“Remember the night you woke me up, Ned, and I thought you were a robber?” he asked.
“Yes, you nearly killed me. Bet you knew it was me all the time!”
There was no lack of conversation nowadays, and instead of avoiding each other they seemed hardly satisfied out of each other’s sight. West House saw and marvelled.
“They’re like the Siamese Twins,” commented Spud, “sort of stuck on each other, what?”
But if they hadn’t much to say about their quarrel or their renewal of friendship the mystery of the missing money was often discussed. Monday night they went to work systematically and ransacked the Den from end to end. But they found nothing; or, at least, nothing they were searching for. They did discover what Ned called “a disgraceful state of affairs.” In his lower bureau drawer, under a top covering of underwear, lay about a half-bushel of apples of which many were in the last stages of decay.
“Gee,” said Ned, “I’d forgotten all about them. Don’t they smell awful? I’ve thought for a week or so that this place smelled a good deal like a cider mill. Roll the waste basket over here, Cal, and I’ll throw out the rotten ones.”
“You’d better not do that, Ned. Marm’ll see them and wonder.”
“That’s so. What’ll we do with them?”
Cal smiled wickedly. “Don’t ask me. They aren’t my apples!”
“You’ve got a disposition just like that,” said Ned, holding up one far-gone apple. “I guess I’ll leave these until tomorrow and then lug them outside somewhere. Have one?”