Wilfred--who had been kept outside the room during the financial transaction, as being too young to be trusted with a secret of such importance--was now admitted in compliance with his reiterated petition; and the two little fellows stood quietly watching their cousin, as in a hurried, feverish way, she put a few articles into her little bag, and took a fur-lined cloak out of the wardrobe, and laid her hat and gloves ready on the bed. "I say, Cousin May," said Harold, all at once, "you'll come back again, sha'n't you?" She looked down at the child's upturned face, with a start. It had not occurred to her before, but the thought now struck her that it was very likely she should never return to that house. "I will see _you_ again, darlings, if I live," she said, bending down to kiss and embrace the children. Wilfred, always inclined to be tearful, showed symptoms of setting up a sympathetic wail. But Harold said, with a dogged little setting of the lips-- "Well, if you don't come back, I know what I shall do. I've got all those pennies left in the box, and I shall buy a stick and a bundle, and run away, and go along the high road ever so far, till I find you." "I shall come too," cried Wilfred. "Papa gave _me_ sixpence!" All three looked, indeed, almost equally childish and innocent: Harold and Wilfred, with their project of running away, derived from a nursery story-book, and May clutching the "yellow sixpence" as a talisman that was to carry her afar from all trouble and persecution! She did not, of course, mean to leave Aunt Pauline in any anxiety as to what had become of her; but she wanted to get a good start. After some deliberation, she wrote a short note to her aunt, and entrusted it to Harold. His instructions were to keep it until luncheon-time, and then give it to his mother. But, in case he heard them asking for May in the house, and wondering where she was, he might deliver it sooner. In any case, he must not give it to Cécile or Smithson, but place it in his mother's own hand. This latter was a service which Harold felt to be a severe one; but he undertook it, with a feeling akin to that of a knight doing battle with giants and dragons, on behalf of his liege lady. Not that his mother would be harsh or cruel; that was quite out of the question. She would not even scold him much, probably; but she would look at him with that complaining air of disapproval, as if he were an unmerited affliction, and call him and his brother "those dreadful little boys," and send him away to the nursery, all which things the child felt keenly in his heart, although he was entirely unable to analyze them in his brain. May also wrote to Owen, telling him of her departure, and confessing that she had not written to Mr. Bragg.