“No, sir!” he said. “I won't go. You can cheat us out of fifty dollars reward, maybe, but you've got to give back the diamond ring this burglar has that belongs to Herb and Fan. You got to give that back, because it ain't yours.”
“Have you got a ring like that?” the policeman asked Lazy Joe.
“Yes,” he said, and he took it out of one of his pockets. So Swatty took it and we skipped out. We went right over to my house, because it was dark by now, and I went to Fan and told her we had her ring for her. I didn't know what I would say when she asked me where I got it, but she didn't ask. She just went to her drawer and got out fifteen dollars and gave it to me and didn't say anything. Only when I went out of the room I heard her bed creak sudden, and I knew she had sort of thrown herself down on it, broken-hearted, like in a novel.
VII. THE HAUNTED HOUSE
Well, it looked like that vacation would be a sort of nice one—at the beginning of it, anyway—because Fan had taken mother's advice and gone over to Chicago to visit Aunt Beatrice, and Mamie Little had gone down to Betzville to be on her uncle's farm awhile, because it would do her good.
When Fan went she went in a closed carriage as far as the depot, because she was so pale and peaked she didn't want anybody to see her and have Herb hear of it. She sent him his ring back, I guess, before she went.
I thought it was pretty mean that Fan had to be mostly sick like that, while Herb was as well as ever and having a good time with Miss Carter, as far as I knew, but it wasn't any of my business. Mother said she guessed Fan would get over it, because she was young yet and, goodness knew! there wasn't so much difference between one man and another, but that if people like Bony's mother didn't stop coming over and talking about it she would go mad. And I guess that was so because Bony's mother is some talker. I 've heard her talk.
I heard her talk about Fan one day, and it made me sick. And then she talked about Bony, and it made me sicker.