pressing me to take a walk with him," she
explained, hanging her head and playing with the fringe of baby's shawl;
"and I said as how I'd never been in the wood. 'All the better,' says
Jenkins, quite short, 'because that wood ain't no place for you, nor for
any other nice young lady.' Oh, if they've gone and got kidnapped or
murdered, what ever shall I do!" sobbed Perry, who was really a
well-meaning woman, and good at heart in spite of a certain
narrow-mindedness, not uncommon to her class, which hindered her from
seeing at any time much further than her own nose.

Mrs. Grey had listened to nurse's speech with ill-concealed scorn.

"Young lady indeed!" she said afterwards to Mr. Grey, giving a
contemptuous sniff. "Her a lady--and young too! Why, she's
eight-and-twenty if she's a day! And a lad like Jim Jenkins! Sakes
alive! the conceit o' some folks is sickenin'!"

Then when Perry began to weep and lament, the older woman watched her
curiously in order to make sure how little of her feeling was real, how
much assumed. But such distress was undoubtedly genuine, Mrs. Grey
decided, and her eyes held a kindlier expression as she said
soothingly,--

"Come now, cheer up! Takin' on that way won't do no manner o' good. You
had better hurry home with the baby now. It's gettin' late for him to be
out, pretty dear! Maybe you'll find the other two there before you, and
famishin' for their tea."

"The missis is right," agreed Mr. Grey, rising from the table as he
spoke, and wiping his mouth with a huge, red cotton pocket-handkerchief.
"You get along as fast as ever you can, an' if the young shavers isn't
at Firgrove afore you, send somebody up wi' a message. Then me an' Tom
Brook 'll take a look round; an' if they're anywhere inside Copsley
Wood, we'll bring them home to you afore bedtime yet, I'll be bound."

But when nurse got back to Firgrove, Darby and Joan were still absent;
so, giving Eric in charge to Mary the cook, she sped up the hill again
herself, flying as fast as fear and excitement could urge her, and
reached the farm, panting and breathless, just when Mr. Grey and his
head man, Tom Brook, were putting on their coats and preparing to leave
the barn for the night.

Until almost midnight the two men tramped hither and thither through the
labyrinths of Copsley Wood, carrying the stable lantern to give them
light, armed with stout sticks with which to poke among the dense
undergrowth of laurel, holly, and hazel t