“If you want to know what I think,” said Mrs. Enos Trowbridge, in her positive manner, “I call it suspicious—very suspicious.”
Just then, when they were all a-flutter with excitement, Mrs. Enos Trowbridge’s “second girl,” whose name was Angeline, came hurrying into the long parlor.
“I hope you’ll excuse the liberty, Mis’ Trowbridge,” she said, as excited as the bridge ladies themselves, and as pleased to be excited, “but Sallie Macumber from Mis’ Gildersleeve’s wants to phone here, ’cause their phone is out of order, and it’s awful important.”
“Why, of course,” said Mrs. Enos Trowbridge, not too graciously. “Tell her she can come in. I suppose it’s a case of sickness,” she told her guests apologetically.
Sallie, all red with excitement, fluttered into the long room, and fluttered toward the desk where the telephone stood.
“Excuse me, ladies,” she spoke shrilly. “I’m sorry to disturb you, I’m sure, but our phone won’t work, and I’ve got to get the constable right away this minute.”
“Constable?” repeated Mrs. Enos Trowbridge, and lost her frigid dignity. “Why, Sallie, what’s the matter?”
“Oh, Mis’ Trowbridge!” cried Sallie, delighted to unburden herself. “Me and Hannah are so upset! There’s been thieves in our house, sure as you’re sitting there. I didn’t get round to the side-board drawers till just a little while ago—and there was a dozen silver teaspoons I tucked in under some napkins, the day we shut up the house, and they’re gone!”
“Oh, my soul!” gasped Mrs. Wheeler Trowbridge, and clutched Eleanor, as if she thought she, too, might go the way of the vanished spoons.
“Then we just glanced an eye round the place,” Sallie went on, in a voice that grew shriller with every word she uttered, “and a lot of little silver things are gone from Miss Penelope’s desk, and the snuff-box from the parlor table, and all the little hand-painted knick-knacks Miss Penelope kept in her glass cabinet, and there was some beads of Jacqueline’s I put away myself in a box, the day she left, and they’re gone, too.”