likely."

"Probably she is. So you and the men have been here all the
afternoon?"

"That we have. A hot job, the cutting of this hedge."

"It looks fine," declared Walter, turning away.

"It ought to," Tim growled. "Goodness knows it's trouble enough! A
privet hedge is the devil to keep even."

Walter, however, did not wait to hear the virtues and vices of privet
hedges discussed. He was in too much of a hurry. Furthermore, he had
secured the information which he had come to seek. Tim and his host
knew nothing of the whereabouts of Lola. Nothing else mattered. In
fact, bewildered, anxious, and excited, it seemed at the moment as if
nothing else would ever matter again. He must find that dog--he
_must_!

Nevertheless he remembered he must not appear agitated and therefore,
instead of racing across the lawn and shouting for Jerry as would have
been his inclination, he walked decorously along the path until he
came to the boathouse from which door Jerry was at that instant
issuing.

"You haven't seen Lola, have you, Jerry?" he asked as indifferently as
he could.

"Lola? No. Why?"

"It--it is just her dinner time," stammered the lad, "and I wanted to
find her."

"She'll be up at the house, most likely, if she isn't at the kennels,"
announced Jerry. "There's visitors and Lola will be on deck to see
'em. She's a vain little lady and likes to be shown off."

Walter greeted the remark with a sickly grin.

"What have you been doing?" inquired he idly.

"Me? Why, I was just starting to fix that hasp on the gate to the
chicken coop when Minnie came running down from the house to say
somebody wanted to speak to me on the telephone. It was a
long-distance call and kept me there most half an hour; and what it
was all about I don't know now. Some feller I never heard of kept
talking and talking, and I couldn't make head nor tail out of anything
he said. Finally I told him so and hung up the receiver. I can't
imagine who he was. Nobody ever telephones me."

"So you didn't get the hasp fixed on the hen yard."

"I would have hadn't the cook held me up just as I was leaving and
wanted I should put a new washer on the kitchen faucet. I saw it
needed it the worst way. In fact, I had planned to do it before the
folks came and it had slipped my mind. So I tinkered with that and
got nothing else done. I'm just after mending a hinge on the boathouse
door. A profitless afternoon, I call it."

"So you haven't been back to y