“Does it worry you, Ruth?” her sister asked anxiously.
“A little—yes,” the older sister was forced to admit. “Oh, of course I know there’s no danger with Uncle Rufus, Linda and Mrs. MacCall with us; and yet——”
“Why don’t you add Neale and Luke?” inquired Agnes, with a laugh. “They’ll be with us—more or less—principally more I hope—until after this house party.”
“Well, since you have named them, I am glad they are going to be around,” conceded Ruth. “Not that I fear anything will happen, but I don’t like the way those men acted. Why, they might be lunatics!”
“They didn’t act at all, according to what Uncle Rufus said,” retorted Agnes.
“No, and that’s just the trouble,” went on Ruth. “If they had done something while down cellar—if they had dug up a place to find a leak, if they had tightened the pipes, anything to show that they were what they claimed to be, it wouldn’t be so mysterious. But now it looks as if they just went in there, as Sammy said, to look for an easy means of entering the house after dark.”
“Ruth Kenway, don’t dare say such things!” cried her sister.
“I know it seems a scary thing to say, and perhaps I am foolish for mentioning it,” sighed Ruth. “I know I’d shake Sammy if he spoke of it again, but I can’t help thinking it, Agnes.”
“Do you suppose we had better tell Mr. Howbridge?” asked her sister, pausing at the corner of a street that led to the office of their guardian.
“Gracious, no!” exclaimed Ruth. “He would only laugh at us.”