The men (Andrew and Paul at once became manly, and different from usual) took counsel briefly and decided that they would plant Rayley’s stick where they had sat and come back at low tide again. There was nothing more that could be done now. If the brooch was there it would still be there in the morning, they assured her, but Minta still sobbed, all the way up to the top of the cliff. It was her grandmother’s brooch; she would rather have lost anything but that, and yet Nancy felt, though it might be true that she minded losing her brooch, she wasn’t crying only for that. She was crying for something else. We might all sit down and cry, she felt. But she did not know what for.

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