“Gosh, do you suppose he’ll survive, Tommy? I’ll bet it’s a hundred and six inside there.”
“Aw, it’ll do him good,” put in Jack. “Don’t you worry about him. He’s a strong man. It was all Tommy and I could do to keep a good hold on him.”
“Oh, kids,” exclaimed Kit. “I didn’t want you to touch him.”
“How else were we to catch him?” demanded Tommy. “You and your bright ideas. Come on, Jack, let’s go back and stand guard over him.”
Kit watched them leave rather dubiously. It was one thing to act on the impulse of the moment and quite another to face the consequences. Now that the prisoner was safe in the corncrib, she wondered uneasily just what her father would say when he found out what she had done to protect the berry patch. But just now he was in the upper orchard with old Mr. Weaver, deep in apple culture, and she thought she could get rid of the trespasser before he returned.
Mrs. Gorham was in the kitchen putting up peaches. She was humming and the sound came through the screen door. Mrs. Gorham was Judge Ellis’s housekeeper and helped out the Craigs occasionally when an extra hand was needed. Now that Judge Ellis had married Becky Craig, Mr. Craig’s cousin who had engineered the family’s move to Woodhow and was always at hand in an emergency, Mrs. Gorham was not needed as much at the Judge’s home. Billie, the Judge’s grandson who was sixteen and Doris’s best friend, completed the Ellis household.
Kit slipped around the drive behind the house out to the hill road. Mr. Hicks would have to come from this direction, and here she sat on the ground at the entrance to the driveway, thinking and waiting.
The minutes passed and still Mr. Hicks failed to appear. If Kit could have visualized his trip, she might have imagined him lingering here and there along the country roads, stopping to tell the news to any neighbor who might be nearby. Beside him sat Elvira, his youngest, drinking in every word with tense appreciation of the novelty. It was the first chance Mr. Hicks had had to make an arrest during his term of office, and as a special test and reward of diligence, Elvira had been permitted to come along and behold the climax with her own eyes. But the twenty minutes stretched out into nearly forty, and Kit’s heart sank when she saw her father strolling leisurely down the orchard path, just as Mr. Hicks hove in sight.
Mr. Weaver limped beside him, smiling contentedly.
“Well, I guess we’ve got ’em licked this time, Tom,” he chuckled. “If there’s a bug or a moth that can stand that dose of mine, I’ll eat the whole apple crop myself.”