"Oh, we have had such a dreadful time," she sobbed. "I cannot see how you could have gone and left us in this lonely place all this while."
Bess instantly had her arms around the trembling little woman. Mrs.
Robinson had always been "babied" by the girls, and that she was very nervous her whole family knew too well.
"Mother dear," began Bess, "we did not think it too late. You said we might stay until--after nine----"
"But, daughter! How did I know we were to be frightened to death by--burglars!"
"Burglars!" chorused the boys.
"Yes," put in Miss Steel, "we distinctly heard them in the dining room, and when I had the courage to attempt to go in they--blew out the lamp!"
"Mercy!" exclaimed Belle, recoiling from the window she had been leaning against.
"It might have been--a draft of wind," suggested Walter.
"But a draft could not knock over a chair," Miss Steel told him, somewhat indignantly. "We would have gone over to the hotel if we could have left any word for you, but, you see, we could not go inside, even to write a note."
A thought flashed through Cora"s mind. The mention of "note" had inspired it. She drew Bess and Belle aside.
"I wouldn"t wonder if these runaway girls came back," she whispered.
"We must go inside and see if they--left a note."
"Go inside!" repeated Belle. "I guess not."
"Come on, boys! Let"s investigate," said Walter to the others, opening the hall door and striking a match as he did so. He lighted the hanging lamp in the little hall, while the women, with Bess and Belle, actually left the porch and went out on the sidewalk to be at a safe distance.
Cora followed the boys.
"Who"s here?" asked Jack as he entered the dining room.
"Light up!" commanded Ed. "We might step on somebody"s fingers."
The dining-room light was soon burning. Yes, a chair had been overturned, and another!
"The flower vase is broken!" exclaimed Cora, seeing the wreck in the centre of the table.
"And I gathered those posies!" said Ed. "Just my luck!"
"Come right along, gentlemen," invited Walter to the invisible intruders. "Come along! This way to the refrigerator!"
"Be careful, Walter," cautioned Cora, for although she had undertaken to follow the boys she had not counted on seeing things thus upset.
"There are candles in the pantry," suggested Ed. "I know, because I put them there, after I found the oil can in the cellar."
Jack and Walter each lighted a candle. They then undertook a systematic search. Closets, cupboards, corners and stairways were ransacked, every door was opened and closed, to make sure no one swung on the hinges. Then the searching party went upstairs.
The same thoroughness was observed on the second floor, but no hint of whom the intruders might be was brought to light. It took some time to go over all the smaller rooms, and, when every nook had been finally explored, Cora sat down for a moment on the hall seat.
"Listen!" she whispered.
A sound from the dining room had caught her attention.
"It"s the girls," said Walter, as he, too, heard something downstairs.
"They would never come in until we a.s.sured them everything was all right," objected Cora.
"Let"s go down," said Ed, at the same moment, almost falling over the bannister in his haste to get down quickly.
"There they go!" called Walter, who was just back of Jack, and, as he said this, a figure darted out the rear door, and made away, before the boys could get out of the house to follow.
"This way!" shouted Jack to Ed, as they finally did reach the open yard. "I saw them go over that fence."
A light from the street at the rear of the cottage was now to be seen.
"An auto!" yelled Ed. "They are ready to start! Quick, Walter! Head them off at the corner!"
But the first buzz of the strange machine was of that determined quality that usually indicates great power, capable of spurting some rods away with one great, grand whizz! The car was out of sight, and out of sound, while Walter was struggling with the stickers of a barbed wire fence. A dark stretch of road, that at once united and separated two summer resorts, made the flight of the intruders" car too simple to speculate upon.
"If our garage was not so far away," complained Walter, returning from the fence with bleeding fingers, "we"d have a race."
"Hanged funny, isn"t it?" commented Ed.
"As if that--person--we saw get away was a robber! Why, that was a girl--she crawled under the fence!" declared Walter.
"She may have left me a bunch of violets," remarked Jack with a sigh, as they all three went back to the cottage, where, at the steps, Cora was waiting. "Say, sis," her brother went on, "let"s go in and look over things now. I have an idea that our visitor came to wash up more dishes!"
"And I also have an idea that the visitor--had been here before,"
replied Cora. "They--he--she, or it--knew how to open that funny catch on the screen door!"
Re-entering the house the boys made all sorts of fun of each other, for each and all of them allowing the "burglar" to escape.
"But, joking aside," said Cora, "I know I heard the noise in the dining room, and I"m going to look there first."
"For my violets," whimpered Jack, with a sniffle.
"June violets!" mocked Cora.
"Well--daisies then. I saw daisies as we came out, and I"d just as soon have daisies."
Ed and Jack held their candles high above their heads as they tiptoed into the dining room.
A bit of paper fluttered from the hanging lamp!
"More directions on "How to Use This Cottage!"" roared Jack. "There, didn"t I tell you! This is the second note left this way. Must have come by a homing-pigeon. Well, I"d just as soon have a dove as a bouquet of violets."