“Couldn’t you borrow one?” suggested Jane.
“No—I’m sorry—Horace refused to go.”
Mary Louise sighed, as if to say how thankful she was that she wasn’t married to a grouch like that. So the girls said good-bye and walked slowly back to their cottage.
“She can’t be over twenty, if she’s that,” surmised Mary Louise. “I certainly feel sorry for her.”
“So do I,” agreed Jane. “Do you really think her husband is guilty, Mary Lou?”
“I don’t know. He sounds queer.” She lowered her voice: there did not appear to be anybody around, but you never could tell, with all those thick trees to conceal possible eavesdroppers. “And if he believes it’s his right to have work, he may try burning other cottages. That’s what worries me.”
“Well, he surely wouldn’t pick on yours, Mary Lou,” was Jane’s comforting assurance. “He’d select somebody’s who was rich—like the Smiths’, or some place that was absolutely necessary, like the Flicks’.”
The girls were passing the inn at this moment, and as they looked up they saw David McCall in his tennis clothes coming out of the door.
“I was over at the bungalow looking for you girls,” he said. “The Reed girls are on the court, but they wouldn’t let me play until I found a partner. So please hurry up!”
“O.K.,” agreed Mary Louise. “Walk back with us, Dave. I want you to tell me why you think Cliff Hunter set his own bungalow on fire—at such an inconvenient time. When they had company, I mean.”