“Aye, aye! Ye thought mooch I’ve nae doot. And to little good purpose. Well, ’tis a matter for Mr. Howbridge now, sure enough. And what he’ll say—”
“But I hope that Costello does not come to the house again,” ventured the girl, in some lingering alarm.
“You or Neale go to Mr. Howbridge’s clerk in the morning and tell him. He should tell the police of this crazy man. A Gypsy, too, you say?”
“I think he must be. The bracelet seems to be a bone of contention between two branches of the Gypsy tribe. If it belonged to that old Queen Alma—”
“Fiddle-faddle!” exclaimed the housekeeper. “Who ever heard of a queen among those dirty Gypsies? ’Tis foolishness.”
The fact that Costello, the junkman, was lingering about the old Corner House was not to be denied. They saw him again before bedtime. Uncle Rufus had gone to bed and Linda was so easily frightened that Mrs. McCall did not want to tell her.
So the housekeeper grabbed a broom and started out on the side porch with the avowed intention of “breaking the besom over the chiel’s head!” But the lurker refused to be caught and darted away into the shadows. And all without making a sound, or revealing in any way what his intention might be.
Mrs. McCall and the trembling Agnes went all about the house, locking each lower window, and of course all the doors. Tom Jonah, the old Newfoundland dog, slept out of doors these warm nights, and sometimes wandered away from the premises.
“We ought to have Buster, Sammy Pinkney’s bulldog, over here. Then that horrid man would not dare come into the yard,” Agnes said.
“You might as well turn that old billy-goat loose,” sniffed Mrs. McCall. “He’d do little more harm than that bull pup—and nae more good, either.”