"Gun?" faltered Mrs. Peabody.
"Yes, gun," snapped her husband. "I don't suppose it occurs to you those idiots may take it into their heads to come back and burn the barns? Bob and me will sit up all night and try to save the cattle, at least."
Bob was furious at the idea of playing lookout all night, and he was in the frame of mind by early morning where he probably would have cheerfully supplied any arson-plotters with the necessary match. But nothing happened, and very cross and sleepy, he and Mr. Peabody came in to breakfast as usual.
Betty, too, had not slept well, having wakened and pattered to the window many times to see if the barns were blazing. Indeed, if Lieson and Wapley had deliberately planned to upset the Peabody family, they could not have succeeded better.
Bob made up his lost sleep the next night, but his appetite came in for Mr. Peabody's criticism.
"You seem to be aiming to eat me out of house and home," he observed at dinner a day or two later. "You don't have to eat everything in sight, you know. There'll be another meal later."
Bob blushed violently, not because of the reproof, for he was used to that, but because of the public disgrace. Betty, the cause of his distress, was as uncomfortable as he, and she experienced an un-Christianlike impulse to throw the dish of beans at the head of her host.
The following day Bob did not come in to dinner, and Betty, thinking perhaps that he had not heard Mrs. Peabody call, rose from the table with the intention of calling him a second time.
"Where are you going?" demanded Mr. Peabody suspiciously.