"Oh, sugar!" muttered the worried lightkeeper, reddening like a schoolboy caught in a peccadillo. Then: "I tell you there ain't no reason. He ain't poor."
"Why, Tobias Bassett! if Professor Endicott has lost all his money——"
"But he ain't! It's all torn foolishness. I—I just told you I'd heard 'twas so, Lorny. And I did hear it. You know how gossip goes in Clinkerport. Them story-mongers has had Henry Endicott ruined financially because of his inventions a score of times."
"But you told me——"
"Oh, sugar! I didn't have no business to tell you such a thing. I never ought to have said it," stammered the lightkeeper. "I was figgerin' that the matter with you young folks—you and Ralph—was that you both had too much money. If you was poor I cal'lated you'd begin to have pity for each other and, as the feller said, 'pity is akin to love.'"
"Tobias Bassett, you deliberately deceived me? Ralph Endicott is not poor at all?"
Her face was suddenly aflame. Her eyes sparkled with rage. She stamped her foot. Tobias had no difficulty in keeping a straight face now. In truth he could not have called up a grin to save his life.
"That's just what I done, Lorna," he confessed. "I cal'late I trimmed my sails purt' close to the truth and no mistake. Didn't just foresee this difficulty, that's a fact. But you disabuse your mind right now of the idea of Ralph Endicott being anything different from what he's always been—as straight as a main stick and as clean as a whistle."
"But that penknife you found—and his address book?" she gasped.
"I ain't trying to explain them. I don't have to—just like I told that detective feller. I give it as my opinion that somebody is trying to tie something on Ralph. But no evidence they could show me would make me believe he was a bank burglar—nossir!"