“That isn’t his uncle’s writing,” Ruth said.
“Of course it isn’t,” the second sister replied scornfully. “Mr. Bill Sorber doesn’t write at all. Don’t you remember? That’s why he thinks it so foolish for Neale to want an education. But it’s somebody Uncle Bill’s got to write for him.”
Agnes’ practical explanation could not be gainsaid. She did not connect for a moment the disappearance of the old album with Neale’s sudden flight from Milton. The bonds and banknotes pasted into the big volume she had found in the garret gave Agnes not the least anxiety. But she looked closely at the envelope.
“Wish Mr. Murphy had found the letter, too,” she said. “Then we could have learned what made that horrid boy run off so.”
“‘Tiverton,’ Humph! Where’s Tiverton? That’s where this letter was mailed. Seems to me somebody said ‘Tiverton’ to me only lately,” murmured Agnes.
Ruth did not hear her, and Agnes said no more about it. But after she had retired that night and was almost in dreamland—in that state ’twixt waking and sleeping when the happenings of the day pass through one’s mind in seemingly endless procession—suddenly Agnes sat up in bed.
“Oh! I know where I’ve heard of Tiverton before,” she whispered shrilly in the darkness. “That’s where Mr. Howbridge has gone—to see his sick brother. Say, Ruth!”
Ruth was asleep. And by morning Agnes had forgotten all about the matter. So the coincidence was not called to the older sister’s attention.
CHAPTER XI—SOME EXCITEMENT
As Uncle Rufus had stated, his daughter, the pleasant and unctious Petunia Blossom, was to take a week’s vacation from laundry work at New Year’s; but she brought the last wash home a few days after Christmas.