"She'll be up at the house, most likely, if she isn't at the kennels," announced Jerry. "There's visitors and Lola will be on deck to see 'em. She's a vain little lady and likes to be shown off."
Walter greeted the remark with a sickly grin.
"What have you been doing?" inquired he idly.
"Me? Why, I was just starting to fix that hasp on the gate to the chicken coop when Minnie came running down from the house to say somebody wanted to speak to me on the telephone. It was a long-distance call and kept me there most half an hour; and what it was all about I don't know now. Some feller I never heard of kept talking and talking, and I couldn't make head nor tail out of anything he said. Finally I told him so and hung up the receiver. I can't imagine who he was. Nobody ever telephones me."
"So you didn't get the hasp fixed on the hen yard."
"I would have hadn't the cook held me up just as I was leaving and wanted I should put a new washer on the kitchen faucet. I saw it needed it the worst way. In fact, I had planned to do it before the folks came and it had slipped my mind. So I tinkered with that and got nothing else done. I'm just after mending a hinge on the boathouse door. A profitless afternoon, I call it."
"So you haven't been back to your diggings since noon."
"Not a once. Why? Did you want me?"
"N—o. Oh, no."
"That's lucky. Apparently everybody else did," concluded Jerry grimly.