The tirade had attracted so much attention that a small crowd was gathering. Anything for excitement in Barbend, but a clash between Nancy Trivett and Gloria Doane was particularly promising. Realizing her conspicuous position, but at the same time summoning her usual clearheaded courage to combat it, Gloria was secretly glad that Tommy escaped. He would never have been able to answer Nancy, and the crowd would be apt to jeer at a boy, at any boy against the spectacular Nancy. Just now she did look too funny! She wore the same hat she always appeared in, a black sailor, or one that had once been black, and this was festooned and decorated with feathers, flowers and ribbons, or bits of stuff that represented such decorations. Her dress was equally a mixture of useless odds and ends, all piled on, or plastered on at intervals from the neck to the jagged hem. It looked black but it should have been brown—that is the alpaca that composed the foundation for all the trimmings. But queerest of all was Nancy’s own personality. She had red hair that “changeth not,” and eyes of no less permanency. They were a sort of hazel, and her complexion was not bad at all where it got a chance to show itself, but the strong sun and the rough weather do things to the complexion that goes with sandy hair and hazel eyes, and they did it unmercifully to Nancy’s.
But her chiefest and most conspicuous feature was her hand bag. She carried it everywhere and never seemed to be without it. The bag was once brown leather but again time had collected its toll, and the bag looked now like something the rummage sale couldn’t get rid of. It was large enough to carry a half dozen of eggs which Nancy often traded with the dealers for other commodities, and it was flat enough to go in her basket, and had a clasp! It was that clasp that fascinated Nancy.
All these details were as familiar to the Barbend folks as was Nancy herself, but while introducing her in her oddities, it is best to take a good look.
Gloria now confronted the woman with something of a scornful smile on her lips. She was so glad that Tommy did not have to answer that foolish accusation! Being a normal girl with a sense of justice ever ready to assert itself, she felt at first very much inclined to tell the old-young lady just what she thought of her, but the small crowd just emerging from the post office were too plainly eager for a lark. Gloria was not quite good natured enough to satisfy them.
All this time Nancy kept talking. What she said did not matter in the least, her voice was so strident it supplied what her words might have lacked in the way of force.
“Say, Mrs. Trivett,” said Gloria after a long wait filled with the other’s cackling, “when and where did you lose that money?”
“Haven’t I told you? I laid it right down on the basket of tomatoes—”
“Come on over to Sam’s,” suggested Gloria.
“It might be stuck around—”
“Haven’t I looked everywheres? Do you suppose I would go all day without that money that I had set aside for the fire insurance, if it was in Sam’s store?”