THE two girls walked home in a state bordering on stupefaction. Every little while Phyllis would stop to ejaculate: “Who would have thought it! The horrid little snob! I really can’t believe yet that it is she, Leslie—our ‘mysterious she!’ I’m sure there must be some mistake.”

“Well, of course, it may not be so,” Leslie admitted, “but you must see how many things point to it. The beads are identical. I stood so near her that I had a fine chance to see them closely. Her name is the same as the one on the envelop in the book—”

“Yes, but that isn’t the name of the man who hired the bungalow,” objected Phyllis.

“That’s quite true, but even so, you can’t tell what connection there may be with the other name. It isn’t exactly a common one, and that makes it all the more likely that we may be right. And then, there’s the fact of her being so near here—right in the village. I have always imagined that whoever it was had to come from quite a distance, and I’ve always wondered how she managed it, so late at night.”

“But Leslie, why on earth should she come to that bungalow in the dead of night, in a storm, and hide that ‘Dragon’s Secret’? What mysterious affair can she be mixed up with, anyway?”

Leslie, however, had no solution to offer to this poser, but she did have a sudden idea that made her stop short in the road and gasp:

“Do you realize, Phyllis Kelvin, that we are doing a very questionable—yes, a wrong thing in keeping the ‘Dragon’s Secret,’ when it evidently belongs to this girl?”

“How do you know it belongs to this girl?” countered Phyllis. “You only guess that it may, when all’s said and done. You didn’t see her hide it there—you didn’t even see her at the bungalow. We may be way off the track, for all you know, and we’d be a pretty pair of geese to go and meekly hand it to her, shouldn’t we! And do you know, even if I was simply positive it was hers, I just wouldn’t give it to her, anyway, for a while. I’d let her stew and fret for it for a good long spell—after such hatefulness!”

Phyllis’s manner was so vindictive that Leslie had to smile in spite of herself.

“But oh, see here!” Phyllis went on. “I have an idea—a glorious idea! It may help to clear up a lot of things. I know Aunt Sally Blake very well, and we’ll go and see her—this very afternoon! Perhaps she can give us more light on the subject.”

“But wouldn’t that seem too plainly like tracking down this—Miss Ramsay?” objected Leslie, “especially as she doesn’t appear to care for our acquaintance!”

“Not a bit!” declared Phyllis, positively. “You don’t realize how well I know Aunt Sally. Why, she’s a regular village institution—everybody knows her and thinks the world of her. She’s a plump, jolly, delightful old lady who lives in a delightful old house full of dear, old-fashioned furniture. She keeps a lot of chickens and often sells them and the fresh eggs, and she does a little sewing, and sometimes takes a boarder or two, and goes out nursing occasionally—and oh, I don’t know what all! But I know that we couldn’t get along at all around here without Aunt Sally. We’ll go down to her house this afternoon and call (I really haven’t been to see her since I came down this time), and I’ll ask her if she has a nice roasting chicken that I can have. That’ll be a perfectly good excuse. And if our polite young lady isn’t around, I’ll try and get her to talk. Aunt Sally loves to talk, but she isn’t a gossip like old Mrs. Selby, and we’ll have to go at it a little more carefully.”

They solaced themselves with this thought, and awaited with more than a little impatience the visit that afternoon. Surely Aunt Sally, if any one, would be able to solve some of their mysteries!

By afternoon, the weather had turned warm, almost sultry, and they found Aunt Sally sitting on her front porch, rocking gently and humming to herself over her sewing. She was delighted to see Phyllis again and to make the acquaintance of Leslie, whom Phyllis introduced as her neighbor and very dear friend. When they had chatted about topics of common interest for a while, Phyllis introduced the subject of the chicken.

“Bless your heart, dear!” cried Aunt Sally. “I’m so sorry, but I haven’t a roasting chicken just now in the whole yard—nothing but fowls. But I can give you a couple of nice young broilers—and I’ve plenty of fresh eggs.”

Phyllis straightway arranged to have two broilers ready for her when she called for them next day, and skilfully changed the subject.

“Oh, Aunt Sally! do show Leslie those begonias you’ve been raising all summer. I do think they are the most beautiful things! You certainly are very successful at making things grow!”

Highly flattered, Aunt Sally rose to lead the girls indoors to the sunny room where she kept her plants. While they were admiring them, she asked them to sit down and rest a while and talk—an invitation they accepted with great alacrity. At length, after a detailed account of the health and affairs of her entire family, Phyllis craftily led the conversation back to Aunt Sally herself.

