Part 26 (2/2)
”You can try to laugh if you want to,” snapped Agnes. ”But being haunted by a junkman, and getting notes from Gypsies like that! Huh!
who wouldn't be scared? Why, we don't know what those people might do to us if we give up the bracelet to the wrong person.”
”It doesn't belong to any of the Gypsies, perhaps.”
”That is exactly it!” she cried. ”Maybe, after all, it is the property of Miss Ann t.i.tus' friend, Sarah.”
”And was lost somewhere on Willow Street--about where your garage now stands--forty years ago!” scoffed Neale. ”Well, you are pretty soft, Agnes Kenway.”
This naturally angered the girl, and she pouted and got down from the fence without replying. As she went back up the yard she saw Mrs.
Pinkney, with her head tied up with a towel, shaking a dustcloth at one of her front windows. It at least changed the current of the girl's thought.
”Oh, Mrs. Pinkney!” she cried, running across the street to speak to Sammy's mother, ”have you heard anything?”
”About Sammy? Not a word,” answered the woman. ”I have to keep working all the time, Agnes Kenway, or I should go insane. I know I should! I have cleaned this whole house, from attic to cellar, three times since Sammy ran away.”
”Why, Mrs. Pinkney! If you don't go insane--and I don't believe you will--I am sure you will overwork and be ill.”
”I must keep doing. I must keep going. If I sit down to think I imagine the most horrible things happening to the dear child. It is awful!”
Agnes knew that never before had the woman been so much disturbed by her boy's absences from home. It seemed as though she really had lost control of herself, and the Corner House girl was quite worried over Mrs. Pinkney.
”If we could only help you and Mr. Pinkney,” said Agnes doubtfully.
”Do you suppose it would do any good to go off in the car again--Neale and me and your husband--to look for Sammy?”
”Mr. Pinkney is so tied down by his business that he cannot go just now,” she sighed. ”And he has put the search into the hands of an agency. I did not want the police to get after Sammy. But what could we do? And they say there are Gypsies around.”
”Oh!” gasped Agnes. ”Do you suppose--?”
”You never can tell what those people will do. I am told they have stolen children.”
”Isn't that more talk than anything else?” asked Agnes, trying to speak quite casually.
”I don't know. One of my neighbors tells me she hears that there is a big encampment of Gypsies out on the Buckshot Road. You know, out beyond the Poole farm. They have autovans instead of horses, so they say, and maybe could carry any children they stole out of the state in a very short time.”
”Oh, dear me, Mrs. Pinkney! I would not think of such things,” Agnes urged. ”It does not sound reasonable.”
”That the Gypsies should travel by auto instead of behind horse?”
rejoined Sammy's mother. ”Why not? Everybody else is using automobiles for transportation. I tell Mr. Pinkney that if we had a machine perhaps Sammy might not have been so eager to leave home.”
”Oh, dear, me!” thought Agnes, as she made her way home again, ”I am sorry for Mr. Pinkney. Just now I guess he is having a hard time at home as well as at business!”
But she treasured up what she had heard about the Gypsy encampment on the Buckshot Road to tell Neale--when she should not be so ”put-out”
with him. The Buckshot Road was in an entirely different direction from Milton than that they had followed in their automobile on the memorable search for Sammy. Agnes did not suppose for a moment that the missing boy had gone with the Gypsies.
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