As soon as they had picked themselves up, Rusty Wren and his wife and Chippy, Jr., looked at one another for a few moments without saying a single word.
Mrs. Rusty was the first to break the silence—if a house may be said to be silent when there are six children in it, all clamoring for something to eat.
“I knew we should have some sort of trouble if we took a stranger into our home,” she wailed.
“Why, what’s the matter now?” Rusty inquired in surprise.
“Matter?” she groaned. “Here’s this great lout of a boy inside our house! And we’ll never be able to get rid of him. Instead of his helping us to feed our children, we shall have to feed him! And now we are worse off than we ever were before.”
XVIII
THE PUZZLE
Rusty Wren looked quite crestfallen as he listened to his wife’s wail. He wished that he had heeded her warning, when she declared that his hiring a boy would certainly lead to trouble.