Will O’ the Wisp by Patricia Wentworth

sleep.
    Eleanor said, “Folly!” and Folly said, “O—oh!” She flung out her other arm and blinked at the light.
    â€œFolly!”
    Folly woke up.
    â€œWhat is it? Is the house on fire? O—oh!” Her yawn was natural enough.
    â€œFolly—have you been out?”
    The imps woke up; one peeped rather sleepily at Eleanor.
    â€œOut?”
    â€œYes—out.”
    â€œOut where?”
    â€œFolly, someone went out of the house and down into the woods. Was it you?”
    â€œâ€™M—” She sat up and locked her arms about her knees. “I said I should like a walk—didn’t I?”
    â€œFolly! Was it you?”
    â€œâ€™M—” said Folly again. Her pink diaphanous nightgown slipped from her shoulder. Her eyes were very wicked; she looked sideways at Eleanor. “Perhaps David went for a walk. Did he? It’s quite proper to go for a walk with one’s cousin. Now, if it had been Stingo—”
    â€œFolly! You didn’t go to meet that horrible man?”
    â€œDavid?”
    Eleanor shook her.
    â€œMr. St. Inigo.”
    â€œNo one calls him that—he’s always Stingo.”
    â€œ Did you go to meet him?”
    Folly unlocked her hands and kissed all ten fingers to Eleanor.
    â€œDarling Mrs. Grundy!” she said. “I do love you!”
    â€œ Did you?”
    â€œPahssionately!”
    As she spoke, she whisked down into the bed and pulled the eiderdown over her head. Her muffled voice reached Eleanor:
    â€œDon’t you ask no questions, and you won’t be told no lies!”

CHAPTER VII
    Folly was as good as gold next day. David went off early to town. Betty and Eleanor drove into Guildford, taking Folly with them. They lunched with Mrs. Norris, a cousin so distant that even the Fordyces might have considered the kinship negligible if she had not been Eleanor’s godmother.
    Folly, on her best behaviour and prepared to suffer boredom meekly, was a good deal cheered by the discovery that Mrs. Norris had a son living at home. He was a very personable youth, just down from Oxford, and casting about him for a job. He wore a brilliant red tie, and political opinions of an even more ferocious shade. He considered Lenin the greatest man of the century, and discoursed to Folly upon the Soviet system.
    Folly listened beautifully. The imps were under lock and key; an innocent yearning for information looked out of her limpid green eyes. Aubrey Norris’s admiration for the late M. Lenin became pleasantly merged in admiration for Miss Folly March. Altogether a successful lunch-party.
    On the way home Folly asked to stop at a hairdresser’s, where she kept the car, a patient Eleanor, and an impatient Betty for about twenty minutes. To Betty’s outraged “What have you been doing?” she returned a flighty nod and a “Wait and see!”
    David got back just in time to dress for dinner. He came into the drawing-room to find Eleanor and Betty there. A moment later Folly skipped down the stairs, whisked into the room, banged the door, and stood just inside it with modestly cast-down eyes. She wore a slip of a pale pink frock; her face was washed quite clean, her mouth had only its natural red; her little black head was bound with a silver fillet; from under the fillet, on either side, hung a cluster of shining black curls.
    Betty said, “Good gracious!” and Eleanor said, “Oh Folly, how pretty! I do like it!” David said nothing at all. But something tugged at his heart—perhaps it was one of Folly’s imps. He was frowning when she lifted her eyes and looked at him with a little clear colour in her cheeks.
    â€œâ€™M—d’you like it? Aren’t I clever to grow them so quickly?” She put up a finger and just touched the curls. “Don’t you like them?”
    â€œThey’re not bad.”
    Folly broke at the knees in a charity bob.
    â€œThank you,