Betty was far from concerned over Mr. Peabody"s wasted time, but she wondered uneasily what he could wish to ask her. Something connected with Bob, doubtless. She followed Mrs. Peabody downstairs and found the master of Bramble Farm striding up and down impatiently.
"Never saw the beat of women," he muttered. "Gabble, gabble, and an hour right out of a day"s work means nothing to "em. Oh, here you are, Miss. You know that gray alpaca coat of mine you took the letter from this morning?"
"The coat the letter fell out of?" corrected Betty, knowing that such quibbling was foolish On her part and might provoke serious irritation in her questioner, yet unable to refrain. "Of course I remember it; what about it?"
Peabody accepted her description of the coat. He was plainly excited and nervous, and betrayed a curious disposition to conciliate Betty, instantly detected in his change of tone.
"Did you pick up any other papers?" he asked quite politely. "Any folded sheets, I mean, or a long envelope? I thought you might have put them back of the clock or somewhere for safe keeping and forgotten to mention them to me."
Betty looked her astonishment. Automatically her eyes traveled to the clock which was pulled out of its place against the wall. So the man had actually looked there, believing that out of chagrin she might have concealed his papers from him!
"Nothing fell out of your pocket except my letter," she said earnestly and with a quietness that carried conviction. "I saw absolutely nothing else on the floor. If I had picked up other papers, I should have returned them to you, of course."
Mrs. Peabody cleared her throat, usually a sign of coming speech on the rare occasions when she did open her mouth in her husband"s presence.
"What you lost, Joseph?" she asked eagerly. "Something missing out o" your pocket?"
"Yes, something out of my pocket!" said her husband savagely. "You wouldn"t know if I told you, but it"s an unrecorded deed and worth a good deal of money. And I"ll bet I know who took it--that measly runaway, Bob Henderson! By gum, he carried the coat up to the house for me from the barn the day before he lit out. That"s where it"s gone. I see his game! He"ll try to get money out of me. But I won"t pay him a cent. No sir, I"ll go to Washington first and choke the deed out of his dirty pocket."
"Did Bob go to Washington?" quavered Mrs. Peabody, her mind seizing on this concrete fact, the one statement she could understand in her husband"s monologue. "How"d you find out, Joseph?"
"Not through Betty," returned Peabody grimly. "She"s willing to take the scoundrel"s part against honest folks any time. Jim Turner told me. Leastways he told me of some old duffer who runs a crazy shop down there, and he thinks Bob"s gone looking him up to find out about his parents. Just let him try blackmailing me, and he"ll learn a thing or two."
Betty had kept still as long as she could.
"Bob is no thief!" she said bravely. "You ought to be ashamed to say such a thing about him. I know he didn"t take your old deed. What earthly use would it be to him? Besides, Bob would never touch a thing that wasn"t his!"
"I don"t believe he would take anything, Joseph," urged Mrs. Peabody with perfectly amazing temerity. As a rule she took neither side in a controversy. "Besides, as the child says, what good would an unrecorded deed do him? Unless--Joseph, have you bought the Warren lots?"
"You tend to your housework, and I"ll manage my own affairs,"
snapped Peabody, turning a dull brick red, however. "I meant to put the thing in the safety deposit box over to the bank, and then that sick cow took my mind completely off it. If Betty didn"t take it, Bob did. It"s gone, and they"re the only two that could have put hands on it."
"I tell you that I haven"t seen the deed," said Betty firmly. "And I am equally certain that Bob never took it. He"s the soul of honor, whatever you may think, and he would no more take what wasn"t his than he would lie to you about it."
Peabody caught hold of her right hand suddenly.
"What you carrying?" he demanded suspiciously. "A trunk key? Looks mighty funny, doesn"t it, to be packing up with something pretty valuable missing? The law would likely give me the right to search your trunk."
"What a dreadful old man you are!" cried Betty, involuntarily, shrinking from the sinister face that grinned malevolently into hers.
"You have no right to touch my trunk."
"Well, no call to look like that," muttered Peabody, turning toward the door. "I knew that other young one took it, and I aim to make it hot for him."
"Bob didn"t take any deed!" stormed Betty to Mrs. Peabody, her packing forgotten for the moment. "Why does he keep insisting Bob stole it? And why, oh, why did that poorhouse man have to tell where Bob had gone?"
Mrs. Peabody"s natural curiosity had to be satisfied, and as it was no longer a secret Betty told her of Lockwood Hale and Bob"s determination to find out more about himself.
