“Yes,” Arden nodded.
“We haven’t done a thing toward that yet,” spoke Terry. “We don’t even know whether or not he has been found, restored to his worried friends, and the reward paid to someone else. Don’t you think we had better check up on it?”
“Yes, we must,” Arden agreed. “And though we can’t leave the campus even to go to the post office and see if that reward poster is still there, still, perhaps we can do something. They can’t keep us out of the orchard, anyhow.”
“Except that I’m not going there again at night, not for ten swimming pools!” declared Terry.
“Nor I,” Sim added. “But I don’t suppose,” she went on, “that the mystery or the terror, or whatever you want to call it, of the orchard has anything to do with the missing man and the thousand dollars reward, do you, Arden?”
“I don’t know.”
“What a delicious mystery it would be if it worked out that way, wouldn’t it?” exclaimed Terry.
“If you’re making fun of my well-meant efforts,” spoke Arden a trifle stiffly, “why, I——”
“Oh, not at all!” Terry made haste to say, Sim chiming in with a murmured denial also. “And we’re going to help you all we can as soon as this horrid campusing is over. Really, there must be some reason for thinking this missing young man might be in this neighborhood, or it wouldn’t have said so on the poster.”
“Arden has the right of it there,” Sim declared, “and it’s sweet of both of you not to mind this so much. But I feel very badly about it. I got you into trouble, and I got Tiddy down on all of us.” Sim was impatiently kicking a clump of grass. “Well, we can’t do anything about it now. So let’s go back and write the real story home before our families have a chance to hear it from Tiddy.”