Sally shrugged her shoulders. "I haven't any authority, I have a 'hunch'," she returned, appreciating how painfully her slang would annoy her intellectual sister.
"But how is it possible that Gerry could have written? Don't you think she and Felipe are still hiding in Mexico? We know that much from what Mr. Morris has told us! If Gerry should write to Mrs. Burton she might betray her own and Felipe's secret and she would not do that," Marta Clark protested.
"I did not say Gerry had written, I only said that I believed Tante had received some information concerning her," Sally answered, undisturbed by criticism.
In response to this speech the expressions on the faces of the four other girls became curiously alike.
"I don't believe if I were Mrs. Burton I should ever take an interest in Gerry again," Marta Clark announced. "Perhaps I am more in a position to say this than any of the rest of you, because all of you have some past association with Mrs. Burton; she was an intimate friend of your mothers. She simply chose to be kind to me and to invite me to spend this summer with her Camp Fire group without any especial reason, just as she has been good to Gerry. If I should repay her kindness as Gerry has done, I should never dare make the effort to see her again, or to ask her forgiveness, no matter how greatly I might desire it."
"I feel just as you do, Marta," Bettina Graham agreed.
But Sally gave a little protesting cough, holding a chocolate drop suspended in the air for an instant.
"Judge not, lest ye be judged," she declared sententiously, and then with a somewhat less self-righteous expression, "Was that quotation from the Bible or Shakespeare and did I quote correctly? The truth is I wish that all of you would not be so hard upon Gerry. I know you think it silly and impossible for a girl not yet eighteen to be really in love, but just the same Gerry is in love with Felipe. As she is in love with him and he has been a coward and is now a fugitive from his own country, I don't suppose Gerry is so happy that all of you need be disagreeable about her. Personally I am perfectly sure that if Gerry wishes Tante's sympathy and help again, Tante would be sure to do whatever she could to help her."
"Hats off to Sally!" Bettina Graham remarked and no one disputed the suggestion. "Still of course, Sally dear, it is impossible that any news could have been received from Gerry, since she and Felipe must remain out of the country until the war is over and the whole circumstance of Felipe is forgotten," Bettina continued. "But suppose when Tante returns we inquire why we are to wait over in Los Angeles a few days more? I presume she would not object to explaining. I believe no one asked her the direct question."
"Yes, but she would have volunteered to tell had she wished us to know," Alice Ashton argued.