“Why, Mrs. Ware saw the callers coming just before they rang the bell and the professor had been digging in the garden. Of course she straightened things up a little before she appeared in the parlor to welcome the visitors. But the professor did not appear. Somebody asked for him at last and Mrs. Ware went to the foot of the stairs to call him.
“‘Oh, Professor!’ she called up the stairs, and the company heard him answer back just as plain:
“‘Maria, I can’t remember whether you sent me up here to change my clothes or to go to bed.’”
“I can believe it!” chortled Neale O’Neil. “He has made some awful breaks in school. But I don’t believe he ever owned that bracelet, Aggie.”
The first person who displayed interest in the advertisement in the Post about the bracelet, save the two young people who put it in the paper, proved to add much to the mystery of the affair and nothing at all to the peace of mind of Agnes, at least.
Agnes was busy at some mending—actually hose-darning, for Ruth insisted that the flyaway sister should mend her own stockings, which Aunt Sarah’s keen eyes inspected—when she chanced to raise her head to glance out of the front window of the sewing room. A strange looking turnout had halted before the front gate.
The vehicle itself was a decrepit express wagon on the side of which in straggling blue letters was painted the one word “JUNK,” but the horse drawing the wagon was a surprisingly well-kept and good looking animal.
The back of the wagon was piled high with bundles of newspapers, and bags, evidently stuffed with rags, were likewise in the wagon body. The man climbing down from the seat just as Agnes looked did not seem at all like the usual junk dealer who passed through Milton’s streets heralded by a “chime” of tin-can bells.
He was a small, swarthy man, and even at the distance of the front gate from Agnes’ window the girl could see that he wore gold hoops in his ears. He was quick but furtive in his motions. He glanced in a birdlike way down the street and across the Parade Ground, which was diagonally opposite the old Corner House, before he entered the front gate.