and began
to run. In a moment he fell over a turret of grass and the group jeered
openly. He picked himself up and fled towards the gate of the Gardens,
anxious only to escape ridicule. He ran on with beating heart, with
quickening breath and sobs that rose in his throat one after another
like bubbles, breaking because he ran so fast. He was in Kensington High
Street, among the thickening crowds of people. He seemed to hear
pursuing shouts and mocking laughter. At last he saw a policeman whose
tunic he clutched desperately.

"What's all this about?" demanded the constable.

"Please, my name is Charles Michael Saxby Fane and I live at 64
Carlington Road and I want to go home."

Michael burst into tears and the policeman bent over and led him by a
convulsed hand to the police station. There he was seated in a wooden
chair, while various policemen in various states of undress came and
talked kindly to him, and in the end, riding on the shoulder of his
original rescuer, he arrived at the tall thin house from whose windows
Nurse was peering, anxious and monkey-like.

There seemed to be endless talk about his adventure. All day the affair
was discussed, all day he was questioned and worried and scolded and
threatened. Treats faded from possible granting for months to come.
Restrictions and repressions assumed gigantic proportions, and it was
not until Nanny went upstairs to put Stella to bed and left Michael in
the kitchen with Mrs. Frith and Annie that his adventure came to seem a
less terrible breach of natural law. Away from Nurse, the cook and the
housemaid allowed a splendid laxity to gild their point of view.

"Well, what a fuss about nothing," said Mrs. Frith comfortably. "I
declare. And what was _she_ doing? That's what some people would like to
know. You can't lose a child the same as you might lay down a thimble. I
call it very careless."

"Yes. What a shame!" Annie agreed. "Supposing he'd of been run over."

"He might of been run over a dozen times," said Mrs Frith. "It's all
very fine to put all the blame on the poor child, but what was _she_
doing?"

Then Mrs. Frith closed her right eye, tightened her mouth and very
slowly nodded her head until the most of her pleated chin was buried in
the bib of her apron.

"That's what I thought," said Annie mysteriously.

"What did you think, Annie?" Michael asked fretfully.

"She thought you hadn't no business to be so daring," said Mrs, Frith.
"But there! Wel