A little before the bride went to change, H.O. got up and reached his brown-paper parcel from under the sideboard and sneaked out. We thought he might have let us see it given, whatever it was. And Dora said she had understood he meant to; but it was his secret. The bride went away looking quite comfy in a furry cloak, and Albert's uncle cheered up at the last and threw off the burden of his cares and made a joke. I forget what it was; it wasn't a very good one, but it showed he was trying to make the best of things. Then the Bridal Sufferers drove away, with the luggage on a cart--heaps and heaps of it, and we all cheered and threw rice and slippers. Mrs. Ashleigh and some other old ladies cried. And then every one said, "What a pretty wedding!" and began to go. And when our waggonette came round we all began to get in. And suddenly Father said-- "Where's H.O.?" And we looked round. He was in absence. "Fetch him along sharp--some of you," Father said; "I don't want to keep the horses standing here in the cold all day." So Oswald and Dicky went to fetch him along. We thought he might have wandered back to what was left of the lunch--for he is young and he does not always know better. But he was not there, and Oswald did not even take a crystallised fruit in passing. He might easily have done this, and no one would have minded, so it would not have been wrong. But it would have been ungentlemanly. Dicky did not either. H.O. was not there. We went into the other rooms, even the one the old ladies were crying in, but of course we begged their pardons. And at last into the kitchen, where the servants were smart with white bows and just sitting down to their dinner, and Dicky said-- "I say, cookie love, have you seen H.O.?" "Don't come here with your imperence!" the cook said, but she was pleased with Dicky's unmeaning compliment all the same. "_I_ see him," said the housemaid. "He was colloguing with the butcher in the yard a bit since. He'd got a brown-paper parcel. Perhaps he got a lift home." So we went and told Father, and about the white present in the parcel. "I expect he was ashamed to give it after all," Oswald said, "so he hooked off home with it." And we got into the wagonette. "It wasn't a present, though," Dora said; "it was a different kind of surprise--but it really is a secret." Our good Father did not command her to betray her young brother. But when we got home H.O. wasn't there. Mrs. Pettigrew hadn't seen him, and he was nowhere about. Father biked back to the Cedars to see if he'd turned up. No. Then all the gentlemen turned out to look for him through the length and breadth of the land. "He's too old to be stolen by gipsies," Alice said. "And too ugly," said Dicky. "Oh _don't_!" said both the girls; "and now when he's lost, too!"