CHAPTER XII
A SERENADE
JACK TIVERTON stood in the lower hall one morning, and appeared as if waiting for some one. In his hand was a short switch that he had cut from a shrub that grew beside the driveway. Often he looked up the staircase, and then, as no one appeared, he would continue to strike at the flies that flew past the doorway.
At last he heard merry voices upon the landing, and then Dorothy and Nancy came hurrying down the stairs.
"Good morning!" they called, but Jack, in his eagerness to ask questions, forgot to return their greeting.
"Say!" he cried, "do you know that Mrs. Paxton and Floretta left this morning before breakfast?"
No, the little girls did not know that.
"Well, they have. I saw them go, and I'm glad. Floretta was fun to play with, but she wasn't fair. She'd get me to do things, and then if we got caught, she'd always say I planned it," said Jack.
Dorothy tried to think of something kind to say of Floretta, but she knew that what Jack said was true. Floretta truly was not in the habit of playing "fair."
"Her mamma said something queer just as she was going off. She was talking to a lady, I don't know what her name is, and Mrs. Paxton said: