“And we found this little place,” Laura caught her up eagerly, “and came inside to keep from drowning to death.”
“We hope you don’t mind,” Vi finished, with her pleading smile which sometimes won more than all Billie’s and Laura’s courage.
“Mind,” the man repeated vaguely, passing a hand across his eyes as if to wake himself up. “Why should I mind? It isn’t very often I have company.”
The girls thought he spoke bitterly but the next minute he smiled at them.
“I’m sorry I can’t ask you to sit down,” he said, so embarrassed that Billie took pity on him.
“We don’t want to sit down,” she said, smiling at him. “We’re too nervous. Do you suppose the rain will ever stop?”
The man shook out his clothing and sent a shower of spray all about him. He was soaking, drenching wet, and suddenly, looking at him, Billie had a dreadful thought.
Suppose the man was not quite right in his mind? She had a horror of crazy people. But what sane man would build himself a cabin in the woods like this in the first place, and then go roaming around in the rain without any protection?
A memory of the slow, measured steps they had heard approaching the cabin made her shudder, and instinctively she drew back a little and snuggled her hand into Laura’s.
If he was not crazy he was probably a criminal of some sort, and neither thought made Billie feel very comfortable. Three girls alone in the woods with a crazy man or a criminal, with the darkness coming on——