“You ought to have asked him where he saw her! Go after him quick! Don’t let him get away!”
Stung into action Eugene opened the door and called into the night:
“Oh, I say! Come here! Wait a minute!”
But his words seemed to float out on emptiness.
Eugene stood in the door for a moment listening, but there seemed to be no echo of footsteps. Yet it was scarcely a second since the visitor had stood inside the door. Where could he have gone? It was almost uncanny.
Nannette came and looked out the door, and Eugene hurried down the walk calling out again, but no answer came, and his own voice seemed to mock him. He looked up and down the street, but saw no one. He walked around the house, and back to the gate again. There was no sound of automobile in the quiet moonlit street. Everybody had gone to bed and the lights were out. Strange! How could the man have disappeared?
“Junior! Who was that man?” screamed Nannette remembering and rushing back into the house. But Junior had a realizing sense of his disloyalty to his family, and had fled to his bed with the clothes tucked tightly around his ears, and his eyes screwed shut as if in deep slumber. When rudely shaken into being he yawned reprovingly and asked, “What man?”
Nannette brought him at last to a proper appreciation of the necessity and he nonchalantly replied, “Oh, him? He’s our coach, Darce Sherwood. You just oughta see him pitch a ball. He’s some cracker-jack pitcher.”
Questioned further concerning the package he said he guessed some old woman had sent it to Joyce. He guessed it was some seeds or “sumpin” to put on Grandma’s grave.
The mother and father looked at one another completely puzzled.