Penelope gave Poppy a warning glance. "Well, she _can_ be nice," she repeated, for want of something else to say. "Now come along, girls; do let's get back to 'the Castle' and have some lunch, and we'll forget all about Miss Row being so nasty. It is the Poppy's birthday, and we've _got_ to think only of nice things. Now let's join hands and run down this slope." With Poppy tightly grasped by her two eldest sisters, they flew over the ground as fast as their legs could go. Poppy, her feet scarcely touching the ground, shrieked with the greatest delight. Guard, who had been distractedly hovering between the two couples while their party was divided, barked and danced, and raced away and back again, as pleased as any of them. They were quite exhausted before they reached 'the Castle,' and Poppy and Angela had to be allowed to sit down to recover their breath. "I will go on and begin to get out the baskets," said Esther, "and unpack them by the time you come. You won't stay here very long, will you?" Penelope was lying on her back gazing up at the blue sky and the swarms of tiny insects which hovered and darted between her and it. She was too comfortable to move, even to help get the lunch, so Esther and Guard went alone. 'The Castle,' the children's favourite play-place, was a group of huge boulders, like closely set rough pillars, so arranged by nature as to enclose a considerable space, like a tiny room, while outside was a kind of natural staircase leading to what they sometimes called 'upstairs,' and sometimes 'the roof,' which was formed of a large flat boulder, forming a natural roof, and keeping the interior dry and cosy save for the breezes which blew through the various openings, large and small, between the pillars. It was in this centre, close to a pillar, and well out of sight, that the children had hidden their things; and here Esther came now, and pushing her arm through a narrow opening, groped about for the familiar baskets, and groped in vain. "I thought we put them here," she said to herself, "but I must have come to the wrong opening." She went to another, and groped again in vain. "Well," she said perplexed, and beginning to feel troubled, "I am certain it was in one of those. We didn't go round to the other side, I am sure we didn't. I'll go inside and look." She went to what they called their secret entrance, and creeping in, stood up in the 'room' and looked about her. Not a basket was to be seen. The place was bare. She scrambled out again more quickly than she had moved for a very long time. "Penelope," she shouted, "girls, quick--come--we've been--" Then the thought suddenly came to her that perhaps the thieves were in hiding somewhere near, and were chuckling over her dismay, and she drew herself up abruptly. If a trick had been played them the perpetrators should not gloat over their discomfiture.