“It would be more terrible if Father went to prison, I guess,” said Wilfred.

“I don’t think you can train a slug,” said Zebediah.

“You shut up!” said Winifred and Wilfred.

I was beginning to feel for Zebediah. He would be about seventy, I would guess, before he was allowed to speak in that household.

“Well,” said Sina, after an awkward silence, “all’s well that ends well.”

And that was when soldiers began appearing at the door with hysterical and disheveled Brownies.

May 8

MAY 8

The first Brownie on our doorstep we recognized almost immediately as Ermintrude, the first trial tyke, which was fortunate, as otherwise she might have been unrecognizable. She had sticks in her hair and one whole blackberry vine trailing from her shorts. And there were gashes where she’d obviously tripped on rocks or tree roots. She looked like someone who’d lost a battle with the wilderness.

“Why, it’s little Ermintrude, isn’t it?” asked Sina in cooing tones, but Ermintrude refused to bite and just sobbed hysterically.

“And a plane was seen off your coast, ma’am,” said a soldier to Sina, ushering more Brownies onto the porch. “These girls say they weren’t on it.”

“Well, of course they weren’t on it!” barked Old Tom.

“As you say,” said the soldier. “Remarkable coincidence, though. Have you seen anybody else strange about?”

“They’re not strange; they’re Brownies,” Sina said coldly.

“Yes, ma’am,” said the soldier. “Have you seen anything at all suspicious, I should have said?”

But of course none of us had seen or heard a thing. We led a very quiet life.

More Brownies arrived. They were just as dirty but somewhat more composed.

“Miss Macy left us!” they cried. “She left us!”

Sina and I turned to each other wildly. The day before, when Miss Macy had said she and Cheryl were making a fire ring, it hadn’t occurred to us that the other Brownies would be arriving and the campout beginning. Miss Macy must have brought them all from her place through the woods to their campsite later in the day. And Old Tom and I had assumed that Miss Macy had been out for another of her reconnaissance walks when we ran into her that morning. Not for one second had it occurred to us that she had been camping in the woods with her Brownies. And forgotten or, worse, simply abandoned them in the excitement of finding the hermit.

“Where are the others?” demanded Old Tom sharply, grabbing one of the incoming Brownies by the shoulders.

“I dunno,” she said, beginning to sob, too. “Everywhere.”

“Winifred and Franny, take these children into the kitchen and get them a snack,” said Sina.

“You mean the leftover burnt chipped beef on toast from yesterday’s lunch?” asked Winifred. “Because I doubt if they’ll want it.”