In the first lull Aunt Caroline pounced upon Grif. She wanted him to go to bed, or at least to lie down on the sofa. Only through repeated assurances that he could not possibly sleep was he absolved from this, and, even then, promises were extracted from him that he would keep quiet, and not run about in the sun. She accompanied him to his room and watched him change his stockings and his collar. “If Doctor O’Neill comes round before you go to bed this evening you’re to see him,” she suddenly declared. “I’m all right,” Grif protested. “I know I am, and I hate doctors.” “But _I_ don’t know it,” said Aunt Caroline. She looked at the sallow face, at the dusky lines under the dark eyes, and felt dissatisfied. “Where are you going to now? Why can’t you stay quietly in the house?” “I’m going to be quiet. I want to read about Tobias. Grandpapa told me it was in the old Bible in church.” “The church is locked up.” “He told me I could have the key,” said Grif. “He left it for me in the drawer of the hat-stand, so that I could get it when I wanted.” “Come and let me brush you; your jacket’s covered with dust. Grandpapa spoils you all. If you _do_ go, remember you’re not to be late for tea. I’ll be very angry if you are, and not allow you to go out by yourself again.” “How can I help forgetting, if I do forget?” Grif argued gently, as Aunt Caroline turned him round to brush the back of his coat. “I mean I can’t _remember_ not to forget.” “You can remember to come straight home at any rate,” said Aunt Caroline. “You must have _known_, Grif, that you shouldn’t have run off the way you did yesterday, without telling anybody where you were going to!” Grif listened patiently, and as she dropped the brush stooped and picked it up for her. “I didn’t know: I hadn’t time to think: it was hearing the engine whistle that put it into my head. And at all events I got Pouncer.” “If you had stayed at home, if you had told grandpapa, you would have got Pouncer; and you wouldn’t have needed to wander about out of doors all night.” She let him depart, reluctantly, for after the events of yesterday nothing seemed safe, though it was difficult, unless an aeronaut descended and carried him off, to imagine what harm could come to him now. She herself was going into Ballinreagh to return Palmer’s revolver. She had insisted on grandpapa’s confiscating _that_ immediately after breakfast, and she felt that she shouldn’t be happy till it was safely back in the shop, and till she had said a word or two to the man who had sold it. She had kept Grif so long, however, giving him various injunctions, and examining him minutely as to the state of his health, that when he at last escaped from her clutches the others had disappeared. He went round to the back of the house and whistled two or three times; then, getting no answer, trotted on down the drive by himself, and out on to the road.