"She was a detective,"—this in a whisper.
"What!" said the other two, awesomely.
"A detective."
Then a quick movement of chairs and a pulling of yarn. Ruth dropped a spool of thread which rattled, as it fell, and rolled a space and lay neglected.
The sister Serene was now laughing.
"It's ridiculous!" she remarked.
"Go on," said the others, and one of them added, "Land sakes! don't stop now."
"Well, she got sick the other day and sent for a lawyer, an' who do you suppose it was?"
"I dunno," said Ruth Tole. The words had broken away from her, and she covered her mouth, quickly, and began to look out of the window. The speaker had begun to laugh again.
"'Twas Dick Roberts," she went on. "He went over to the tavern; she lay there in bed and had a nurse in the room with her—a woman she got in Ogdensburg. She tells the young lawyer she wants him to make her will. Then she describes her property and he puts it down. There was a palace in Wales and a castle on the Rhine and pearls and diamonds and fifty thousand pounds in a foreign bank, and I don't know what all. Well, ye know, she was pert and handsome, and he began to take notice."