“Oh, my! He’s a regular convict, then,” gasped Agnes, much impressed.
“Pshaw!” said Neale. “They don’t call a man a convict unless he has been sent to the State prison, or to the Federal penitentiary. But that Big Jim looked to be tough enough, when we saw him down at Pleasant Cove, to belong in prison for life. Remember him, Aggie?”
“The children did not say anything about a Gypsy man,” observed his friend. “There were two Gypsy women.”
She went on to tell June Wildwood all about the basket purchase and the finding of the silver bracelet. The older girl shook her head solemnly as she said:
“I don’t understand it at all. Gypsies are always shrewd bargainers. They never sell things for less than they cost.”
“But they made that basket,” Agnes urged. “Perhaps it didn’t cost them so much as Ruth thinks.”
June smiled in a superior way. “Oh, no, they didn’t make it. They don’t waste their time nowadays making baskets when they can buy them from the factories so much cheaper and better. Oh, no!”
“Crackey!” exclaimed Neale. “Then they are fakers, are they?”
“That bracelet is no fake,” declared Agnes.
“That is what puzzles me most,” said June. “Gypsies are very tricky. At least, all I ever knew. And if those two women you speak of belonged to Big Jim’s tribe, I would not trust them at all.”