Page:Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil.djvu/146

136 soon as Betty appeared. "I couldn't be quite sure, in spite of the name and the coincidences, but now I know it. Do you think I look like them, Betty?"

"You look an awful lot like Miss Hope," said Betty. "You look like Miss Charity, too, but not nearly as much. Miss Hope has blue eyes, you see. You haven't seen Miss Charity yet, but her eyes are black. I'm sure they are your aunts, Bob."

"Well, if they ever needed a husky nephew they need him now," declared Bob whimsically. "I don't know how long they've been sick, but this place looks as though no one had cleaned it up in a year. The animals need currying, too."

"They haven't been able to hire any help, I suppose," said Betty. "And I don't believe you can get a hired man around here. The men are all working in the oil fields. Ki is mad at the oil investors, and that's the only reason Will Watterby can keep him."

"Are they both asleep?" asked Bob, whose mind skipped topics with amazing rapidity. "All right then, let's go out to the barn. Something tells me if you look around you'll get a basket of eggs."

They had great fun doing the work together, and both agreed that if they never thanked the Peabodys for another thing, they could say