When they reached their rooms upstairs they felt too excited for sleep, and sat for a long time talking over the incident.
They could laugh now at their surprise in meeting friendly Bruce instead of a very unfriendly house-breaker, but more than once both of them caught themselves listening for sounds in the silent house below.
"It was just luck," said Billie, as she rose at last to go to bed, "that it was Bruce that happened to find that open window instead of—of some one else!"
CHAPTER VIII
STARTLING DEVELOPMENTS
Chet and Billie were very careful to leave neither doors nor windows unlocked, and the rest of the week passed without further mishap.
Then one morning came a telegram from their parents saying that they would be home the next day.
"Goodness, now I have to get busy!" cried Billie, jumping up from the table in such a hurry that she very nearly upset Chet's coffee cup, thereby considerably surprising that boy.
"Say, do you think it's catching?" he asked, with a smile. "What's the matter with you, Billie?"
"Oh, of course you wouldn't understand—you're a boy," remarked his sister condescendingly, as she put on the becoming dust cap and pulled some gloves on her hands.