“Well,” sighed Gloria crushing the little note in her warm hand, “that’s another link in our daisy chain, broken.”
But she must turn to sterner realities. Her mind seemed to swing in a circle around the suspicions betrayed by the mason’s children.
“I guess Jane was right when she used to tell me that joy is a picture framed in shadows,” Gloria was deliberating. Not much given to such fancies the fact of her entertaining them betrayed a very serious state of mind.
“I’m glad the hoodlum’s father didn’t work on this house. I should never feel comfortable here if I found out the charges meant walls unpaid for. Of course, what I feel is mostly pride,” she qualified, “but one can’t help being—proud.”
Her aunt’s change of attitude, and with it the life that had suddenly bashed in upon her otherwise gloomy existence, was like a lifted veil. But now there was this sinister threat of those impossible children. What could it mean? Whom could she ask?
With this question uppermost in the mind, Gloria started for school. And just as she had feared, the shadows that lined the joy pictures stood waiting for her at the Elm Tree turn.
“Those children!”
There they were, four abreast in battle formation, confronting her with some sort of guns ready to fire!
“I’ll fool them,” decided Gloria. “I’ll—go for them—first.”
She hurried so they would see she intended to catch up with them.