What was left? Well, the surprise he had promised Ricky might cover the
problem. As he reached for a certain black note-book, someone knocked on
his door.

"Mistuh Val, wheah's Miss 'Chanda? She ain't up heah an' Ah wan's to--"

Lucy stood in the hall. The light from the round window was reflected
from every corrugated wave of her painfully marcelled hair. Her vast
flowered dress had been thriftily covered with a dull-green bib-apron
and she had changed her smart slippers for the shapeless gray relics she
wore indoors. Just now she looked warm and tired. After all, running two
households was something of a task even for Lucy.

"Why, she should be in her room. We came up to change. Miss Charity's
gone home with a headache. What was it you wanted her for?"

"Dese heah cu'ta'ns, Mistuh Val"--she thrust a mound of snowy and
beruffled white stuff at him--"dey has got to be hung. An' does Miss
'Chanda wan' dem in her room or does she not?"

"Better put them up. I'll tell her about it. Here wait, let me open that
door."

Val looked into Ricky's room. As usual, it appeared as though a
whirlwind, a small whirlwind but a thorough one, had passed through it.
Her discarded costume lay tumbled across the bed and her slippers lay on
the floor, one upside down. He stooped to set them straight.

"It do beat all," Lucy said frankly as she put her burden down on a
chair, "how dat chile do mak' a mess. Now yo', Mistuh Val, jest put
eberythin' jest so. But Miss 'Chanda leave eberythin' which way afore
Sunday! Looka dat now." She pointed to the half-open door of the closet.
A slip lay on the floor. Ricky must have been in a hurry; that was a
little too untidy even for her.

A sudden suspicion sent Val into the closet to investigate. Ricky's
wardrobe was not so extensive that he did not know every dress and
article in it very well. It did not take him more than a moment to see
what was missing.

"Did Ricky go riding?" Val asked. "Her habit is gone."

"She ain' gone 'cross de bayo' fo' de hoss," answered Lucy, reaching for
the curtain rod. "An' anyway, Sam done took dat critter down de road fo'
to be shoed."

"Then where--" But Val knew his Ricky only too well.

She had a certain stubborn will of her own. Sometimes opposition merely
drove her into doing the forbidden thing. And the swamp had been
forbidden. But could even Ricky be such a fool? Certain memories of the
past testified that she could. But how? Unless she had taken