It was Mr. Elnathan Rogers. Isabel quaked, but Phebe faced him boldly.
"Yes, sir."
"But it is a sin to steal—"
"A pin." Phebe unexpectedly capped his sentence for him. "These aren't worth a pin, anyway, and I don't see the harm of hooking two or three."
"But they are not your own," Mr. Rogers reiterated. He was more accustomed to the phraseology of the prayer-meeting than of the public school.
"Ours aren't ripe yet," she answered, as she scrambled down from the fence. "When they are, I'll bring some of them over, if you want them. Yours aren't very good ones, either."
Isabel also descended from the fence. As she did so, her skirt clung for a moment, and the turnip rolled out from her pocket. Mr. Rogers eyed her sternly.
"Worse and worse," he said. "I would rather feel that you ate them here, where temptation lurks, than that you carried them away to devour at your ease. I shall surely have to speak to your parents, little girls. Who are you?"
Isabel looked to Phebe for support; but Phebe was far down the road, running to meet her brother, who had just come in sight, with Mulvaney, the old Irish setter, at his heels.
"I—I'm Isabel St. John," she confessed.