“Well, bless her heart, did she come to see us at last!” cried Grandma Watterby, hurrying down to greet her. “Emma!” she called. “Emma! Just see who’s come to stay with us.”
The old woman was greatly disappointed when Betty explained that she must go back after lunch, dinner, as the noon meal was made at the Watterby table, but the girl was not to be persuaded to stay over night. She had promised Bob.
Every one, from Grandma Watterby to the Prices, had an innocent curiosity, wholly friendly, to hear about Bob and his aunts, and Betty was glad to gratify it. She told the whole story, only omitting the portion that dealt with the death of Bob’s mother in the poorhouse, rightly reasoning that the Misses Saunders would want to keep this fact from old neighbors and friends. The household rejoiced with Bob that he had found his kindred, and Grandma Watterby expressed the sentiments of all when she said that “Bob will take care of them two old women and be a prop to ’em for their remaining years.”
Ki, the Indian, had the fox skin cured, and proudly showed it to Betty. She was delighted with the silky pelt and ran upstairs to put it in her trunk while Ki saddled Clover for the return trip. She knew that a good furrier would make her a stunning neck-piece for the winter from the fur.
It was slightly after half past one when Betty started for the Saunders farm, and as the day was warm and the patches of shade few and far between, she let Clover take her own time. In a lonely stretch of road, out of sight of any house or building, two men stepped quietly from some bushes at the side of the road, and laid hands on Clover’s bridle. Betty recognized them as the two men dressed in gray whom Bob had followed on the train, and who had interviewed him while the aunts were ill.
“Don’t scream!” warned the man called Blosser. “We don’t go to hurt you, and you’ll be all right if you don’t make trouble. All we want you to do is to answer a few questions.”
Betty was trembling, more through nervousness than fright, though she was afraid, too. But she managed to stammer that if she could answer their questions, she would.
“That fresh kid we saw with you the other day, back at the Saunders farm,” said Blosser, jerking his thumb in the general direction of the three hills. “Is he going to be there long?”
Betty did not know whether anything she might say would injure Bob or not, and she wisely concluded that the best plan would be to answer as truthfully as possible.
“I suppose he will live there,” she said quietly. “He is their nephew, you know.”