“What did Darry say when he knew you had seen him? Did he—explain?” asked Jessie, slowly.
“There is the most peculiar part of it,” Burd answered reluctantly. “He not only refused to explain but acted as though angry and was unpleasant about the whole thing. Accused us of trying to spy on him and of several other crimes that were farthest from our minds. He even went so far as to say that we had ‘spoiled it all.’”
“What did he mean by that?” asked Jessie, puzzled and speaking more to herself than to Burd.
“That is what I would give a good deal to find out,” returned Burd, ruefully, then adding, with a chuckle: “You should have heard him when, in an evil moment, Fol asked him for an explanation. Near chewed Fol’s head off.”
Jessie shook her head slowly. The situation was even more mysterious than she had thought it, and with each of Burd’s startling revelations she became more hopelessly bewildered.
“Did he say when he was coming back?” she asked, after a long reflective pause. Again Burd shook his head.
“He wouldn’t tell us anything,” he said, adding with a frown: “I don’t mind admitting to you he got me pretty sore.”
Jessie smiled slightly and murmured that she “didn’t wonder.”
“I don’t know what we can do about it,” she added, after a moment, as they turned and started back toward the others. “I am sure Darry has good reasons for acting as he does, and when he comes to explain everything to us we shall see that he could not have acted differently.”
But in spite of her brave words she was troubled, and, partly to get Darry and his strange behavior out of her mind and partly to give herself something absorbing to do, she suggested that they “listen in” on a concert.