"Then the young feller comes back and says as how the lady in the car was feeling sick, and could I fetch her a glass of water with a teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda in it. I knew we had some in the medicine chest upstairs, so--"
"So you went back to the house and got it?"
"Yes, miss."
"And that's when they copped the plates!" declared Bill, the irrepressible.
"Bull's eye!" derided Dorothy. "How'd you guess it?"
"Form of genius some of us have."
Dorothy ignored this last and turned again to the maid. "What happened when you brought back the bicarb, Lizzie?"
"I give it to the young lady in the car, miss."
"Young, was she?"
"I couldn't get a good look at her face, for she was dabbin' her eyes with a handkerchief like she'd been cryin'. But she was dressed in some of those new-fangled pajamas like you wear to the beach, they was--sort of yellow-green color--and a wisp of her hair that had got loose from the bandanna she wore was red--the brightest red hair I ever see. She turned her head away when she drunk the medicine, but she thanked me prettily enough when she handed back the glass."