"Well, he isn't soft-hearted this time," said his wife; "he's mad enough to-day, and he says he'll pay for his own ticket to Geneseo to bear witness against them."
Just here Mrs. Wellston, who lived in the first house over the hill from the schoolhouse, came rushing in.
"Oh, I just heard!" she panted, "they left a lot of bills at King's and at Race's Corners, where my sister Molly lives, they left a board-bill of eighteen dollars! They're known all over!"
"What do you think of that?" Mrs. Ray said, turning to Mrs. O'Neil.
Mrs. O'Neil gasped.
"The man who told Jack told Nathan and Lizzie that the old woman's husband died in the penitentiary," she said. "That's a nice kind of people to have around your house."
Mrs. Wiley gasped this time. Mrs. O'Neil gasped again.
"Jack said we must tell you all the first thing for fear she'd try to borrow money of some one. I told him he was foolish, because if they borrowed money of any one then they could pay us."
"He was only joking," said Mrs. Ray; "if they paid you, you wouldn't really take the money, for you'd know that they must have gotten it from some of us."
"On the contrary, you ought to have taken it, I think," said Mrs. Dunstall solemnly, "and then returned it to whoever give it to them."