“But—but we don’t know where to find them,” blurted out the youngest Corner House girl.
“You can find them I guess—out on the Buckshot Road.”
“We don’t know that our Gypsy ladies are there,” said Tess, with some defiance.
“You don’t dare go to see,” said Margaret Pease.
It was a question to trouble the minds of Tess and Dot. Should they try to find the Gypsies, and see if the very ladies who had given them the bracelet were in that encampment?
At least it was a leading question in Tess Kenway’s mind. It must be confessed that Dot only hoped it would prove a false alarm. She was very grateful to the strange Gypsy women for having put the silver ornament in the green and yellow basket; but she hoped never to see those two kind women again!
The uncertainty was so great in both of the small girls’ minds that they said nothing at all about it in the hearing of any other member of the family. Had Ruth been at home they might have confided in her. They had always confided everything to their eldest sister. But just now the two smaller Corner House girls were living their own lives, very much shut away from the existence Agnes, for instance, was leading.
Agnes had a secret—several of them, indeed. She did not take Tess and Dot into her confidence. So, if for no other reason, the smaller girls did not talk to Agnes about the Gypsies.
The Kenways owned some tenement property in a much poorer part of the town than that prominent corner on which the Corner House stood. Early in their coming to Milton from Bloomsburg, the Corner House girls had become acquainted with the humble tenants whose rents helped swell the funds which Mr. Howbridge cared for and administered.
Some of these poorer people, especially the children near their own age, interested the Kenway girls very much because they met these poorer children in school. So when news was brought to Agnes one afternoon (it was soon after lunch) that Maria Maroni, whose father kept the coal, wood, ice and vegetable cellar in one of the Stower houses and who possessed a wife and big family of children as well, had been taken ill, Agnes was much disturbed.