“Yes, I’ll tell you all about it later,” replied Mary Louise. “But first I want to hear about you, Elsie: why you are here, and how these gypsies have been treating you.”
“They’ve been treating me splendidly! Much better than Aunt Mattie ever did. You see, they liked my father and my grandfather, and they hated Aunt Mattie. So of course they have a lot of sympathy for me.”
“But when did you come to them?”
“Yesterday afternoon. I was perfectly miserable after Saturday night. I knew Jane suspected me of doing that terrible thing to you, and I never slept a wink the whole night. So I decided to run away. I didn’t think of the gypsies at the time: I just wanted to get out of Riverside. I put on the green silk dress you gave me, and tied up my other things in a bundle, and made off through the woods so that I wouldn’t meet anybody.”
“Mrs. Jones saw you go,” said Mary Louise. “It was she who put Daddy and Silky and me on the trail.”
“I took some fruit and some biscuits from the kitchen at Dark Cedars,” Elsie went on to explain. “I thought I’d walk to the nearest town and ask for work. Now that I have some decent clothes, I don’t feel ashamed to be seen.”
“But you came upon the gypsies before you got to any town?” inquired Mr. Gay, who couldn’t keep out of the conversation, although he had not been properly introduced.
“Yes. And I was tired and hungry, so I thought maybe they’d let me stay overnight with them. They were stewing chicken, and it smelled so good.”
“Your aunt Mattie’s chickens,” explained Mary Louise laughingly.
“Really?” asked Elsie in surprise. The idea had not occurred to her.