Page:Malot - Nobodys Boy, Crewe-Jones, 1916.djvu/382

 closed up on the barge. There were no flowers on the veranda. What had happened to Arthur? We stopped, looking at each other both with the same sorrowful thoughts.

A man who had charge of the boat told us that the English lady had gone to Switzerland with a sick boy and a little dumb girl. They had gone in a carriage with a maid; the other servants had followed with the baggage. We breathed again.

"Where is the lady?" asked Mattia.

"She has taken a villa at Vevy, but I cannot say where; she is going to spend the summer there."

We started for Vevy. Now they were not traveling away from us. They had stopped and we should be sure to find them at Vevy if we searched. We arrived there with three sous in our pockets and the soles off our boots. But Vevy is not a little village; it is a town, and as for asking for Mrs. Milligan, or even an English lady with a sick son and a dumb girl, we knew that that would be absurd. There are so many English in Vevy; the place is almost like an English pleasure resort. The best way, we thought, was to go to all the houses where they might be likely to live. That would not be difficult; we had only to play our music in every street. We tried everywhere, but yet we could see no signs of Mrs. Milligan.

We went from the lake to the mountains, from the mountains to the lake, looking to the right and to the left, questioning from time to time people who, from their expression, we thought would be