“You needn’t add lying to your stealing! Guess I know! Those cookies go just twelve in a pan, and four of them are gone. Do you mean to tell me they put on their hats and went out for a walk? Shame on you, boys, for lying to me!”
“But I tell you, Gusta, we never touched them or as much as knew they were here until we came in the door. You came in the same moment we did. And here we are standing over on this side of the room and the cookies are away over there on that side. Now tell me how we could have gotten them.”
“Well, you may have been over here and grabbed them and run back to the door when you heard me coming,” she said slowly.
“But we didn’t, and you are a mean old thing to accuse us of lying and stealing—two things we do not do!”
“Oh, merciful goodness!” exclaimed Augusta, throwing up her hands and looking with horror at her clean kitchen floor. “See, see! Some one has been in here and tracked mud all over my floor!”
“Ha, ha! See there, now! Whoever did that stole your cookies too,” said Joe.
“I bet it was the grocery boy, as no one else comes around here,” said Augusta.
“Gusta, you are too quick to accuse people when you really have no reason to do so. These are not the footprints of a person at all but of some animal, and the tracks look like those of a sheep or a goat.”
“So they do! Well, just wait until I find the animal and I will give it a good beating with my broom,” she threatened. “I don’t care so much for the cookies as I do about the floor, for now I shall have to scrub it again, and there is no fun in getting down on my rheumatic knees to clean this floor.”
While Augusta was grumbling, the boys edged their way over to the table and helped themselves to three cookies apiece.