“It couldn’t be a real burglar,” murmured Agnes, quiveringly. “Oh, Neale! I wouldn’t have thought it of you!
“And Aunt Sarah must have scared him when he was at that closet. But, goodness me! what would Neale O’Neil want in that old closet? Nothing there much but medicines on the top shelf and old books and papers. I—don’t see—
“Could it be a really, truly burglar, after all? Not one like Dot’s plumber, but a real one? And why didn’t Tom Jonah bark? Oh, goodness! suppose he hasn’t gone out after all?
“Oh! I want to go to bed and cover my head up with blankets!” gasped Agnes. “I want to tell Ruth—but I daren’t! Maybe I ought to call everybody and make a search for the burglar. But suppose it should be Neale?”
So she stole up to bed, shaking with nervous dread, yet feeling as though she ought, somehow, to be congratulated. Yet when she had slipped off her robe and was in bed again, two separate and important thoughts assailed her:
Had Barnabetta Scruggs been out of her room? And what had Aunt Sarah Maltby done with the key to the dining room closet?
CHAPTER XX—LEMUEL ADEN’S DIARY
Agnes slept so late that Sunday morning that she had to “scrabble,” as she herself confessed, to get down to breakfast before everybody else was through.
As the members of the Corner House family who had risen earlier made no remarks about burglars in the night, Agnes decided she would better say nothing of her own experience.
It really seemed to Agnes now as though it had been a dream. Only she noticed when she sat down at the table that the big brass key was missing from the lock of the closet door.