The young man looked disappointed.
“You are mean, Mary Lou,” he said. “My vacation’s nearly over.”
“I’m being a lot nicer to you than you deserve,” she replied. “Letting you in on all the thrills of solving a real mystery.... Well, are you coming or not?”
“Sure I’m coming,” he muttered disconsolately. But he gazed longingly at the river and wished it were a canoe, and not a car, in which they were to spend the afternoon.
Remembering the farmhouse where Hattie Adams had said she lived, Mary Louise turned off the drive beyond Shady Nook into a dirt road which wound around to the top of a hill. She was going slowly—in second gear—when a strange-looking creature in a gray dress darted out from the bushes into the direct path of the car. With a gasp of horror, Mary Louise ground down her brakes, missing the woman by only a couple of inches.
“What did you do that for?” shouted David.
The woman looked up and smiled innocently at the two young people in the car. Her eyes were vacant and expressionless; her gray hair hung about her face in tangled curls, tied with a faded blue ribbon, in a childish fashion. And under her arm she lugged an immense china pitcher—the kind that is used in the country for carrying water to the bedrooms. She was indeed a strange-looking person—probably the same woman the boys had noticed on the road the night before.
“You better move out of the way!” called David.
The woman wagged her head confidently: evidently she had no idea of the danger she had just escaped.
“I’m looking for well water,” she said. “Well water to put out the dreadful fires.”