“I’ll tell him that!” promised Nellie.
“All right. Do your worst,” giggled Bobby. “It will be a month old before he gets around to sound my heart action again, and he will have forgotten all about it by then.”
The Saturday following a crowd of the girls went out to visit Eve Sitz, and Nellie and Bobby were included in the automobile load that left the Beldings’ house right after luncheon. Saturday mornings Laura always helped in her father’s jewelry store, while Chet was behind the counter as an extra salesman in the evening; so the Beldings’ chauffeur drove the car to the Sitz farm for the girls.
There were chestnut and hickory woods on, and near, the Sitz farm, and the girls had in mind a scheme for a big nutting party just as soon as Otto Sitz—Eve’s brother—should pronounce the frost heavy enough to open the chestnut burrs and send the hickory nuts tumbling to the ground.
There was always plenty to do to amuse the young folk—especially young folk from the city—on the Sitz place. This day Otto and the hired men were husking corn on the barn floor, and Nellie, and Bobby, and Jess and the Lockwood twins were supplied with “corn pegs” and sat around the pile, helping to strip the golden and red ears.
Eve had an errand down at the nearest country store, so she put the old gray mare into the spring cart with her own hands, and Laura rode with her.
“We had a nice colt from old Peggy last year, and two weeks ago it was stolen. Otto had just broken her to saddle, and she was a likely animal,” Eve said. “Old Peggy misses her, and whinnies for her all the time,” she added, as the mare raised her head and sent a clarion call echoing across the hills.
“Hasn’t your father tried to find the thief—or the colt?” queried Laura.
“Yes, indeed. He’s over to Keyport to-day to see the detective there.”
“But the colt may be outside the county,” urged Laura.