CHAPTER XX
FIGHTING IT OUT
As might have been expected Cara went into ecstasies over the old sampler.
“You ought to bring it right in,” she counselled Babs. “They’ll have a real honest-to-goodness opening this afternoon with speeches and all, and you should have the Nelson sampler there for folks to inspect. Besides, Babs,” she pointed out, “it was so wonderful of your father to unearth it. He’s a perfect peach,” she went on, without once taking her brown eyes off the little framed sampler she was holding.
“And I feel like a criminal not to have gone in the old show with him,” Babs confessed. “Oh, Cara,” she exclaimed impatiently, “haven’t I been an idiot?”
“Well, maybe,” agreed her chum laughingly, “but you’re a different sort of idiot from the common garden variety. Let’s go. Where to? Want to peek in and see if the old Davis twin is still breathing?”
“I think I had better,” demurred Babs. “Surely she’ll believe Nicky is innocent. But suppose she shouldn’t?”
“Well, if you ask me,” remarked Cara, in that funny way she had of saying slangy things prettily, “I’d say she surely will believe him guilty. She’s got to have somebody guilty because the boat is gone, you know,” Cara finished, sagely.
“Oh, yes; I know that,” agreed Babs, “but it isn’t Nicky.”
“I hope not,” Cara answered her briefly.
They drove along the sea-shore road, both silent for a few moments. This was unusual for these two girls, who always had so much to say to each other, but both were very busy thinking.