“I think he’s just too mean for anything,” she said to Ruth, querulously, when the older girl came home from market.
“Who is mean?” Ruth returned absently.
“Neale. To go off and never say a word to us. I am offended.”
Had Agnes’ mind not been so strongly set upon the subject of Neale O’Neil’s defection she would surely have noticed how Ruth’s hands trembled and how her face flushed and paled by turns.
“Never mind about Neale O’Neil,” the older sister said, rather impatiently for her.
“Well, I just do mind!” Agnes declared. “He has no business to have secrets from us. Aren’t we his best friends?”
“Perhaps he doesn’t consider us such,” said Ruth, who would have been amused by her sister’s seriousness at another time. “There’s Joe Eldred. Perhaps he knows where Neale has gone.”
“Joe Eldred!” cried Agnes. “If I thought Neale had taken a mere boy into his confidence and hadn’t told me, I’d never speak to him again! At least,” she temporized, knowing her own failing, “I never would forgive him!”
“Never mind worrying about Neale,” Ruth said again. “Come into the sitting room. I want to show you something.”
Agnes followed her rather grumpily. To her mind there was nothing just then so important as Neale O’Neil’s absence and the mystery thereof.