“She aims to put me off this land.”
“Mr. Burmaster seems like a fairly reasonable man. I doubt he’d make any use of the deed even if his wife turned it over to him.”
“Maybe not,” Mrs. Lear agreed, “but Mrs. Burmaster ain’t likely to give it to her husband. She’ll find some other way to git at me. You see!”
Nothing Penny or Louise could say cheered the old lady.
“Don’t you worry none about me,” she told them. “I’ll brew a cup o’ tea and take some aspirin. Then maybe I kin think up a way to git that deed back. I ain’t through yet—not by a long shot!”
Long after Penny and Louise had gone back to bed the old lady remained in the kitchen. It was nearly three o’clock before they heard her tiptoe upstairs to her room. But at seven the next morning she was abroad as usual and had breakfast waiting for them.
“I’ve thought things through,” she told Penny as she poured coffee from a blackened pot. “It won’t do no good to go to Mrs. Burmaster and try to make her give up that deed. I’ll jes wait and see what she does fust.”
“And in the meantime, the deed may show up,” Penny replied. “Even though you think Mrs. Burmaster took it, there’s always a chance that it was only misplaced.”
“Foot tracks don’t lie,” the old lady retorted. “I was out lookin’ around early this morning. Them prints lead from my door straight toward the Burmasters!”
Deeply as were the girls interested in Mrs. Lear’s problem, they knew that they could be of no help to her. Already they had lingered in Red Valley far longer than their original plan. They shuddered to think what their parents would say if and when they returned to Riverview.