“I think we’ll be back before he wakes,” said Mrs. Patterson, “and anyhow he is very good and won’t be any trouble.  Don’t let him go outside, though.  He has a cold now.”

We went away, leaving Dan sitting on the door-sill reading his book, and Jimmy P. snoozing blissfully on the sofa.  When we returned—­Felix and the girls and I were ahead of the others—­Dan was still sitting in precisely the same place and attitude; but there was no Jimmy in sight.

“Dan, where’s the baby?” cried Felicity.

Dan looked around.  His jaw fell in blank amazement.  I never say any one look as foolish as Dan at that moment.

“Good gracious, I don’t know,” he said helplessly.

“You’ve been so deep in that wretched book that he’s got out, and dear knows where he is,” cried Felicity distractedly.

“I wasn’t,” cried Dan.  “He must be in the house.  I’ve been sitting right across the door ever since you left, and he couldn’t have got out unless he crawled right over me.  He must be in the house.”

“He isn’t in the kitchen,” said Felicity rushing about wildly, “and he couldn’t get into the other part of the house, for I shut the hall door tight, and no baby could open it—­and it’s shut tight yet.  So are all the windows.  He must have gone out of that door, Dan King, and it’s your fault.”

“He didn’t go out of this door,” reiterated Dan stubbornly.  “I know that.”

“Well, where is he, then?  He isn’t here.  Did he melt into air?” demanded Felicity.  “Oh, come and look for him, all of you.  Don’t stand round like ninnies.  We must find him before his mother gets here.  Dan King, you’re an idiot!”

Dan was too frightened to resent this, at the time.  However and wherever Jimmy had gone, he was gone, so much was certain.  We tore about the house and yard like maniacs; we looked into every likely and unlikely place.  But Jimmy we could not find, anymore than if he had indeed melted into air.  Mrs. Patterson came, and we had not found him.  Things were getting serious.  Uncle Roger and Peter were summoned from the field.  Mrs. Patterson became hysterical, and was taken into the spare room with such remedies as could be suggested.  Everybody blamed poor Dan.  Cecily asked him what he would feel like if Jimmy was never, never found.  The Story Girl had a gruesome recollection of some baby at Markdale who had wandered away like that—­

“And they never found him till the next spring, and all they found was—­his skeleton, with the grass growing through it,” she whispered.

“This beats me,” said Uncle Roger, when a fruitless hour had elapsed.  “I do hope that baby hasn’t wandered down to the swamp.  It seems impossible he could walk so far; but I must go and see.  Felicity, hand me my high boots out from under the sofa, there’s a girl.”

Felicity, pale and tearful, dropped on her knees and lifted the cretonne frill of the sofa.  There, his head pillowed hardly on Uncle Roger’s boots, lay Jimmy Patterson, still sound asleep!