Hutchins rudely started the car before he had finished;
but he ignored her and waved a cordial farewell to
the rest of us.
“Bring as many as you like,” he called.
“Sunday is a good day. Ask Miss—Miss
Hutchins to come out and bring some friends along.”
We drove back at the most furious rate. Tish
was at last compelled to remonstrate with Hutchins.
“Not only are we going too fast,” she
said, “but you were really rude to that nice
young man.”
“I wish I had turned the hose on him and drowned
him!” said Hutchins between her teeth.
Hutchins brought a newspaper to Tish the next morning
at breakfast, and Tish afterwards said her expression
was positively malevolent in such a young and pretty
woman.
The newspaper said that an attempt had been made to
rob the Newcomb place the night before, but that the
thieves had apparently secured nothing but a package
of oatmeal and a tin sprinkling-can, which they had
abandoned on the lawn. Some color, however, was
lent to the fear that they had secured an amount of
money, from the fact that a silver half-dollar had
been found on the window sill of a tool-house.
The Newcomb family was at its summer home on the Maine
coast.
“You see,” Hutchins said to Tish, “that
man didn’t belong there at all. He was
just impertinent and—laughing in his sleeve.”
Tish was really awfully put out, having planned to
take the Sunday school there for a picnic. She
was much pleased, however, at Hutchins’s astuteness.
“I shall take her along to Canada,” she
said to me. “The girl has instinct, which
is better than reason. Her subconsciousness is
unusually active.”
Looking back, as I must, and knowing now all that
was in her small head while she whistled about the
car, or all that was behind her smile, one wonders
if women really should have the vote. So many
of them are creatures of sex and guile. A word
from her would have cleared up so much, and she never
spoke it!
Well, we spent most of July in getting ready to go.
Charlie Sands said the mosquitoes and black flies
would be gone by August, and we were in no hurry.
We bought a good tent, with a diagram of how to put
it up, some folding camp-beds, and a stove. The
day we bought the tent we had rather a shock, for
as we left the shop the suburban youth passed us.
We ignored him completely, but he lifted his hat.
Hutchins, who was waiting in Tish’s car, saw
him, too, and went quite white with fury.
Shortly after that, Hannah came in one night and said
that a man was watching Tish’s windows.
We thought it was imagination, and Tish gave her a
dose of sulphur and molasses—her liver being
sluggish.
“Probably an Indian, I dare say,” was
Tish’s caustic comment.
In view of later developments, however, it is a pity
we did not investigate Hannah’s story; for Aggie,
going home from Tish’s late one night in Tish’s
car, had a similar experience, declaring that a small
machine had followed them, driven by a heavy-set man
with a mustache. She said, too, that Hutchins,
swerving sharply, had struck the smaller machine a
glancing blow and almost upset it.
