"What do you think?" some one asked.
"I don't think anything," said Mrs. Ray; "I know!"
"Well, what do you know, then?"
"I know that a letter-getter stays a letter-getter, and the reverse the reverse. Just as I know that case-knives are suspicious and that picking chestnuts may be a bunco game as easy as anything else. I've found it nothing but a bunco game, myself. I've never made my chestnuts pay, just because they were so easy picked up by other people; and you can't hire boys to do your nutting for you,—boys eat up all the profits and most of the chestnuts into the bargain. Yes, indeed. And as for those two up at Nellie's—they'll get no letter. Wait and see."
"But what will happen to them then?" asked Joey Beall, aching to discuss the details of the arrest and the journey to Geneseo.
"I don't know, but I can tell you one piece of news, and it isn't gossip either; it come straight from Nellie O'Neil herself; she's been here this morning."
"Have they found out anything new?"
"Not about them; but her other two is leaving."
"What!"
"Yes, going this afternoon." Mrs. Ray folded her arms and leaned back against the shelves containing her grocery business.