"I am positive, Auntie."
"Then I'm going to bed," declared the old lady. "But I allus told Peter this old place was bound to go to rack and ruin because o' his miserliness."
Ruth waited till her aunt got into bed, where she almost at once fell asleep. Then the girl scrambled for the remainder of the broken crackers and carried them all out into the hall in the trash basket.
Neale O'Neil was sitting on the top step of the front stairs, waiting for her appearance.
"Well! I guess I did it that time," he said. "She looked at me savage enough to bite, at supper. What's she going to do now—have me arrested and hung?" and he grinned suddenly.
"Oh, Neale!" gasped Ruth, overcome with laughter. "How could you?"
"I thought you girls were in there. I was giving Aggie her crackers back," Neale grunted.
Ruth explained to him how the crackers had come to be left in his room. Agnes had had nothing to do with it. "I guess the joke is on you, after all, Neale," she said, obliged to laugh in the end.
"Or on that terrible old lady."
"But she doesn't know it is a joke. I don't know what she'll say to-morrow when she sees that none of the ceiling has fallen."