you think he is."

"What do you mean?" asked the lady, not unnaturally, while Devereux (as
I must term the grown-up Lamb) tried vainly to push Anthea away. The
others backed her up, and she stood solid as a rock.

"You just let him go with you," said Anthea, "you'll soon see what I
mean! How would you like to suddenly see a poor little helpless baby
spinning along downhill beside you with its feet up on a bicycle it had
lost control of?"

The lady had turned rather pale.

"Who are these very dirty children?" she asked the grown-up Lamb
(sometimes called St. Maur in these pages).

"I don't know," he lied miserably.

"Oh, Lamb! how _can_ you?" cried Jane,--"when you know perfectly well
you're our own little baby brother that we're so fond of. We're his big
brothers and sisters," she explained, turning to the lady, who with
trembling hands was now turning her bicycle towards the gate, "and we've
got to take care of him. And we must get him home before sunset, or I
don't know whatever will become of us. You see, he's sort of under a
spell--enchanted--you know what I mean!"

Again and again the Lamb (Devereux, I mean) had tried to stop Jane's
eloquence, but Robert and Cyril held him, one by each leg, and no proper
explanation was possible. The lady rode hastily away, and electrified
her relatives at dinner by telling them of her escape from a family of
dangerous lunatics. "The little girl's eyes were simply those of a
maniac. I can't think how she came to be at large," she said.

When her bicycle had whizzed away down the road, Cyril spoke gravely.

"Hilary, old chap," he said, "you must have had a sunstroke or
something. And the things you've been saying to that lady! Why, if we
were to tell you the things you've said when you are yourself again,
say to-morrow morning, you wouldn't ever understand them--let alone
believe them! You trust to me, old chap, and come home now, and if
you're not yourself in the morning we'll ask the milkman to ask the
doctor to come."

The poor grown-up Lamb (St. Maur was really one of his Christian names)
seemed now too bewildered to resist.

"Since you seem all to be as mad as the whole worshipful company of
hatters," he said bitterly, "I suppose I _had_ better take you home. But
you're not to suppose I shall pass this over. I shall have something to
say to you all to-morrow morning."

"Yes, you will, my Lamb," said Anthea under her breath, "but it won't be
at all the sort of thi