V

NO WINGS

Whether anyone cried or not, there was certainly an interval during
which none of the party was quite itself. When they grew calmer, Anthea
put her handkerchief in her pocket and her arm round Jane, and said--

"It can't be for more than one night. We can signal with our
handkerchiefs in the morning. They'll be dry then. And someone will come
up and let us out"--

"And find the syphon," said Cyril gloomily; "and we shall be sent to
prison for stealing"--

"You said it wasn't stealing. You said you were sure it wasn't."

"I'm not sure _now_" said Cyril shortly.

"Let's throw the thing away among the trees," said Robert, "then no one
can do anything to us."

"Oh yes,"--Cyril's laugh was not a light-hearted one,--"and hit some
chap on the head, and be murderers as well as--as the other thing."

"But we can't stay up here all night," said Jane; "and I want my tea."

"You _can't_ want your tea," said Robert; "you've only just had your
dinner."

"But I _do_ want it," she said; "especially when you begin talking about
stopping up here all night. Oh, Panther--I want to go home! I want to go
home!"

"Hush, hush," Anthea said. "Don't, dear. It'll be all right, somehow.
Don't, don't"--

"Let her cry," said Robert desperately; "if she howls loud enough,
someone may hear and come and let us out."

"And see the soda-water thing," said Anthea swiftly. "Robert, don't be a
brute. Oh, Jane, do try to be a man! It's just the same for all of us."

Jane did try to "be a man"--and reduced her howls to sniffs.

There was a pause. Then Cyril said slowly, "Look here. We must risk that
syphon. I'll button it up inside my jacket--perhaps no one will notice
it. You others keep well in front of me. There are lights in the
clergyman's house. They've not gone to bed yet. We must just yell as
loud as ever we can. Now all scream when I say three. Robert, you do the
yell like a railway engine, and I'll do the coo-ee like father's. The
girls can do as they please. One, two, three!"

A four-fold yell rent the silent peace of the evening, and a maid at one
of the Vicarage windows paused with her hand on the blind-cord.

"One, two, three!" Another yell, piercing and complex, startled the owls
and starlings to a flutter of feathers in the belfry below. The maid
flew from the Vicarage window and ran down the Vicarage stairs and into
the Vicarage kitchen, and fainted as soon as she had explained to the
man-servant and the