Page:Mary Rinehart - More Tish .djvu/188

 180  It was after that incident, when we had taken the doctor home and put him to bed, that I demanded an explanation.

But she only said with a far-away look in her eyes: "It may be a useful accomplishment some time. If one were going after wounded at night it would be invaluable."

"Not if you killed all the doctors on the way!" I snapped.

The limit to our patience came soon after that. One morning about the first of August the boat man from the lake came up the path with a spade over his shoulder. Tish, we perceived, tried to take him aside, but he gave her no time.

"Well, I've done it, Miss Tish," he said, "and God only knows what'll happen if somebody runs into it between now and tomorrow morning."

"Nobody will know you did it unless you continue to shout the way you are doing now."

"Oh, I'll not tell," he observed; "I'm not so proud of it. But 'twouldn't surprise me a mite if we both did some time together in the county jail, on the head of it, Miss Tish."

Well, Aggie went pale, but Tish merely gave him five dollars and spent the rest of the day shut in the garage with her car. I went back and looked in the window during the afternoon, and