_ CHAPTER XIV. COULD IT BE OLGA?
It was a beautiful evening, this of Stella Latham's birthday party. It was not often that the climate gave the people of Greensboro, this early in the season, such a soft and temperate night.
There was no moon, but the stars plentifully besprinkled the heavens, and their light bathed the area surrounding the Latham house, beyond the radiance of the Japanese lanterns, sufficiently for the three girls to see objects at some distance.
Before they reached the back door of the farmhouse, Amy cried aloud:
"Oh, girls! What's that? A ghost?"
"Ghost your granny!" exclaimed Stella. "That is somebody running along the hedge in a white skirt."
"It is a woman or a girl," Janice agreed, staring at the rapidly moving figure. "Is there a path there?"
"That is the path to one tenant house. Wait till I ask Anna, the cook."
She hurried to the back door, and her two friends, waiting at the pasture-lane bars, heard her ask if the woman who had broken the dish had gone.
"The awkward thing!" exclaimed Anna, the cook. "She's just this minute left."
"What is her name, Anna?" asked Stella, knowing that Janice was deeply interested.
"I don't know, Miss. Some outlandish Swedish name."
"Olga?"
"Humph! Maybe!"
"Olga Cedarstrom?"
"Goodness me! Don't ask me what else besides 'Olga' she is named," said the irritable cook, "for I couldn't tell you. I couldn't tell you my own name, scarcely, to-night. I'm that flurried."
Hearing all this plainly, Janice murmured to Amy: "I wish I dared follow her. Suppose it should be Olga?"
"Well, she is going right to that small house that belongs to Mr. Latham. Stella says she lives there, whoever she is."
Just then a figure popped up beside them. Gummy's cheerful voice demanded:
"What's the trouble, girls?"
"Oh!" cried Janice.
"Goodness!" said the boy's sister. "How you scare one, Gummy! Why, it isn't near time to go home."
"I got off earlier than I expected. So I came out and have been hanging around at the back here for half an hour."
"Oh. Gummy! did you see that woman?" Janice asked, seizing his jacket sleeve.
"What woman?"
"See there?' cried his sister, pointing. "That white thing going over the hill."
"Yes, I saw her. She came out of the kitchen, and she was crying. They had a row in there."
"Oh, Gummy! What did she look like?" murmured Janice.
"Yes, Gummy, tell us quick!" urged his sister.
"I tell you she was crying, and she had her handkerchief up to her face. So I did not see much of it. But her hair was 'lasses color, and she had it bobbed back so tight that I guess she couldn't shut her eyes until she undid it," chuckled Gummy.
"Oh, Amy!" ejaculated Janice, with clasped hands, "that is the way Olga used to do her hair."
"Not Olga, the Swede, who robbed you?" demanded the boy, interested at once.
"Yes. It might be Olga. If you had only seen her face--"
"I'll see her face all right," declared Gummy, starting off. "I'll tell you just where she goes and what she looks like. Don't you girls go home without me."
He was gone on the track of the flying woman like a dart. He was out of sight, being in dark garments, before Stella came back from the kitchen door.
"Don't tell her about Gummy," whispered Amy quickly. "She'll think, maybe, that he's been hanging around like those strange boys over the fence in front."
"Not a word," agreed Janice, smiling. "I wouldn't give Gummy away."
"There isn't anybody in the kitchen who knows that girl very well," said Stella, who was really showing herself interested in Janice Day's trouble. "I asked them all. This girl, Olga, is staying with Mrs. Johnson. Mrs. Johnson has a little baby to care for and couldn't come to-night. So this friend of hers came up to help. And she helped all right!" concluded Stella, with emphasis. "That dish is in a thousand pieces."
"Isn't it too bad?" said Amy, sympathetically.
"It's a mean shame," Stella declared. "I bet she'd steal. You'd better come over here tomorrow and find her. I'll bring you back in the auto with me after I go shopping, and we'll ride around by Mr. Johnson's house. He's one of father's farmers, you know."
