“I’ll be up at daybreak,” resolved Nancy, really determined now to get the little country home in order.
A band concert in Long Leigh was plainly an important event, and the numbers of persons crowding about the band-stand on the village green attested hearty appreciation for the musical efforts. The firemen, however, seemed to draw out the heaviest applause, but that was because old Jake Jacobs, the best piccolo player around, had been training them. Still, there was Pete Van Riper, the drummer on the baseball side of the platform. He certainly could drum, and the small boys around kept calling to him in baseball parlance such encouragements as “Make it a homer, Pete! Hug the mat! Hit her hard!” and such outfield coaching.
Ruth had met a number of her friends and some she introduced to Nancy, but the concert was spoiled for Nancy. She could see and actually feel her mother working in that little country place to which she had come, just to give Ted and Nancy a happy vacation.
When her worry was becoming so keen that she felt she must ask Ruth to go home with her, there pushed into the crowd an old man in a broad-brimmed straw hat, although the sun was well out of all mischief.
“Look!” whispered Ruth. “There’s Mr. Townsend! And that’s Mr. Sanders—with him!”
Just then the two men stepped over to the little mound where the girls were. They did not see the girls, but Mr. Sanders drew Mr. Townsend to a sudden stop in a space directly in front of Nancy and Ruth.
“I tell you, Sanders,” Mr. Townsend said, in a voice not at all suitable for his surroundings, “the whole town is talkin’. They say all kinds of things and you had better out with the whole thing.”
Mr. Sanders laughed as if he enjoyed the joke.
“Keep cool, keep cool, friend,” he said.
But Mr. Townsend was by no means keeping cool, and he said so, sharply.