"'The codfish'?" they repeated, looking puzzled, while Rose added with a little yawn: "Yes, do tell us about the codfish, Billie—it sounds so interesting."
The tone more than the words made Billie angry, but before she had time to retort the girls broke in, eagerly demanding the story of the "Codfish."
"We caught one one time on a family fishing trip," said one of the girls, taking it for granted that this particular codfish was of the swimming variety, "and we had fried codfish steaks for a week afterward."
Billie chuckled while Vi and Laura openly giggled.
"But this wasn't that kind of a fish," said Billie. "It was a man."
This was almost too much for the girls, who were beginning to think that Billie and Laura and Vi had suddenly gone crazy, but Billie hurried on to explain about the "Codfish," growing more and more interested in her story as she went on.
As for the girls, well, they simply hung on her words, and when she came to the part where the thief had dropped her precious trunk in the roadway they exclaimed so loudly that Caroline had to warn them to be quiet. By this time the guard at the door had been removed, as there was little danger of discovery at so late an hour.
"Well," sighed Connie Danvers, when Billie had finished her story, "I wish something like that would happen to me sometime. It sounds just like a story book."
"But you should have caught him," Nellie objected. Though Nellie had heard of Billie's wonderful good fortune in finding the old trunk, she had never heard the details of the part the "Codfish" had played in it until to-night. "It gives me the shivers to think that an awful thing like that, with red hair and a fishy mouth, should be wandering around loose."
"I'm sure I'll dream of him to-night," said one of the other girls plaintively.