“Oh, Pa,” came helplessly. “Lawyer Chew was here. And he’s coming back with the sheriff to put us out.”
“Um.... What’s he goin’ to put us out for?”
“Spitework, more than anything. He says that we haven’t any right to be here.”
“But Miss Ruth has the keys. Her grandpa gave her the keys. And she sent us here.”
“SO, YOU’RE GOING TO PUT ME OUT, ARE YOU?”
Poppy Ott and the Galloping Snail. Page [85]
“I know, Pa, but Miss Ruth isn’t here yet. And until she comes we’re helpless. Oh, the humiliation if that man does put us out in the road! To think that such a thing could happen to a Danver at the hands of a man whose grandfather was a horse thief!”
Poppy and I were watching the old man to see what we could read in his face. For in this new trouble it didn’t seem possible to us that he could hide all trace of his secret. Yet we saw nothing—only dumbness. I began to wonder then if he really knew as much about the granddaughter’s hiding place and her other secrets as we imagined. Maybe, I admitted our error, we were all wrong in our belief.
Poppy had gone into the house. And now I heard him at the telephone. When he came out he was grinning. But when I asked him what the joke was he wouldn’t tell me. I suspected, though, that he had made the first move against the enemy.
It was now time for us to start for Pardyville. So, with the old engine heaving and snorting, we loaded ourselves onto the cushioned back of the Galloping Snail and gallantly set forth on our journey, yelling to Ma Doane the very last thing to keep a stiff upper lip and cook a lot of beefsteak and gravy. For there’d be five of us for supper, we promised. Down in our hearts, though, we were saying “maybe.” Yet it was all right, we thought, to say something like that to cheer her up. And it made us glad to know that we left her smiling.