Early next morning the two children awoke in clean beds that smelt deliciously of lavender.  The feeling was so new to them and so pleasant, that for a while they lay in luxurious ease, gazing out upon so much of the world as could be seen beyond the window—­a green hillside scattered with gorse-bushes, sheeted with yellowing brake-fern and crossed by drifting veils of mist:  all golden in the young sunshine, and all framed in a tangle of white-flowered solanum that clambered around the open casement.  Arthur Miles lay and drank in the mere beauty of it.  How should he not?  Back at the Orphanage, life—­such as it was—­and the day’s routine had always taken care of themselves; he had accepted, suffered them, since to change them at all lay out of his power.  But Tilda, after a minute, sat upright in her bed, with knees drawn up beneath the bedclothes and hands clasped over them.

“This is a good place,” she announced, and paused. “An’ decent people, though rummy.”  Then, as the boy did not answer, “The best thing we can do is stay ’ere, if they’ll let us.”

“Stay here?” he echoed.  There was surprise in the echo and dismay.  “But why should we stay here?”

“W’y not?”

She had yet to break it to him that Sir Miles Chandon was abroad, and would (so Miss Chrissy had told her) almost certainly remain abroad for months to come.  She must soften the blow.

“W’y not?” she repeated.  “They’re kind ’ere.  If they’ll keep us we can look about an’ make inquiries.”

“But we must get to the Island.”

“The Island?  Oh, yes, I dessay we’ll get there sometime or another.  What’re you doin’?” she asked, for he had leapt out of bed and run to the window.

“Looking for it.”

But the Island was not visible.  This gable of the house fronted a steep coombe, which doubtless wound its way to the sea, since far to the right a patch of sea shone beyond a notch in the enfolding slopes.

“It’ll stay there, don’t you fret,” Tilda promised. “’Wish I could be as sure that we’d stay ’ere:  though, far as I can see, we’re safe enough for a few days.  The old lady’s puzzled about me.  I reckon she don’t attend circuses—­nor the Minister neither—­an’ that Child-Acrobat turn fairly fetched ’em.  They set it down to the ’fects of grace.  I ‘eard them talkin’ it over, an’ that was ’ow the Minister put it—­ whatever ’e meant.”

“Well, but wasn’t it?”

Arthur Miles had come back from the window, and stood at the foot of the bed in a nightshirt many sizes too large for him.

“Wasn’t it wot?”

“Hadn’t—­hadn’t it anything to do with the praying?”