Part 23 (2/2)
”But--but!” gasped Agnes, ”that must have been some time ago, Miss t.i.tus.”
”It is according to how you compute time,” the dressmaker said. ”Sarah and I were about of an age. And she isn't more than forty years old right now!”
”I don't think this bracelet we have is the one your friend lost,”
Agnes said faintly, but confidently. She wanted to laugh but did not dare.
”How do you know?” demanded Miss Ann t.i.tus in her snappy way--like the biting off of a thread when she was at work. ”I should know it, even so long after it was lost, I a.s.sure you.”
”Why--how?” asked the Corner House girl curiously.
”By the scratches on it,” declared Miss t.i.tus. ”Sarah's brother John made them with his pocketknife--on the inside of the bracelet--to see if it was real silver. Oh! he was a bad boy--as bad as Sammy Pinkney. And what do you think of _his_ running away again?”
Agnes was glad the seamstress changed the subject right here. It seemed to her as though she had noticed scratches on the bracelet the Gypsies had placed in the basket the children bought. Could it be possible--
”No! That is ridiculous!” Agnes told herself. ”It could not be possible that a bracelet lost forty years ago on Willow Street should turn up at this late date. And, having found it, why should those Gypsy women give it to Tess and Dot? There would be no sense in that.”
Yet, when the talkative Miss t.i.tus had gone Agnes went to the room the little folks kept their playthings and doll families in, and picked up the Alice-doll which chanced that day to be wearing the silver band.
She removed it from the doll and took it to the window where the light was better.
Yes! It was true as she had thought. There were several crosswise scratches on the inside of the circlet. They might easily have been made by a boy's jackknife.
”I declare! Who really knows where this bracelet came from, and who actually owns it? Maybe it is not Queen Alma's ornament after all.
Dear, me! this Kenway family is forever getting mixed up in difficulties that positively have nothing to do with _us_.
”The silly old bracelet! Why couldn't those Gypsy women have sold that basket to Margaret and Holly Pease, or to some other little girls instead of to our Tess and Dot. Mrs. McCall says that some people seem to attract trouble, just as lightning-rods attract lightning, and I guess the Kenways are some of those people!”
Neale did not come over again that day, so she had n.o.body to discuss this new slant in the matter with. And if Agnes could not ”talk out loud” about her troubles, she was apt to grow irritable. At least, the little girls said after supper that she was cross.
”Ruth doesn't talk that way to us,” declared Tess, quite hurt, and gathering up her playthings from the various chairs in the sitting room where the family usually gathered in the evenings. ”I don't think I should like her to be away all the time.”
This was Tess's polite way of criticising Agnes. But Dot was not so hampered by politeness.
”Crosspatch!” she exclaimed. ”That's just what you are, Aggie Kenway.”
And she started for bed in quite a huff. Agnes was glad, a few minutes later, that the two smaller girls had gone upstairs, even if they had gone away in this unhappy state of mind. Mrs. McCall had come in and sat down at some mending and the room was very quiet. Suddenly a noise outside on the porch made Agnes raise her head and look at the nearest window.
”What is the matter wi' ye, la.s.sie?” asked Mrs. McCall, startled.
”Did you hear that?” whispered the girl, staring at the window.
The shade was not drawn down to the sill, and the curtains were the very thinnest of scrim. At the s.p.a.ce of four inches below the shade Agnes saw a white splotch against the pane.
”Oh! See! A face!” gasped Agnes in three smothered shrieks.
”Hech, mon! Such a flibbertigibbet as the la.s.s is.” Mrs. McCall adjusted her gla.s.ses and stared, first at the frightened girl, then at the window. But she, too, saw the face. ”What can the matter be?” she demanded, half rising. ”Is that Neale O'Neil up tae some o' his jokes?”
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