Page:Ballinger Price--Us and the Bottle Man.djvu/51

Rh one of the wavy patches of sunlight, and we read it again.

"Did you really think anybody'd find it?" Jerry asked suddenly, and I told him I had n't thought so.

"Neither did I," he said; "let alone such a jolly old soul. Why, he'd be better than Aunt on a picnic."

"I do wonder why he has to stay there," I said.

"Perhaps he's a fugitive from justice," Jerry suggested; "or perhaps he's a prisoner and the bearded person comes out with Spanish Inquisition things to make him confess his horrible crime."

"He sounds like a person who'd done a horrible crime, does n't he!" I said in scorn.

"Well, then," said Jerry, who really has the most inspired ideas for plots, "perhaps he's an innocent old man whose wicked 37