Addie shouted up to her window, and imparted news in cheerful tones. Crow went in to have a bath and do her hair before the bell rang. There was a general stir of excitement. In the middle of breakfast Adrian said: "Pam was up as early as we were. I congratulate you, my dear girl--never saw anything so athletic in my life! Talk about our risks! They were jolly small compared to your plan of speeding about all over the Beak at sunrise--jolly slippy hour too." Pamela sat up with a sort of a start, and sat staring at the speaker while a flush of colour crept over her face, saying nothing at first. "No good you saying you were in bed--this time," continued Adrian with a good-natured emphasis on the last two words, "we saw you, as plain as we saw the old Beak--ripping it looked, too--didn’t we, Crow?" "We saw a girl climbing down the Beak--who looked exactly like Pam----" "Well, who else could it be _but_ Pam," interrupted Adrian, "need we haggle over a thing like that? If we were in London, or even Peterock, one might see a few samples of girls, but not in Bell Bay." Everyone was looking at Pamela, and for one wild moment she contemplated saying she was the person seen, just to stop the conversation. Then she remembered that nothing is so silly--apart from wrong--as a fib, even a harmless fib, because you are bound to tangle yourself up in a network of bother, and afterwards, when you do tell the truth, people will not believe. "I wasn’t on the Beak this morning," she said; "I didn’t get up till nearly eight." There was silence of a tense kind. Adrian raised his eyebrows and looked at Christobel. Christobel winced, gazed at her plate and turned pink. Mrs. Romilly glanced from one face to the other, puzzled. Hughie came to the rescue. "Pam got up soon before eight. I know, because when she opened her door I heard." Poor Pamela cast a grateful look towards her faithful ally. Then the Floweret--faintly conscious of uneasiness, but believing in everybody’s good faith, as usual--burst into the conversation. "I call that quite an odd coincidence--don’t you, dear Mrs. Romilly? To think that Pamela should have risked her life to save that of another, on the Beak last evening, while we were all in ignorance. And that this morning when she was not there, Adrian should fancy she was! Most strange, is it not?" Nobody entered into argument as to the strangeness of the Floweret’s "coincidence", but Crow demanded eagerly what was the story about Pam. She was told--by everybody except Pamela, who sat listening. Christobel was intensely interested; Adrian asked many questions. Finally, it was decided that someone must go up to Clawtol and inquire about Reuben; then the party dispersed, the decision having been reached that Crow and Adrian would go up that morning, carrying certain delicacies for Reube; and Mrs. Romilly would go herself to see Mrs. Ensor later in the afternoon, probably after tea.