"No, you sha'n't!" cried Dot. "You sha'n't know. And I don't want to know who is going to j-j-jerk it out," and she ran away, sobbing.
Being so busy that morning, the others really forgot the little girl. None of them saw her take a hassock, put it behind the sitting-room door that was seldom opened, and after tying the string to the knob, seat herself upon the hassock and wait for something to happen.
She waited. Nobody came near that room. The sun shone warmly in at the windows, the bees buzzed, and Dot grew drowsy. Finally she fell fast asleep with her tooth tied to the doorknob.
CHAPTER VI
AGNES LOSES HER TEMPER AND DOT HER TOOTH
It was on this morning—Friday, ever a fateful day according to the superstitiously inclined—that the incident of the newspaper advertisement arose.
The paper boy had very early thrown the Kenways' copy of the Milton Morning Post upon the front veranda. Aunt Sarah spent part of each forenoon reading that gossipy sheet. She insisted upon seeing the paper just as regularly as she insisted upon having her five cents' worth of peppermint-drops to take to church in her pocket on Sunday morning.
But on this particular morning she did not take the paper in before going to her room after breakfast, and Neale strolled out and picked up the sheet.
Ruth was behind him, but he did not know of her presence. She had been about to secure the morning paper and run upstairs with it, to save Aunt Sarah the bother of coming down again. As she was about to ask the boy for it, Ruth noticed that he was staring rigidly at the still folded paper. His eyes were fixed upon something that appeared in the very first column of the Post.