“We found it lying on that seat,” explained Eleanor. “This slip of paper was tucked into it.”
Patsy took the bit of paper which Eleanor proffered. Mabel and Bee eagerly peered at it over her shoulder as she held it up and inspected the one word written on it. Her brows contracted in a puzzled frown.
“Humph!” she ejaculated. “I don’t see—-”
“I do,” interrupted Mabel with a little laugh. “That word ‘gracias’ is Spanish for ‘thank you.’”
“Then my wood nymph is Spanish!” Bee cried out. “It was she who took the book. The whole thing is as plain as daylight. She only borrowed it over night to read. Miss Martha’s pretty white parasol didn’t interest her at all. It was the book that took her eye. And why? Because she wanted to read it, of course.”
“Go ahead, Sherlock,” teased Patsy. “What next?”
“Well——” Bee laughed and looked slightly confused. “We know, too, that she is honest, or——”
“That’s just what I said,” interposed Eleanor.
“Really, Beatrice, I can hardly imagine a wild-looking girl such as you have described as having literary tastes,” broke in Miss Martha drily. “It is far more reasonable to assume that the bright color of my book caught her eye. She may have thought it a picture book. Finding out that it was not, some strange impulse of her own caused her to return it. Her methods seem to me decidedly primitive. Why doesn’t she come out and show herself openly, instead of dodging about under cover like a young savage?”
“She is probably just awfully shy,” staunchly defended Patsy. “She can’t really be quite a savage. She wrote ‘thank you’ on that bit of paper. That proves two things. She knows how to write and is not too ignorant to be polite.”