The incredulous horror on returning from Walnut Grove and finding her gone was something better imagined than described. They examined the empty room, they peered beneath the bed, behind the curtains, within the wardrobe, while little Max, in a fit of absent-mindedness, pulled out the bureau drawers, and even lifted the tray of her Saratoga trunk in a vain search for the lost one. Beautiful Aline had flown from the dreary room like a swift-winged bird from the prison bars of its cage. They called her name, but she answered not. They sought her in her dearest haunts, but they found her not. They were face to face with a mystery. Cook had not anticipated such alarm on the part of the family. She had missed the young lady several hours ago when she had taken up luncheon to her, but being used to the mischievous pranks of her young mistress, had believed that she was hiding herself somewhere within the room. She had set down the tray on a stand and gone away, locking the door behind her. It was locked still when they came home from the picnic rather earlier than they would have done, but that they were anxious over Aline--poor Aline who had missed all the delights of the picnic because she had been a naughty girl yesterday and left undone those things which she ought to have done, and done those things which she ought not to have done. Aline had deserted the sewing-machine and the ruffles mamma had set her to hem yesterday and gone a-fishing with ten-year-old Max and his comrade Harry Jones. She had coaxed away from cook the sponge cake that was destined to accompany the cream at dinner, and she had triumphantly packed it into her lunch basket and shared it with the two boys that day on the river bank where they cast their lines into the waves. And she had come home with the end of her nose and the back of her neck blistered red, her dress-skirt soiled and “brier-torn,” like Maud Muller’s, and her pretty bare hands turned brown, while Max came trailing behind her with his pantaloons rolled up to his knees, his feet and limbs all yellowed with river mud, and a string of ridiculous little shining minnows in his hands. It was bad for Max--it was utterly disgraceful for that great girl, Aline, decided mamma and Effie. It was a case that called for punishment, more especially as Aline could not even be induced to repentance for her fault. She insisted that she had not meant any harm and that she had done nothing wrong. She could not be brought to see her error in the light that her mamma wished her to see it in. So Mrs. Rodney, deeming this an extreme case, resorted to extreme measures. She knew that Aline had set her heart on the picnic in Walnut Grove--therefore she kept her away to meditate on her misdeeds, and, if possible, to win her to repentance. She even dared hope that under the stress of such punishment Aline might be brought to promise “never to do so any more.”