“I’m going to hurry home,” went on Tom. “And if there’ve been any robbers at our house I’ll go and tell the constable, too.”
“No, don’t do that!” cried Ted.
“Why not?” asked his chum.
“’Cause we want to catch ’em ourselves. If you find out your house has been robbed, you come and tell me and we’ll hunt the burglars. We won’t say anything about it to Constable Juke till we catch the burglars.”
“Say, that’ll be fun!” cried Tom, his eyes opening wide. “Won’t everybody be s’prised?”
“They surely will,” cried Ted. “You hurry back now, and then come an’ tell me.”
Tom ran off across the meadow, and Ted walked slowly up and down in the sun, waiting for the mud to dry, so it could be brushed off. But, after a while, he grew tired of this.
“I guess it doesn’t show much now,” he said to himself as he tried to turn around to look at his back. “Anyhow, I’m going to tell mother I fell in. Besides, she can see I did. I might as well go home now and see if we had any burglars. I don’t see how we could, but maybe we did,” he added, half wishing this would be so. “Then Tom and I could catch ’em all together.”
So, not waiting for Tom to come back, Ted hurried home. Out in front of the house he saw an automobile, which he knew was not his father’s.
“Oh, maybe there’s a policeman in there now about the burglars!” thought the little boy. But, as he entered the house, he heard the voice of Dr. Whitney. It was the doctor’s automobile out in front.