“Yes!” exclaimed Ben. “‘Stay there until some one comes for you, babies.’ Only of course it wasn’t babies—they’d have starved to death before now.”
Ann and Jo laughed at that. “I guess you’re right about that, Ben,” said Jo.
“And what do you think he is doing, back there in the woods?” said Ann.
“Ask me another,” answered Jo. “I’m stumped about the whole thing.”
And then he slipped away in the darkness and Ann and Ben crept silently over the window sill. For the second time that night Ann undressed and went to bed.
CHAPTER IX A DAY OF MYSTERIES
“Ben,” Mrs. Seymour asked next morning at the breakfast table, “did you bring home the cheese yesterday when you came back from the village?”
“Yes, mother,” Ben answered. “I left it with the other packages on the bench outside the kitchen door.”
“You are sure that you didn’t leave it in the store?” Mrs. Seymour was not questioning Ben’s statement, for she, too, was quite certain that the cheese had been accounted for when Ben had dropped all his marketing on the seat by the door and checked each purchase by the list she had given him.