No one knew but the colored servant, and he did not understand, that Mary and Billie had refused to eat anything in a house where one of them had been called a thief.
“Mary, tell your mother the whole story,” said Billie, as she dropped her friend at “The Sign of the Blue Tea Pot.” “Tell her not to be uneasy. Your friends know you are innocent and it is all obliged to come out right.”
Then she dashed around the Square, turned up Cliff Street, and stopped at the home of Miss Helen Campbell.
“No, I haven’t had breakfast,” she said to the old man servant, who opened the door. “I’ll eat with Cousin Helen if she hasn’t breakfasted.”
“Miss Campbell will not eat any breakfast this morning, Miss Billie,” replied the butler.
“Is she ill?”
“No, Miss,” the old man lowered his voice, “but she’s wearing her black dress.”
Billie frowned.
“Is it an anniversary?” she asked.
“No, Miss. That’s just the queer part. It ain’t the anniversary. We know when that comes now. But something’s happened.”