a month that you get just what you want."

It seemed to Frank, when the boat got under way, that they had happened
on the one propitious day. The _Tortoise_ slipped pleasantly along, her
sails well filled, the boom pressed forward against the shroud, the main
sheet an attenuated coil at Priscilla's feet.

"I'm feeling a bit bothered," said Priscilla.

"We ought to have been back for luncheon," said Frank. "I know that."

"It's not luncheon that's bothering me; although it's quite likely that
we won't be back for dinner either. What I can't quite make up my mind
about is what we ought to do next about those spies."

"Go after them again to-morrow."

"That's all well enough; but things are much more mixed up than that. In
some ways I rather wish we had Sylvia Courtney with us. She's president
of our Browning Society and tremendously good at every kind of
complication. What I feel is that we're rather like those boys in the
poem who went out to catch a hare and came on a lion unaware. I haven't
got the passage quite right but you probably know it."

Frank did. He could not, since English literature is still only fitfully
studied in public schools, have named the author. But he quoted the
lines with fluent confidence. It was by turning them into Greek Iambics
that he had won the head-master's prize.

"That's it," said Priscilla. "And that's more or less what has happened
to us. We went out to chase a simple, ordinary German spy and we have
come on two other mysteries of the most repulsively fascinating kind.
First there's Miss Rutherford, if that's her real name, who says she's
fishing for sponges, which is certainly a lie."

"I don't know about it's being a lie," said Frank. "She explained it to
me after you'd gone."

"Oh, that about zoophytes. You don't believe that surely?"

"I do," said Frank. "There are lots of queer things in the British
Museum. I was there once."

"My own belief is," said Priscilla, "that she simply trotted out those
zoophyte things and the British Museum when she found that we weren't
inclined to swallow the ordinary sponge. At the same time I can't
believe that she's a criminal of any kind. She struck me as being an
uncommonly good sort. The wind's dropping. I told you it would. Very
soon now we shall have to row. Can you row, Cousin Frank?"

Frank replied with cheerful confidence that he could. He had sat at
Priscilla's feet all day and bowed to her superior knowledge of sailing.