"I packed my things last night," she informed Bob. "If Mr. Peabody isn't too mean, he'll keep the trunk for me and send it when I write him to. Here, I'll help you carry back the ladder."
"Take your sweater and hat," advised the practical Bob, pointing to these articles lying on a chair on the porch where Betty had left them the afternoon before. "You don't want to travel too light. I think we'll have a storm before noon."
Betty helped carry the ladder back to the barn and put it in place. Then she hung around watching Bob harness up the sorrel to the dilapidated old wagon preparatory to driving to Laurel Grove, a town to the east of Glenside.
"I'd kind of like to say good-bye to Mrs. Peabody," ventured Betty, trying to fix a buckle.
"Well, you can't. That would get us both in trouble," returned Bob shortly. "There! you've dawdled till here comes the old man. Scoot out the side door and keep close to the hedge. If I overtake you before you get to the crossroads I'll give you a lift. Doc Guerin will know what you ought to do."
Her heart quaking, Betty scuttled for the narrow side door and crept down the lane, keeping close to the osage orange hedge that made a thick screen for the fence. Evidently she was not seen, for she reached the main road safely, hearing no hue and cry behind her.
"So you haven't started?" Peabody greeted the somewhat flustered Bob, entering the barn and looking, for him, almost amiable. "Well, hitch the horse, and go over to Kepplers. He wants you to help him catch a crate of chickens. The horse can wait and you can come home at twelve and go to Laurel Grove after dinner."
Bob would have preferred to start on his errand at once, so that he might be at a safe distance when Betty's absence should be discovered; but he hoped that Peabody might not go near her room till afternoon, and he knew Mrs. Peabody was too thoroughly cowed to try to communicate with Betty, fond as she was of her.
"I'll take a chance," thought Bob. "Anyway, the worst he can do to me is to kill me."
This not especially cheerful observation had seen Bob through many a tight place in the past, and now he tied the patient horse under a shady tree and went whistling over to the Keppler farm to chase chickens for a hot morning's work.