“Hannah,” I said sharply, “if you mean to insinuate——”
“Me?” Hannah replied in a hurt tone. “I don’t insinuate anything. If I was called tomorrow before a judge and jury I’d say that for all I know Miss Tish was reading the Banner all morning. But I’d pray they wouldn’t take a trip here and look in the upper right-hand sideboard drawer.”
She then went out and slammed the door.
Aggie and I make it a point of honor never to pry into Tish’s secrets, so we did not, of course, look into the drawer. However, a moment later I happened to upset my glass of water and naturally went to the sideboard drawer in question for a fresh napkin. And Tish’s revolver was lying underneath her best monogrammed tray cover.
“It’s there, Aggie,” I said. “Her revolver. She’s practicing again; and you know what that means—war.”
Aggie gave a low moan.
“I wish we’d let her get that aeroplane. She might have been satisfied, Lizzie,” she said in a shaken voice.
“She might have been dead too,” I replied witheringly.
And then Tish came back. She said nothing about the Andersons; but later on when the baby started to cry she observed rather bitterly that she didn’t see why people had to have a phonograph when they had that, and that personally she felt that whoever destroyed that phonograph should have a vote of thanks instead of—— She did not complete the sentence.
It was soon after that that we went to visit Charlie Sands, Tish’s nephew, at the camp where he was learning to be an officer. We called to see the colonel in command first, and Aggie gave him two extra blankets for Charlie Sands’ bed and a pair of knitted bedroom slippers. He was very nice to us and promised to see personally that they went to the proper bed.