"I'll tell daddy," Janice said, but in some doubt. "I'm awfully much obliged to you, Stella. You are real kind."
This pleased Stella Latham. She liked being praised, and as long as kindness did not cost her much of anything, she was glad to be kind.
The entertainment of her boy and girl friends continued gaily, despite the breaking of the big cutglass dish. It was almost eleven o'clock when the party broke up and the guests began to leave, shouting their congratulations to Stella as they went.
Janice and Amy Carringford found Gummy waiting for them at the front gate.
"Oh, Gummy!" whispered Janice, "did you see her?"
"Sure," declared the boy. "That's what I went after, wasn't it? A sight of the Swedish girl's phisamahogany?"
"Gummy!" remonstrated his sister.
"But was it Olga?" demanded Janice, too deeply interested in the subject of Olga to be patient with sisterly reproof.
"Oh, say! How can I be sure of that? I never saw her before."
"Tell us all about it, Gummy," urged Janice.
"Why, you see," said the excited boy. "I ran's hard as I could and I overbrook that girl at the took"
"What? What?" gasped Janice. "Say that again, Gummy."
"Oh--I--"
His sister went off into a gale of laughter. "Oh, Gummy!" she cried, "you 'overbrook' her at the 'took,' did you? Your tongue's twisted again."
"Oh, pshaw!" exclaimed Gummy. "Of course, I mean I overtook her at the brook."
"That's better," giggled Amy. "But you did get awfully 'gummed up,' Gummy, didn't you?"
"Huh!" he snorted.
"He's the most awful boy you ever saw, Janice. He is always getting twisted in his talk."
"Like the young man in church who asked the girl if he could 'occupew a seat in this pie?'"
"Even worse than that," cried Amy, much to her brother's disgust. "Why, years ago when we lived in Napsburg, where the twins were born, he made an awful mistake--and to our minister, too."
"Aw," objected Gummy, "can't you keep anything to yourself?"
"Go on," urged Janice.
"Now, I say!" again protested the boy.
"Listen, Janice!" giggled Amy. "It's awfully funny. The minister met Gummy on the street and asked him what we had decided to call the twins.
"'You know, I expect to christen them, Gumswith,' he said to Gummy, 'and I want to be sure to get the names right. What are they?'
"And what do you suppose Gummy said?"
"I am sure I couldn't guess," Janice declared. "Let's see: the twins are Sydney and Kate, aren't they?
"That is right," giggled Amy. "But Gummy told the minister we had decided to call them 'Kidney and Steak'!"
Janice herself was convulsed with laughter at this. Gummy was annoyed about it.
"Why don't you keep something to yourself once in a while, Amy?" he growled to his sister. "Janice will think I'm a perfect chump."
"Come on now, Gummy," Janice interrupted cheerily. "You are keeping something to yourself that I very much want to know."
"Oh! About that Swede! Amy knocked it clear out of my head," declared the boy.
"Well, let us hear about it," urged Janice.
"Why, I overtook the girl at the brook," said Gummy, getting the statement right this time. "She might be just the girl you are looking for, from what you told me about her looks. I saw her face plainly when I passed her."
"Where did she go?"
"To that little house at the end of the farm road, just where it opens into the turnpike. Oh, I've seen the place before. I drove out past there the other day for Mr. Harriman."
"That must be the Johnson's house," Janice said. "That is what Stella said the tenant's name was."
"Well, she went in there," said Gummy. "She seemed in a dreadful hurry. She pounded on the door, and she called to them in Swedish. I waited behind the hedge until she got in and the family was quieted down again."
"That's good! It's 'most sure to be Olga, Janice, and you can see her to-morrow and get your box back--at least, find out where it is," said Amy encouragingly.
"Well, I'll tell daddy," sighed Janice. "It may be the same Olga. I hope so. And if she has got my box of treasures--well! I'll forgive her anything if I only get back mother's picture and daddy's letters." _