“I ought to be going home to get ready,” said I. “What time do we start?”
“Five o’clock exactly,” said Fred.
So we agreed to meet at the horse-block, in front of the house, a minute or two before five the next morning, and start simultaneously on the search for fortune.
I went home, and asked mother if there was a red handkerchief, with round white spots on it, in the house.
“I think there is,” said she. “What do you want with it?”
I told her all about our plan, just as Fred and I had arranged it. She smiled, said she hoped we would be successful, and went to get the handkerchief.
It proved to be just like Fred’s, except that the spots were yellow, and had little red dots in the middle. I thought that would do, and then asked her for the salt, the cup, and the cookies. She gave me her pint measure full of salt, and as she had no cookies in the house, she substituted four sandwiches.
“But,” said I, “won’t you want to use this cup before I get back?”
“I think not,” said she, with a twinkle in her eye, which puzzled me then, but which afterward I understood.
I got my little Bible, and some twine, and then went into the yard to hunt up a stick to carry the bundle on. I found a slender spoke from an old carriage-wheel, and adopted it at once. “That,” said I to myself, as I handled and “hefted” it, “would be just the thing to hit a burglar over the head with.”