“Excuse me,” began Roy, leaning over the gate and taking off his broad brimmed straw hat, “do you know a boy named Rex Pell?”
He had decided that this would be the shortest way of getting at things.
The woman looked up quickly, resting her chin on the top of her broom handle.
“Do you think I look as if I knew much about boys?” she replied. “Well, I don’t and I don’t want to.”
“Excuse me,” said Roy, and he hurried on, glad to get away.
The next house was a larger one. There was a good deal of piazza around it and some pretensions were made at keeping the lawn in good condition.
Roy’s knock at the door was answered so promptly that he was fain to believe that some one must have been peeping through the shutters watching his approach.
A tall woman with light hair received him very effusively.
“I’ve been expecting you,” she said, with an expansive smile. “I thought you’d come on that train.”
“This must be the place,” thought Roy. “She knows Rex sent the dispatch and thought some of us would come on.”