"I always knew they were thinking of leaving," Sigismund said, "but I never thought they'd go away like this. I feel quite cut up about it, George. I'd got to like them, you know, old boy, and to feel as if I was one of the family; and I shall never be able to partial-board with any body else." George seemed to take the matter quite as seriously as his friend, though his acquaintance with the Sleafords was little more than four-and-twenty hours old. "They must have known before to-day that they were going," he said. "People don't go to America at a few hours' notice." Sigismund summoned the dirty maid-of-all-work, and the two young men subjected her to a very rigorous cross-examination; but she could tell them very little more than she had told them all in one breath in the first instance. "Mr. Sleaford 'ad 'is breakfast at nigh upon one o'clock, leastways she put on the pertaturs for the boys' dinner before she biled 'is egg; and then he went out, and he come tarin' 'ome agen in one of these 'ansom cabs at three o'clock in the afternoon; and he told missus to pack up, and he told the 'ansom cabman to send a four-wheeler from the first stand he passed at six o'clock precise; and the best part of the luggage was sent round to the greengrocer's on a truck, and the rest was took on the roof of the cab, and Master 'Orace rode alongside the cabman, and would smoke one of them nasty penny pickwicks, which they always made 'im bilious; and Mr. Sleaford he didn't go in the cab, but walked off as cool as possible, swinging his stick, and 'olding his 'ead as 'igh as hever." Sigismund asked the girl if she had heard the address given to the cabman who took the family away. "No," the girl said. Mr. Sleaford had given no address. He directed the cabman to drive over Waterloo Bridge, and that was all the girl heard. Mr. Smith's astonishment knew no bounds. He walked about the deserted house, and up and down the weedy pathways between the espaliers, until long after the summer moon was bright upon the lawn, and every trailing branch and tender leaflet threw its sharp separate shadow on the shining ground. "I never heard of such a thing in all my life," the young author cried; "it's like penny numbers. With the exception of their going away in a four-wheeler cab instead of through a sliding panel and subterranean passage, it's for all the world like penny numbers." "But you'll be able to find out where they've gone, and why they went away so suddenly," suggested George Gilbert; "some of their friends will be able to tell you."