The problem was solved, however, before they crossed the bridge into Washington. On the hill leading to the bridge they overtook a small colored boy weeping bitterly. Bobby signaled Carter to stop, and leaning out asked the child what the matter was.
"I done lost my dawgs!" he sobbed. "We-all is moving, and I had 'em in a basket with a burlap bottom. I done tol mammy that burlap was rotten." He held up the basket for them to see the hole in the cloth tacked across the bottom. "I was going to sell them dawgs for fifty cents apiece when they was bigger," he finished with a fresh burst of grief.
His joy when the girls showed him the puppies and explained how they had found them was correspondingly noisy. He had an old gingham apron with him, and into this the dogs were unceremoniously bundled and securely knotted. Betty and Bobby each gave him a shining ten-cent piece, and a blissful boy went whistling over the bridge, his world changed to sunshine in a few brief minutes.
The car threaded a side street, turned twice, and brought up before a quaint old house with a basement shop tucked away under a bulging bay-window.
"This is Hale's bookshop, Miss," said Carter respectfully to Betty,
CHAPTER XVI
WHAT HALE HAD TO TELL
The door of the bookstore opened with a loose old-fashioned latch, and one fell down two steps without warning into a long, narrow room lined with books. Betty went first, and Bobby, stumbling, would have fallen if she had not caught her.
"Gracious! I'm a little bit scared, aren't you?" Bobby whispered. "It seems like such a spooky place."