” They went hand in hand, and mother showed herself clever in parting a path among the bushes. She managed so that no bough sprang back to strike Joyce and without tearing or soiling her own soft white dress; one could guess that when she had been a little girl she, too, had had a wood to play in. They cut down by the Secret Pond, where the old rhododendrons were, and out to the edge of the fields; and when they paused mother would lift her head and call again, and her voice rang in the wood like a bell. By the pond, which was a black water with steep banks, she paused and showed a serious face; but there were no marks of shoes on its clay slopes, and she shook her head and went on. But to all the calling there was no answer, no distant cheery bellow to guide them to Joan. “I wish she wouldn’t play these tricks,” said mother. “I don’t like them a bit.” “I expect she’s hiding,” said Joyce. “There aren’t wood-ladies really, are there, mother?” “There’s nothing worse in these woods than a rather naughty baby,” mother replied. “We’ll go back by the path and call her again.”