“Oh, my lud!” she cried with a chuckle. “Oh, my lud! how very green you are, my boy. Oh ho! oh ho!” And then she laughed an inward, self-consuming laugh that called up anything but the feeling of sympathetic mirth.
“I'm glad it amuses you,” I said with injured dignity.
“Oh, my liver! Don't you see it yet? Don't you see that you climbed into the next house back, and went through on to the other street?” And she relapsed into her state of silent merriment.
I felt foolish enough as the truth flashed over me. I had lost my sense of direction in the strange house, and had been deceived by the resemblance of the ground plan of the two buildings.
“But what about the plot?” I asked. “I got your note. It's very interesting. What about it?”
“What plot?”
“Why, I don't know. The one you wrote me about.”
Mother Borton bent forward and searched my face with her keen glance.
“Oh,” she said at last, “the one I wrote you about. I'd forgotten it.”
This was disheartening. How could I depend on one whose memory was thus capricious?