“There they are now!” she cried, before she thought. She sprang from her chair to go to the door, but her voice carried more plainly than she had intended, and the men, hearing it, looked at her and then started off down the street on the run.
Agnes followed her sister.
“Do you mean those two men who were in our cellar?” she cried.
“Hush! Yes,” whispered Ruth. But Miss Titus had heard.
CHAPTER V
VISITORS ARRIVE
The dressmaker literally “pricked up her ears,” for as Agnes told Neale later, they actually seemed to rise on her head as she heard the girls mention the mysterious men.
“What’s that?” exclaimed Miss Titus. “Have those men done something?”
“Not that we know of,” answered Ruth, making a signal to her sister not to say anything.
“But you seemed so startled on beholding them,” went on the dressmaker, “that I should impend it might mean something.”
“Oh, nothing at all,” Ruth made haste to say, wanting to laugh, but not daring to when Miss Titus used “impend” so incorrectly. “I just thought I had seen them before, but perhaps I was mistaken.”