“Yes. Tess declares it was. And she’s not imaginative like Dot, you know.”
“Not Tommy Rooney, from Bloomingsburg?”
“There isn’t any other Tommy Rooney that we know,” said Agnes, quite calm now. “And if that doesn’t make a string of uncanny happenings, I don’t know what would. First the ghost in the garret——”
“But—but you haven’t seen that?” interrupted Ruth, faintly.
“No, thank goodness! But it’s there. And then the vanishing kittens——”
“Has Spotty gone?”
“No. But Sandy-face has, and has been gone ever since you went out, Ruth. I don’t think much of that mother cat. She doesn’t stay at home with her family hardly at all.
“Then this boy who looks like Tommy Rooney,” concluded Agnes. “For of course it can’t really be Tommy any more than it can be his spirit.”
“I’m glad to see you have some sense, Ag,” said Ruth, with a sigh. “Now let’s go down to the other girls, or they will think we’re hiding something from them.”
Ruth carried down stairs in her hand the envelope Mr. Howbridge had given to her. The sisters gathered in the dining-room, and Agnes picked up Spotty to comfort him while his mother was absent. “Poor ’ittle s’ing!” she cooed over the funny little kitten. “He don’t know wedder him’s got any mudder, or not.”