“You’re clever, you are, Sid,” said Julian, and Sid beamed all over his round, simple face.

“Well, I hope he’ll deliver them all right,” he said. “Anyway, there’s only two more, up at the farm. Yours is the last house but one that I go to. When’s he coming back?”

“Soon,” said Julian. “Will you stay and have supper with us, Sid?”

Sid’s eyes nearly fell out of his head. “Supper with you folks?” he said. “Coo! That’d be a rare treat!”

“All right. You sit and look at these books,” said Julian, giving him two or three story books belonging to Anne. “I’ll just go and tell our cook to make a specially nice supper for you.”

Sid was all at sea about this unexpected treat, but quite willing to accept a free meal and sit down. He sat beaming on the couch, turning over the pages of a fairy-story book. Coo! What would his mother say when she heard he’d had supper at Kirrin Cottage? She wouldn’t half be surprised, thought Sid.

And now Julian had to tackle Joan, and get her to join in their little plot. He went into the kitchen and shut the door. He looked so grave that Joan was startled.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

Julian told her. He told her about the kidnapping of George, and the strange note. He gave it to her to read. She sat down, her knees beginning to shake.

“It’s the kind of thing you read in the papers, Master Julian,” she said, in rather a shaky voice. “But it’s queer when it happens to you! I don’t like it — that’s flat, I don’t.”

“Nor do we,” said Julian, and went on to tell Joan all they had arranged to do. She smiled a watery smile when he told her how Dick had gone off as the paper-boy in order to watch who took the notebook that night, and described how surprised Sid was.

“That Sid!” she said. “We’ll never hear the last of it, down in the village — him being invited here to supper. He’s simple, that boy, but there’s no harm in him.”

“I’ll get him a fine supper, don’t you worry. And I’ll come and sit with you tonight in the lighted room — we’ll play a card game, see? One that Sid knows — he’s never got much beyond Snap and Happy Families.”

“That’s a very good idea,” said Julian, who had been wondering how in the world they could amuse Sid all the evening. “We’ll play Snap — and let him win!”

Sid was quite overcome at his wonderful evening. First there was what he called a “smasher of a supper,” with ham and eggs and chip potatoes followed by jam tarts and a big chocolate mould, of which Sid ate about three-quarters.

“I’m partial to chocolate mould,” he explained to Anne. “Joan knows that — she knows I’m partial to anything in the chocolate line. She’s friendly with my Mum, so she knows. The things I’m partial to I like very much, see?”