“I think so. They weren’t as well off then as they are now. Sammis moved in and set up his shop right after the road was widened.”
“Then he was lying!”
Peter looked interested.
“About what?”
“About some furniture that was warped as if it had been in the water. He said—”
Judy paused, trying to remember exactly what the used-furniture dealer had said. He certainly had led her to believe that his house had been sheared in half to make room for the road. But if he had purchased the shop just recently, that couldn’t be true.
“What he said about the furniture couldn’t be true, either,” Judy concluded after telling Peter as much of the conversation as she could remember. “And if it wasn’t left out in the rain it could be furniture damaged in the flood six years ago, couldn’t it?”
“I suppose it could,” Peter admitted.
Judy wanted to ask him about the lady table, but she waited until evening, hoping he would mention it first. Meantime she told him everything that had happened up to the time Danny appeared and warned Horace not to break up the dam.
“You see, Peter,” she ended her story, “Danny was afraid if Horace pulled out that table leg—”