Читать книгу The Corner House Girls Solve a Mystery. What It Was, Where It Was, and Who Found It онлайн

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“But you seemed so startled on beholding them,” went on the dressmaker, “that I should impend it might mean something.”

“Oh, nothing at all,” Ruth made haste to say, wanting to laugh, but not daring to when Miss Titus used “impend” so incorrectly. “I just thought I had seen them before, but perhaps I was mistaken.”

This was true enough. She was not absolutely sure that these were the same men she had seen entering the cellar. But she had a pretty clear conviction that they were, else why should they have made such haste to get away when they heard her voice? Agnes, of course, had not viewed the men—that is, Ruth thought she had not—so she could not be expected to remember them.

“Well, of all things—” began Ann Titus, and the girls thought they were going to be made the victims of her gossiping tongue when she unexpectedly swung the suspicions into another channel that suited Ruth and Agnes. For Miss Titus said: “Maybe they’re some of those men from Palm Island who were after turtles. They may have come here to sell turtles or their eggs.”