“Oh, yes, Lady! It was so nice,” and the girl flashed her teeth in a beaming smile. She was quite a pretty girl—if she had only been clean and decently dressed.
She handed the plate to Agnes, and then turned and ran out of the yard and down the street as fast as she could run. Agnes stared after her in increased amazement. Why had she run away?
“If she is a Gypsy—Well, they are queer people, that is sure. Oh! What is this?”
Her fingers had found something on the under side of the plate. She turned it up and saw a soiled piece of paper sticking there. Agnes, wondering, if no longer alarmed, drew the paper from the plate, turned it over, and saw that some words were scrawled in blue pencil on the paper.
“Goodness me! More mysteries!” gasped the Corner House girl.
Briefly and plainly the message read: Do not give the bracelet to Miguel. He is a thief.
Agnes sat down and stared almost breathlessly at the paper. That it was a threatening command from one crowd of Gypsies or the other, she was sure. But whether it was from Big Jim’s crowd or from Costello, the junkman, she did not know.
Her first thought, after she had digested the matter for a few moments, was to run with the paper to Mrs. McCall. But Mrs. McCall was not at all sympathetic about this bracelet matter. She was only angry with the Gypsies, and, perhaps, a little angry with Agnes for having unwittingly added to the trouble by putting the advertisement in the paper.
Neale, after all, could be her only confident; and, making sure that no other dark-visaged person was in sight about the house, the girl ran down the long yard beyond the garden to the stable and Billy Bumps’ quarters, and there climbed the board fence that separated the Kenway yard from that of Con Murphy, the cobbler.
“Hoo, hoo! Hoo, hoo!” Agnes called, looking over the top rail of the fence.