I didn’t know what to do; I really didn’t. It was quite dark outside by now so I thought Violet must have gone out and got lost, and I began to plan about their bringing her home dead, but I didn’t want to tell people and get her into a scrape, besides, Fräulein was in Mother’s room. It didn’t seem either as if Violet could have done anything so dreadfully naughty as to go out alone and get killed, besides wearing her best clothes on a week-day. We’d finished tea by now, and we put crumbs and things in Violet’s place to pretend she’d been there, but I wouldn’t let Humph upset her cup, because Violet is so tidy it wouldn’t have looked more real at all, and he only wanted to because he thought it would be so lovely to spill things on purpose. About six o’clock Father came in and I was just going to tell him, but the first thing he said was, “Why, where’s little Mrs. Roundabout?” He calls Violet that because she is so fat. Father was as surprised as any of us when he heard she was lost, but he didn’t think she could have gone out. “Nonsense,” he said, “she must have gone to sleep in some corner,” as if anybody except babies and grown-ups would go to sleep in the daytime. However, we searched the house all over again. It was rather nice at first, only then I thought of the Princes in the Tower and I was afraid I’d find her body mouldering in the boot cupboard or somewhere, but we didn’t see anything at all. Then Father and Stubbins (he is the gardener) searched all over the garden with lanterns like in a book, but they didn’t find anything there either. After that, they came in again and Father told Stubbins to go to the village and make inquiries at every cottage, and he was just getting ready himself to bicycle round to all the people we know, when suddenly the front door opened--and there was Violet. She didn’t look a bit naughty, that was what surprised me most. She was just smiling to herself like she does sometimes in church, and she’d got on her best things, like I thought, and Mother’s black _moiré_ parasol in one hand and her ivory card case in the other and the plush case with the opera glasses over her arm. I think Father was all the crosser because she looked so pleased. Anyway he almost shouted out, “Where on earth have you been, turning the whole house upside down? Upon my word it’s perfectly intolerable!” Well, after that it wasn’t any good talking any more, for Violet began to cry, and when she once starts she goes on and on for hours and can’t understand anything. Father asked her where she’d been about a hundred times but she wouldn’t answer, so at last he marched off, telling her to go upstairs and that she wasn’t to come down until she’d apologised.