of course, that's the moral of it," said Nancy. "If the roof were
to fall in all we should have to do would be to be good girls and it
would get stuck on again. Joan, I'm hungry; I must go and finish my
bread and butter."

"Thank you, starling darling, for telling us," said Joan, rising from
her seat on the bed. "It seems very odd, but I dare say we shall get to
the bottom of it somehow. Of course we shan't be able to do any lessons
to-day."

"Oh, indeed Joan the very _best_ thing we can do to show we----" began
Miss Bird, but the twins were already out of the room.

They had to wait some little time before they could satisfy their
curiosity any further, because, in spite of their threat to Miss Bird,
and the excellent relations upon which they stood with all the servants
in the house, they were not in the habit of discussing family affairs
with them, and this was a family affair of somewhat portentous bearings.
They kept Hannah busy about their persons and refused to let her open
her mouth until they were quite dressed, and when they had let
themselves loose on the house for the day paid a visit to Cicely's room.

Its emptiness and the untouched bed sobered them a little. "What _did_
she do it for?" exclaimed Joan, as they stood before the dressing-table
upon which all the pretty silver toilette articles lying just as usual
seemed to give the last unaccountable touch of reality to the sudden
flight. "Nancy, do you think it could have been because she didn't want
to marry Jim?"

"Or because Jim didn't want to marry her," suggested Nancy.

But neither suggestion carried conviction. They looked about them and
had nothing to say. Their sister, who in some ways was so near to them,
had in this receded immeasurably from their standpoint. They were face
to face with one of those mysterious happenings amongst grown ups of
which the springs were outside the world as they knew it. And Cicely was
grown up, and she and they, although there was so much that they had in
common, were different, not only in the amount but in the quality of
their experience of life.

They always went in to their mother at eight o'clock, but were not
allowed to go before. They did not want to go out of doors while so much
was happening within, nor to stay in their schoolroom, which was the
last place to which news would be brought; so they perambulated the hall
and the downstairs rooms and got in the way of the maids who were busy
with them. And