"You say you haven't? Well, everybody else has, here in town, I'll bet a horse. Tobe, she hain't heard. You tell her. He can do it to the queen's taste." Mrs. Keith laughed in a chuckling way.
"You can't fool me with that prim look of yours, Miss Mary," the wounded man said, smiling wanly from his pillow, as Mary bent over him. "You know all about it. I'm not such a fool as to think that two big things would just happen together like you being here yesterday and that other piling in so quick afterwards."
"What do you mean by 'that other'?" Mary asked, in groping surprise.
"Listen, Ma, listen at her!" Tobe laughed. "You know women better 'n I do. Ain't she just making out?"
"She looks to me like she's really puzzled," Mrs. Keith answered. "The truth is, Miss Mary, the money for the Atlanta trip was sent last night, an' we don't know who it come from; but Tobe declares you are at the bottom of it."
"I believe it, and nothing won't shake me from it," Tobe insisted, still smiling confidently.
"You say—you say that you got the money!" Mary fairly gasped in surprise.
"Not only that, but a cool hundred over the amount," Tobe went on. "You'd as well get off your high perch, Miss Mary Rowland. You see, I've got evidence."
"Evidence! I don't understand." Mary was truly bewildered.
"Yes. I had no sooner mentioned it to Mrs. Bartlett this morning than she told about how you was riding from place to place to borrow the money. I can put two and two together easy enough. You simply got the money and are trying to keep from being known in it, that's all."