George stamped out of the room. Julian scratched his head and looked at Dick. “Now we’ve put our foot in it,” he said. “What an ass George is! I should have thought she’d have liked someone like Henry, who had exactly the same ideas as she has. Well, she’ll get over it, I suppose.”

“It’s going to be a bit awkward,” said Anne, soberly.

She was right. It was going to be very awkward!

Chapter Three

Sniffer

As soon as George had gone out of the room, a scowl on her face, Henry walked in, hands in jodhpur pockets.

“Hallo!” said Dick, at once. “Henrietta!”

Henry grinned. “Oh, so they’ve told you, have they? I was tickled pink when you took me for a boy.”

“You’ve even got your riding jacket buttons buttoning up the wrong way,” said Anne, noticing for the first time. “You really are a fathead, Henry. You and George are a pair!”

“Well, I look more like a real boy than George does, anyway,” said Henry.

“Only because of your hair,” said Dick. “It’s straight.”

“Don’t say that in front of George,” said Anne. “She’ll immediately have hers cut like a convict or something, all shaven and shorn.”

“Well, anyway, it was jolly decent of Henry to come and meet us and lug our things about,” said Julian. “Have a biscuit, anyone?”

“No thanks,” said Anne and Henry.

“Are we supposed to leave any for politeness sake?” said Dick, eyeing the plate. “They’re home-made and quite super. I could wolf the lot.”

“We aren’t frightfully polite here,” said Henry, with a grin. “We aren’t frightfully clean and tidy, either. We have to change out of our jods at night for supper, which is an awful nuisance, especially as Captain Johnson never bothers to change his.”

“Any news?” asked Julian, drinking the last of the lemonade. “Anything exciting happened?”

“No, nothing,” said Anne. “The only excitement is the horses, nothing more. This is quite a lonely place, really, and the only exciting thing we’ve heard is the name of the big, desolate moor that stretches from here to the coast. Mystery Moor it’s called.”

“Why?” asked Dick. “Some long-ago mystery gave it that name, I suppose?”

“I don’t know,” said Anne. “I think only gypsies go there now. A little gypsy boy came in with a lame horse yesterday, and said his people had to go to Mystery Moor. Why they wanted to go to such a deserted stretch of land I don’t know - no farms there, not even a cottage.”

“Gypsies have peculiar ideas sometimes,” said Henry. “I must say I like the way they leave messages for any gypsy following - patrins, they’re called.”

“Patrins? Yes, I’ve heard of those,” said Dick. “Sticks and leaves arranged in certain patterns, or something, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” said Henry. “I know our gardener at home showed me an arrangement of sticks outside our back gate once, which he said was a message to any gypsy following. He told me what it meant, too!”