“I must,” replied Walter, “or they won’t let me ride with them any more.”
“We’re not going to, anyway; that is, for the rest of this afternoon,” said Cora. “I want to have the girls in the car with me where we can talk over this thing without being interrupted.”
“Shut out from Eden,” groaned Walter bitterly. “You wash your hands of me. You cast me into outer darkness. Just when the better part of my nature was getting uppermost, you put me back into low company. I wouldn’t have believed it of you, girls.”
“Back to the kennel, you hound!” exclaimed Paul, seizing him by the collar. “You might have known that the girls would throw you down. They always do, sooner or later.”
“Well, now that Lucifer as lightning has fallen from heaven,” remarked Jack, “what do you say to hustling along? The afternoon waneth and my appetite waxeth. Dinner at Camp Kill Kare sounds awfully good to me.”
“I suppose we’ll have to,” assented Cora reluctantly; “but I would like to have another glimpse of that gypsy girl first.”
“Nothing doing,” said Jack. “We’re only visitors here anyway, and we haven’t any right to intrude on their private affairs when they show us so clearly they don’t want us to. Ten to one it’s only a mare’s nest anyway that you’re stirring up, sis, about the girl. Probably she’s an honest to goodness gypsy, just like the rest of them.”
“That’s what my common sense tells me,” agreed Cora, “but something outside of common sense tells me that she isn’t.”
“That’s the way I feel about it too,” echoed Bess.
“I too,” agreed Belle. “She may have been stolen when she was a child. That happens often enough.”