“And are you alone now, Aunt Sally, or is your sister still with you? I heard she was going back to Ohio.”

“Yes, she’s gone and I’m alone,” sighed Aunt Sally; “at least,—I’m not quite alone. I have a boarder at present.”

“Oh, have you!” exclaimed Phyllis, guilefully, as if it were all news to her. “Why, that’s very nice. I hope the boarder will stay a long while. It will be some company for you.”

“Well, I dunno how long she’ll stay, and she ain’t much company for me, I must confess!” admitted Aunt Sally, with a somewhat worried air. “The truth is, I can’t exactly make her out.”

This was precisely the line that Phyllis wished her to take, yet even now caution must be observed or Aunt Sally might shy away from it.

“Oh, it’s a lady then!” remarked the artful Phyllis.

“Well, no, it ain’t exactly a lady—it’s a young girl ’bout the age of you two, I should guess.”

“Still, I don’t see why she shouldn’t be company for you, even so,” argued Phyllis, quite as if she were still completely in the dark as to this new boarder.

“The reason she ain’t much company,” went on Aunt Sally, “is because—well, I don’t know as I ought to say it, but I guess she thinks she’s too sort of—high-toned to ’sociate with the person who keeps her boarding-house!” Aunt Sally laughed, an amused, throaty little chuckle at this, and then the worried frown came back.

“Why, she must be rather horrid, I think,” commented Phyllis, with more heartfelt reason than Aunt Sally could guess!

“No, I don’t think she means to be horrid—she’s just been brought up that way, I guess. I wish she could be more friendly. I sort of feel a responsibility about her. You see, she’s here all alone. She was staying at the hotel with her grandfather, and he suddenly took awful sick and had to be taken to the hospital up at Branchville. She stayed on at the hotel so’s to be near him (she runs up there every day in her car), and then the hotel had to close down for the season. The manager come to me and asked me if I could take her in, ’cause he was kind of sorry for her, her grandfather bein’ so ill, an’ she couldn’t seem to find no other place. So I did, but she worries me a lot, somehow. I don’t like to see a young girl like that with no one to look after her, and she running around loose in that auto all the time. Why, she even took it out one rainy night last week at ten o’clock. Said she was worried about her grandfather, but I didn’t approve of her running all the way up there to Branchville in the rain.”

Here Phyllis glanced significantly at Leslie and interjected a question. “Did she and her grandfather have one of the bungalows on the beach this summer, do you know, Aunt Sally?”

“Why, not that I know of. She said she’d been visiting some friends somewhere in Maine, and then come on here to join her grandfather just a few days before he was taken sick. I don’t think it likely she ever stayed in one of the bungalows. She didn’t seem to know anything about this region at first. And I’d likely have heard of it if she had. But, laws! I got biscuits in the oven and I’m clean forgetting them!” And with a whisk of skirts, Aunt Sally vanished for a moment into the kitchen.

“What did I tell you!” whispered Leslie. “Went out in the rain one night last week about ten o’clock! I warrant she didn’t go to the hospital, or, if she did, it was after she’d visited Curlew’s Nest!”

But Aunt Sally was back almost immediately, bearing some hot biscuits and jam which she hospitably invited her guests to try. And while they were partaking of this refreshment she sighed:

“My, how I have been gossiping about that poor girl! I sort of feel conscience-stricken, for I could like her real well if she’d only let me. She’s a sort of lovable-looking child! I wish she knew you two girls. I believe it would do her a lot of good to be around with you. There she is now!”—she cried, as a car flashed past the window and up the driveway toward the barn. “Just wait till she comes in and I’ll introduce you—”

“No, no!” exclaimed Phyllis, hastily springing up. “Better not, Aunt Sally. If she doesn’t care for you, I’m sure she wouldn’t for us. Besides, we must go right away. Remember, we’re both the cooks in our families, and even as it is, we won’t be back very early. It’s a long walk. Good-by, and thank you, and I’ll send for the broilers to-morrow!” And with Leslie in tow, she hurried away, leaving a somewhat bewildered Aunt Sally gazing after them.

“Well, I guess not! The idea of trying to get acquainted a second time with that difficult young person!” Phyllis exploded, when they were out of ear-shot.

“And yet,” mused Leslie as they swung along, “unpleasant as the thought of it is, I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea—to get acquainted?”