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"Do you suppose she could have got tired of staying here all day by herself, and tried to find us in the pasture and lost her way?" The suggestion struck a little chill through the listeners. The locked house, the setting sun, the mystery of Aunt Abigail's disappearance had all combined to dissipate their previous cheerfulness.
Here's Betsy saying she don't know what we make butter out of! She actually never saw anybody making butter!" Uncle Henry was sitting down, near the window, turning the handle to a small barrel swung between two uprights. He stopped for a moment and considered Aunt Abigail's remark with the same serious attention he had given to Elizabeth Ann's discovery about left and right.
Miss Abigail's gesture indicated that the thing was unthinkable. "What's the matter with young folks nowadays, anyhow? They always used to run there and chatter till you couldn't hear yourself think." Miss Molly lowered her voice like a person coming to the frightening climax of a ghost story. "Miss Abigail, they ain't any young folks here any more!"
When the storm had subsided, and the Queen poured into her friendly ear confidential complaints of the absent Duchess, Abigail's sympathy, acquiescence, and responsive condolences, were ever ready, and effected their purpose.
Possibly it was only Abigail's added misfortune to have disappeared upon the eve of the night of Reginald's murder. But later in the day when word came from a nearby town that Reginald had been seen in a strange touring car with two unknown men and a girl, the gossips commenced to wag their heads.
But whisper, whisper, buzz, buzz, went the gossip, until finally it reached the pink little ears at the side of Miss Abigail's generously proportioned head. The pink ears turned crimson, likewise the adjoining cheeks, and Miss Abigail panted with righteous indignation. "It all comes of this plagued old winter-time," she declared, sharply biting her thread, for she was mending a table-cloth.
Snooks," Amy though puzzled was not really anxious, as she was only too familiar with Aunt Abigail's eccentric possibilities. "We'll knock as hard as we can," she suggested. "Maybe she lay down to take a nap and overslept." A vigorous tattoo began forthwith on the back door, to be reinforced presently by the ringing of the front door bell.
"Seems ter me I'd have the decency ter show some shame!" grimly avowed Sarah Jane. Abe could not help it. He sputtered. Even Miss Abigail's, "Yew were a stranger an' we took yew in" did not sober him. "Ef any one o' my husbands had acted the way you've acted, Abe Rose," began Mrs. Homan. "Poor leetle Angy," broke in the gentle Miss Ellie pityingly. "She must 'a' lost six pounds."
Then I made myself a cup of tea, and after luncheon I thought I would take a nap. The screened doors were shut and hasped, but the windows were all open. Any one could have entered without difficulty." Even on the memorable evening when she had entertained her listeners with ghost stories, Aunt Abigail's tones had not been more blood-curdling. The girls listened with open mouths.
She had never met it before outside the pages of her arithmetic book and she didn't know it lived anywhere else. After the salt was worked in she watched Aunt Abigail's deft, wrinkled old hands make pats and rolls.
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