“Aren’t you a miracle worker?” laughed Bobby.
“I guess not.”
“I hear you are. Colonel Swayne’s telling all over town what a head you have got! You certainly have got him going, Laura——”
“Sh! You talk worse slang than Chet. Don’t let mother hear you.”
“I learned part of it from Chet,” declared Bobby, unblushingly. “But that was certainly a great scheme about the stage thunderstorm. Some folks laughed and said it was all nonsense. But Nellie’s father says it was all right. And the Colonel has worked it himself once since, and Mrs. Kerrick has got the habit of sleeping at night now, instead of trying to do so in the afternoon, as she used.”
“Well, she’s not complaining about us girls making a noise in the field—that’s one good thing,” said Laura, with a sigh of genuine satisfaction.
“Lucky she is not. Think of the racket there will be there next Friday afternoon. But, oh! I can only be there as a spectator,” groaned Bobby.
“Bobby, dear,” said Laura. “I wish I really was a magician—or something like that. A prophetess would do, I guess—a seeress. Then I could explain the mystery of the fire in Mr. Sharp’s office and your troubles—for the time being, at least—would be over.”
“There’s the hateful cat that made me all the trouble!” exclaimed Bobby, suddenly, shaking her clenched fist.
Laura peered around the vines which screened the porch and saw Hester Grimes climbing into an automobile, which was standing before the gate of the butcher’s premises.