“That circus girl is a good deal like a singed cat,” remarked Mrs. MacCall in the kitchen. “I’m free to confess I didn’t think much of her at first. You and Ruth do pick up some crooked sticks.” She spoke to Agnes who was preparing to go out.
“But I watched her with the little ones and—bless her heart!—she’s a real little woman! Working in a circus all her life hasn’t spoiled her; but it isn’t a business that I’d want a daughter of mine to follow.
“And there isn’t a mite of harm in that Asa Scruggs,” added the housekeeper. “Only I never did see such a melancholy looking man. And he a clown!”
Agnes was thinking how strange it was she should have met Barnabetta and her father in the woods and brought them home, when they had come from the Twomley & Sorber Circus, and knew Neale O’Neil. And what would Neale say when he learned that the clown and his daughter were at the old Corner House?
Agnes remembered quite clearly that Neale had caught Barnabetta looking at the book of money while he had it in his possession at the winter quarters of the circus. At once the boy would connect the robbery of the Corner House with the circus girl’s presence there.
And that would never do. For Agnes was positive that Barnabetta was guiltless of the final disappearance of the treasure trove.
But suppose Neale was convinced otherwise? With sorrow the Corner House girl had to admit that her boy friend could be “awful stubborn” if he so chose.
“And he might come right over here and say something cross to Barnabetta and to poor Mr. Scruggs, and then everybody’d be unhappy,” Agnes told herself. “Barnabetta is repentant for all she did. It would be mean to accuse her of something she hadn’t done at all.”
So Agnes went rather soberly down the back yard paths to the end of the chicken run. She never contemplated for an instant going round by Willow Street and Willow Wythe to reach the cobbler’s front door.
Only a high board fence separated the Corner House premises from the little back yard of Mr. Con Murphy. There was the corner where Neale got over, and Agnes was enough of a tomboy to know the most approved fashion of mounting the barrier.