“Oh, no!” Mrs. Mantel was eager to say. “I asked her. Naturally I was curious—very curious. I said to her, ‘Where did you get the sweater, my girl, if you will pardon my asking?’ And she told me she bought it in a store here in Cheslow.”
“Oh, my!” gasped another of the group.
“Do you mean to say the Red Cross sells the things people knit for them?” cried Mrs. Crothers.
“How horrid!” drawled another. “Well, you never can tell about these charitable organizations that are not connected with the church.”
Ruth Fielding broke her silence and quite calmly asked:
“Will you tell me who the girl was and where she said she bought the sweater, Mrs. Mantel?”
“Oh, I never saw the girl before,” said the lady in black.
“But she told you the name of the store where she said she purchased it?”
“No-o. What does it matter? I recognized my own sweater!” exclaimed the woman in black, with a toss of her head.
“Are you quite sure, Mrs. Mantel,” pursued the girl of the Red Mill insistently but quite calmly, “that you could not have made a mistake?”