Page:Mary Rinehart - More Tish .djvu/156

 148  It was after supper that we missed Tish. She was nowhere in the house, and the kitchen door, which had been bolted, was unlocked. Aggie wrung her hands, but Myrtle was quite calm.

"I shouldn't worry about her," she said. "She's about as well able to cake care of herself as any woman I ever saw."

It was now quite dark, and our fears increased. But soon afterwards Tish came in. She went to the stove and pouring out a cup of hot water, drank it in silence. Then she said:

"I've been to the Knowleses'. The dratted idiots are all away, probably to the schoolhouse, registering. The car's gone, and the house is closed."

"And the policeman?" I asked.

"I didn't see him," said Tish. But she did not look at me. She fell to pacing up and down the kitchen, deep in thought.

"What time is it, Lizzie?" she asked.

"Almost eight."

Here Tish gave what in another woman would have been a groan.

"It's raining," she observed, and fell to pacing again. At last she told me to follow her outside, and I went, feeling that she had at last made a decision. Her attitude throughout her period of cogitation had been not unlike that of Napoleon before Waterloo. There were the same bent head