Then mother dressed and went to see Aunt Adelaide; I ran up to the nursery to Robin; and Ernie locked herself in the workshop, where she set to work painting a gorgeous family of Japanese paper dolls for Mary Hobart’s birthday,—spattering their beflowered kimonos ever and again with a salty drop. She was very forlorn, poor darling;—distressed beyond measure to feel that her family disapproved of her. Yet she had given her word to Geof. So the morning passed. Lunch time came, and still there was no news. The afternoon dragged even more heavily; and when Hazard came home from the office in the evening he told us that Uncle George had three detectives looking for Geof, but as yet they had found no clue. Dinner was somewhat of an ordeal. I had the head of the table, as mother did not feel she could leave Aunt Adelaide, who is in a very apprehensive and nervous state. We tried to keep the conversation to general topics, but the anecdotal vein of the boarders was not to be stemmed. It seems that Geoffrey’s escapade reminded everybody of some long-forgotten incident in his or her own family, or the family of a friend, or even a friend’s friend. Nothing was too far-fetched to be appropriate, every possible climax to the adventure was predicted, and the same heartening conversation continued when we gathered in the parlour after dinner to wait for news. Till, finally, about half-past ten or so, the boarders began to disperse to their rooms;—yet not before Mr. Lysle had made a brief, though painful, effort to win Ernie’s confidence; for she is a favourite with the kind “Hippopotamus,” and it grieved him to know her in disgrace. Therefore, interrupting his sister, who was condoling with Miss Brown over the sad fate of a nephew of the latter’s mother’s aunt, who eloped with a sea captain’s daughter some sixty years ago, and was finally eaten up by whales off the Cape of Good Hope (I believe it was thus the thrilling story ran), Mr. Lysle, with a sly wink at his wife over the top of his newspaper, began: “Miss Ernie! ahem!” Ernie looked up from her “home-work,” and the “Hippopotamus” continued ponderously: “I suppose you are familiar with the famous anecdote of George Washington and his hatchet? How, when still a young boy, the Father of Our Country found it impossible, even with the fear of stern chastisement before him, to tell a—er—a—lie?” Ernie cautiously refusing to commit herself to any previous acquaintance with the incident, Mr. Lysle continued blandly:— “Now, my dear child, a similar opportunity is presented to you,—an opportunity such as you may never meet again—a grand opportunity! a great one! The path of truth is a path of roses, for all that it has its thorns,—even, if I may say so, because of them!”