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"I am sorry to say, Miss, you will have to wait here for two hours and a half," said the guard, as he helped the young lady who had been given into his charge to alight. "I will carry your bag for you to the waiting-room. It's a slow one, too, the next train, and don't get into Seabourne until 7.10, whereas the express you have just missed would have got you there at 3.45."
So wondering and speculating as to what could have happened during their absence, but never coming near the truth, they all hurried home as fast as they could, and made their way at once to the drawing-room, where their mother was sitting, looking very helpless and unhappy, while Hilary, with a complacent expression on her face, was telling her all over again of the many and varied clues which had caused her to discover in the person of Miss Carson one of the gang of the Seabourne burglars.
Seabourne had certainly been unfortunate in the matter of burglaries of late. There had been three within as many weeks.
There were only three or four stations between Chailfield and Seabourne, and they followed so closely on one another that in rather less than half an hour the train ran into the big station of Seabourne. "Any luggage, Miss, cab, or outside porter, please," said a porter, opening the door of the carriage. "One trunk and a hat-box, and I will have a cab, please," Margaret answered.
You are so close to Seabourne, which place is, I know, a great educational centre, that you will have no difficulty in getting teachers. Pray spare no expense and get the very best.
"I try and cheat myself into the belief that I am going to enjoy myself at Seabourne," she broke out as she resumed her restless march up and down the room; "and that I shall love being near the sea and near real country again. And so I shall enjoy that part. But all the time deep down inside me I am just miserable at the thought that I am wasting time that can never, never come back to me.
So if Eleanor went to Windy Gap, and she, Margaret, to Seabourne, their respective hostesses would never suspect the exchange that their guests had effected between themselves. "Eleanor!" she exclaimed, leaning across the table and speaking in a voice that shook with excitement, "let us do it. Change places, I mean. If you'll be me, I shall be only too pleased to be you.
Chailfield, however, was the nearest station, and that was on the map, as was also Seabourne. The latter place was a large and fashionable watering town renowned for its schools, in one of which Miss Bidwell had been a governess for some years.
The implication that sheer selfishness only made her hold out against this scheme struck Eleanor as being distinctly funny. "But I don't suppose for a minute there is going to be much enjoyment for me at Seabourne," Eleanor protested. "Mrs. Danvers said I must be prepared to work pretty hard." "Well, I shall like that as long as it is not lessons," Margaret said quickly.
Up to the present I have always spent my holidays in Hampstead, but this year she wrote to a cousin of hers who lives in Seabourne and asked her if she would have me down on a visit, and the cousin wrote back such a nice letter, saying she had just been on the point of advertising for some one who would come to her for the whole of the summer holidays, and make herself useful and help look after the children, and have a good time with the elder ones.
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