"He doesn"t want any deed," she finished scornfully. "Can"t you make Mr. Peabody see how foolish such an accusation is?"
Mrs. Peabody leaned against the kitchen table wearily.
"I know what he"s thinking," she said dully. "I know more than I want to know, Betty. Joseph has bought the Warren lots, and that means he"s got "em for his own price. Old man Warren is in his dotage and these lots have been surveyed and cut up into building plots on the stone road over t"other side of Laurel Grove where the trolley"s coming through this spring. Joseph will probably sell "em for three times what he"s paid for "em. That"s why he doesn"t have the deed recorded; Warren"s children will get hold of it, and I doubt if the sale would hold in court. Everybody knows the old father isn"t competent to handle his property. There was talk of having one of the sons made his guardian some months ago. Joseph has just talked him into selling. If he wasn"t my husband, I should say the sale was a plain swindle."
CHAPTER VIII
GOOD-BY TO BRAMBLE FARM
Betty was still mystified.
"What has Bob to do with it?" she urged. "I don"t see how the deed would be of any use to him; he couldn"t claim the lots."
"No, he couldn"t claim the lots," admitted Joseph Peabody"s wife.
"But he could hold the deed and threaten to notify George Warren, if Joseph didn"t pay him a good round sum of money. Mind you, I"m not saying he would do that, Betty, but he could. That"s what Joseph thinks he means to do."
"Well, I call that very silly," said Betty briskly. "Bob Henderson isn"t a thief or a blackmailer, whatever Mr. Peabody chooses to think. That deed is probably in another coat pocket this minute, or else he"s lost it over in Glenside."
"I expect that worries him some, too," confided Mrs. Peabody. "He would hate to have it known that he"s bought the Warren lots. But I guess it would have been better to have had the deed recorded than to run the risk of losing it and the whole town likely to pick it up on the street."
Before supper that night Betty had her trunk packed and her simple belongings gathered up. She knew that Peabody was fully aware of her intention to leave, but, as her board was paid for nearly a week in advance, he could make no possible objection. It was sheer perversity, she decided, that kept him from mentioning the subject to her.
"I"m going to-morrow, Mr. Peabody," she said pleasantly at the supper table, having waited till Ethan had gone to the barn to milk.
"What time would be most convenient to take my trunk over to Glenside or to Hagar"s Corners?"
"I"m not going to either place to-morrow," was the composed answer.
"Don"t know exactly when I shall be going over again, either. Ethan and me"s got our hands full right here with the late-season cultivating."
"But I have to get to the station," protested Betty. "I can walk, of course, but some one will have to take my trunk. You met me at the station when I came, or rather Bob did, you know. Why aren"t you willing to help me go now that the summer is nearly over?"
"You haven"t done me so many favors that I should put myself out for you," retorted Peabody sourly. "I don"t care how you get to the station, but none of my rigs go off this place to-morrow, that"s flat. And you haven"t got that thieving nimble-fingers to plot and plan with you now. You"ll have to manage by yourself."
"What are you going to do, Betty?" asked Mrs. Peabody anxiously, following the girl to the door after the meal was over. "You"re not going to walk to Glenside to-night to try to get a team to come after you?"
"No, I"m only going over to Kepplers," replied Betty capably. "I"m sure one of the boys will drive me over, if not to Glenside, to Hagar"s Corners, where I can get some kind of train for the Junction.
All the through trains stop at Hagar"s Corners, don"t they? I came that way. Perhaps that station is better than Glenside, after all."
The walk across the fields tranquillized her, and she was able to enlist the aid of the Keppler"s oldest boy without entering into too detailed an account of Mr. Peabody"s shortcomings. Indeed, the Kepplers, father and sons, having been the nearest neighbors to Bramble Farm for eleven years, had a very fair idea of what went on there.
"Sure, I"ll take you, and the trunk, too," promised Fred Keppler heartily. "Any time you say, Betty. There"s a good train for Pineville, not too many stops, at twelve-three. How about that?"
It was settled that he should come for her about half past ten, and Betty walked home filled with thoughts of the little home town to which she would be speeding on the morrow.
"If Uncle d.i.c.k knew the things I"ve had to endure, I"m sure he"d say that I haven"t lost my temper often, considering," she mused. "Is that something sticking out of the mail box? Why. it is, and a newspaper. I guess Mr. Peabody forgot to come down to the box to-day."
She opened the box and found the paper was addressed to her. The familiar wrapper and type told her it was the _Pineville Post_, to which she had subscribed when she left the town, and, tucking it under her arm, she went on to the house, intending to read an hour or so before going to bed.