“Tell you what!” exclaimed Tillie at last. “I’ve got an idea!”
Tillie was given to having ideas. Some of them were quite wild, for Tillie was more than half wild herself.
“Let’s steal her trunk!” she cried, clapping her hands.
“That,” said Florence in some disgust, “seems a dumb idea.”
“Not so dumb as you think. Listen. Day before yesterday I brought the lady cop a small bag of balsam tips; you know, the green end of twigs that smell so swell.”
“Yes?”
“She took one sniff of them, then threw up her hands and said, ‘I’d like a trunk full, a whole trunk full to take home to my friends, for making pillows.’
“We’ll steal her trunk and hide it in the woods. We’ll fill it with balsam tips. Turkey Trot and I will bring it back. She’ll drop dead when she sees it. She’ll never know it’s been gone until she sees the balsam tips. Come on. Give me a hand. She’ll be back pretty soon. We’ll just hide it in the brush until we go home. Then we’ll carry it over to your point.”
Florence, though not fully convinced of the wisdom of such high-handed proceedings, was quite carried away by Tillie’s bubbling enthusiasm. In less time than it takes to tell it, the trunk was up from the dark hole and away to the brush, the planks down again, the canvas spread smoothly in place.
They were not a moment too soon. Shaking the rain from her coat, the lady cop came breezing in.