Colonel Stumper had disappeared.
He was K.C.B.
"D'you think he's offended?" suggested Judy, as they met at length in
the hall to consider the situation.
"Of course not," said Tim emphatically, "a man like that! He's written
a book on Scouting!"
"I've finished," Maria mentioned briefly, and sat down.
On Judy's puzzled face there appeared an anxious expression then. His
cold, she remembered, was very heavy. "I looked under every sofa and
into every cupboard," she said, as though she feared he might have
choked or suffocated. They stood in front of the fireplace and began
to talk about other things. Their interest in the game was gone, they
were tired of looking; but at the back of their minds was a secret
annoyance, though at the same time a sense of great respect for the
man who could conceal himself so utterly from sight. A touch of the
marvellous was in it somehow.
"There's no good hiding like _that_," they felt indignantly. Still it
was rather wonderful, after all. A man "like that" could do anything.
He might even be up a chimney somewhere. He might be anywhere! They
felt a little creepy....
"P'raps he _is_ a sort of tiger thing," whispered some one .
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