hat
scattered itself all over the glass panes made her stir uneasily and
murmur something sleepily. It was just after this that some one began
calling 'Coo-ey' softly, on two particular notes; and after this had been
repeated two or three times, it gradually worked itself into the waking
dream of the little new girl. At the fourth time, she was wide awake
and listening with all her might. Another repetition of it, followed by a
gentle whistle that only Peter knew how to blow through his fingers, took
her with a flying leap to the window. The moon outside was flooding the
world with light and revealing every secret in the landscape for miles:
it flooded the big nine-acre field beyond the orchard; it flooded the
orchard itself, and the wall that ran along it, just under her window; and
it showed her five boys sitting astride on the top of the wall, and
five--no, _six_ bicycles leaning against the bottom of the wall.

Barbara pushed open the lattice window as wide as it would go, and leaned
out breathlessly. Her finger was on her lips, and she shivered from head
to foot with cold and the fear of being overheard. Supposing that any
one were to find out they were there, and should send them away before she
could get to them?

The five of them made frantic signs of welcome, as soon as they saw
the familiar dark head appear at the window. In spite of the graphic
description contained in her letter, they were beginning to be afraid
of having besieged the wrong window. Then Kit waved a screw of paper and
made more signs, and the dark head vanished from view again. It did
not take a minute to turn out all the contents of her corner drawer,
and to find the ball of string that Robin had given her for a parting
present, and then to fling the end of it down to Kit, who tied on his
screw of paper and nodded at her to haul it up.

The moonlight was bright enough to enable her to read the few short
pencilled lines without much difficulty.

'We've come to the rescue,' she read. 'Auntie Anna has gone away till
to-morrow, so we could not wait until then, knowing you were so jolly
blue. Come down quickly; there's a window under yours that you could get
through all right.'

Barbara struggled with desperate haste into her pink dressing-gown,
thrust her bare feet into a pair of woolly slippers, and glided to the
door. In her haste and her half-awakened condition a more elaborate
costume than that, considering the urgency of the occasion,