CHAPTER XXIV—GOOD-BYE TO NEWPORT
Early next morning Ruth and Barbara made full confession to Miss Sallie. Mollie and Grace were not surprised, for they had been told enough of the circumstances to expect the outcome. But imagine Miss Sallie!
“You mean to tell me, Ruth and Bab,” she gasped, dropping limply into the nearest chair, “that Harry Townsend is the jewel thief, the Newport Raffles? Why, you girls have walked with him, talked with him, played tennis with him! And Barbara has suspected him all the time! My heavens!” she wailed, in despair. “Did it never dawn on you, Barbara, that you might have been killed?”
Miss Stuart was overcome. “Ruth Stuart, my own niece, do you mean to tell me that you lately discovered that ‘this Townsend’ was the thief who tried to rob us in New Haven? Why was I not told at once? But then, I am grateful I was not. And you, Mollie, fourteen-year-old Mollie, you found out this wretch’s accomplice, and discovered Mrs. Cartwright’s stolen butterfly! I never would have thought it of you!”
“But I didn’t mean to, Miss Sallie. It was all an accident. I am awfully sorry for that poor woman,” answered Mollie.
“Nonsense, child!” said Miss Sallie. “I am grateful enough that such dangerous people are out of the way.”
The girls were standing in a circle round her. “Come to my arms,” she demanded of Grace. “Thank heavens, child, you have not turned detective, and can be relied on to keep me company!”
“But it was just as much Grace’s fault as it was mine that I discovered the butterfly,” argued Mollie, who could not see that Miss Sallie was joking. “She was with me when I found it out.” Everyone joined in the laugh at Mollie’s expense.
“Some one to see you in the library, miss,” announced Susan, the parlor maid. “She says she’d like to see you alone, first, and she’d rather not give her name.”
“Then you are not to go one step, Barbara Thurston,” said Miss Stuart in the voice the girls knew had to be obeyed. “There is no telling who it is waiting for you, nor what her intentions may be toward you. You’d go if you thought you’d be murdered the next minute. I never saw a girl like you. I will go myself,” announced Miss Sallie.