“Gone to that bourne where both good and bad snakes go,” rejoined her husband. “Come, Jessie! It is evident I did not get all that you wanted to tell me the other evening. And, it seems to me, if I remember rightly, you got so excited over your radio business before you were through that you quite forgot the snakes—I mean forgot the girl you say was run away with.” 121
“Don’t joke her any more, Robert,” advised Momsy. “I can see she is in earnest.”
“You just listen here, Daddy Norwood,” Jessie cried. “Perhaps you’ll be glad to hear about Bertha. She is little Henrietta Haney’s cousin, and Henrietta expected Bertha to come to see her where she lives with the Foleys in Dogtown.
“Well, the day that Bertha was expected, she didn’t come. That was the day Amy and I first thought of building our radio. And when we were walking into town we heard a girl screaming in Dogtown Lane. So we ran in, and there was this girl being pulled into an automobile by two women.”
“What girl was this?” asked Mr. Norwood, quite in earnest now. “A girl you and Amy knew?”
“We had never seen her before, Daddy. And I am not positive, of course, that she was Bertha, Henrietta’s cousin. But Amy and I thought it might be. And now you tell about two women who want to keep a servant girl away from you, and it might be the same.”
“It might indeed,” admitted Mr. Norwood thoughtfully. “Tell me what the two women looked like. Describe them as well as you can.”
Jessie did so. She managed, even after this length of time, to remember many peculiarities about the woman who drove the big car and the 122 fleshy one who had treated the girl so roughly. Mr. Norwood exclaimed at last:
“I should not be at all surprised if that were Martha Poole and Mrs. Bothwell. The descriptions in a general way fit them. And if it is so, the girl Jessie and Amy saw abused in that way is surely the maid who worked for Mrs. Poole.”
“Oh, Robert! can it be possible, do you think?” cried his wife.