"The idea!" Mrs. Purnell exclaimed. "They'll be out all night. How could you have gone with them? I don't believe Gordon has been kidnaped at all. It's a false alarm, I tell you. Who could have done such a thing?"
"Who?" The question broke Dorothy's patience. "Who's done everything that's abominable and contemptible lately here in Crawling Water? That Moran did it, of course, with Senator Rexhill behind him. Oh!"
"Nonsense!" said her mother, indignantly.
"Lem Trowbridge thinks so. Nearly everybody does."
"Then he hasn't as good sense as I thought he had." Mrs. Purnell arose and moved toward the kitchen. "You come on and help me make some waffles for supper. Perhaps that will take such foolishness out of your head. The idea of a Senator of the United States going about kidnaping people."
Dorothy obeyed her mother's wish, but not very ably. Her face was flushed and her eyes hot; ordinarily she was a splendid housekeeper and a dutiful daughter, but there are limits to human endurance. She mixed the batter so clumsily and with such prodigal waste that her mother had to stop her, and she was about to put salt into the sugar bowl when Mrs. Purnell snatched it out of her hands. "Go into the dining-room and sit down, Dorothy," she exclaimed. "You're beside yourself." It is frequently the way with people, who are getting on in years and are sick, to charge their own shortcomings on any one who may be near. Mrs. Purnell was greatly worried.
"What's the matter now?" she demanded, when Dorothy left her supper untasted on her plate.
"I was thinking."
"Well, can't you tell a body what you're thinking about? What are you sitting there that way for?"
"I was wondering," said Dorothy in despair, "if Helen Rexhill knows where Gordon is."