followed to the bank, Mr. Spaythe in his automobile with the load of boxes and Ritchie running along beside the car jawing him like a crazy woman. She called him a thief and a robber at ev’ry step, but he paid no attention. Eric Spaythe had just closed the bank when we got there, but he helped his father carry in the truck, and Mrs. Ritchie watched every box that went in and yelled: ‘That ain’t it! That ain’t it!’ while the crowd laughed an’ hooted. Then Mr. Spaythe tried to explain and quiet her, but she wouldn’t listen to reason. So Eric and his father both went into the bank and locked the woman out when she wanted to follow them. It was lots of fun, about that time. I thought she’d smash in the glass with her umbrella; but while she was screaming an’ threatening the Spaythes, Lawyer Kellogg happened to come along and he drew her aside. He whispered to her a minute an’ then they both got into her buggy an’ drove away. That broke up the circus, but ev’ryone says there’ll be something doing before this thing is settled, unless that lost box turns up.”
The information conveyed was not entirely lucid, but sufficiently so to disturb the whole Daring family. They were not at all interested in Mrs. Ritchie, but the Fergusons were such old and close friends that there was a general impression that the lost box might cost them all the judge had left and practically ruin them.
“We know,” said Phoebe, in talking it over later, “that the judge was honest. Mrs. Ritchie knew that, too, or she wouldn’t have put her valuables in his keeping.”
“But it seems very unbusinesslike, on his part, to keep her valuables in an old wooden cupboard,” declared Judith. “Judge Ferguson was quite old-fashioned about such matters and evidently had no fear of either fires or burglars.”
“They never bothered him, neither,” Don reminded her. “That old cupboard’s been stuffed full of valuable papers and tin boxes for years, an’ not a soul ever touched ’em.”
“Oak doors, strong boxes and good locks,” said Phoebe; “that accounts for their past safety. Those cupboard doors are as strong as a good many safes, and as far as burglars are concerned, they manage to break in anywhere if they get the chance. I don’t believe anyone but a professional burglar could steal Mrs. Ritchie’s box, and no burglar would take hers and leave all the others. Still, if it wasn’t stolen, where is it? That’s the question.”
“It’s more than a question, Phoebe,” replied Don; “it’s a mystery.”
CHAPTER IV
HOW PHOEBE BECAME WORRIED
Reflecting on the astonishing information Don had conveyed, Phoebe went to her room and sat down at a small table near the window to which was fastened a telegraph instrument, the wire leading outside through a hole bored in the lower part of the sash.
A telegraph instrument is indeed a queer thing to be found in a young girl’s room, yet its existence is simple enough when explained. Riverdale was an out-of-the-way town, quite as unenterprising as many Southern towns of its class. Its inhabitants followed slowly and reluctantly in the wake of progress. They had used electric lights since only the year before, getting the current from Canton, ten miles away, where there was more enterprise and consequently more business. Canton also supplied telephone service to Bayport and Riverdale, but the cost of construction and installation was considered so high that as yet Riverdale had but three connections: one at the post office, a public toll station; one at Spaythe’s bank and one at the newspaper office. The citizens thought these three provided for all needs and so they did not encourage the Canton telephone company to establish a local exchange for the residences of their village.
Some were annoyed by this lack of public interest in so convenient a utility as the telephone. The Randolphs would have liked one in their house, and so would the Darings, the Camerons, the Fergusons and a few others; but these were obliged to wait until there was sufficient demand to warrant the establishment of an exchange.
The telegraph operator of the village was a young fellow who had been a schoolmate of both Phil and Phoebe Daring, although he was some few years their elder. Dave Hunter had gone to St. Louis to study telegraphy and afterward served as an assistant in several cities until he finally managed to secure the position of operator in his home town.
The Hunters were nice people, but of humble means, and Dave was really the breadwinner for his widowed mother and his sister Lucy, a bright and pretty girl of Phoebe’s age. Encouraged by her brother’s success, Lucy determined to become a telegraph operator herself, as many girls are now doing; but to avoid the expense of going to a school of telegraphy Dave agreed to teach her during his leisure hours. In order to do this he stretched a wire from his office to his home, two blocks away, and placed instruments at either end so that Lucy could practice by telegraphing to her brother and receiving messages in reply.
She was getting along famously when Phoebe Daring and Nathalie Cameron called on her one day and were delighted by her ability to telegraph to her brother.
“Why, it’s as good as a telephone, and much more fun,” declared Phoebe, and Nathalie asked:
“Why couldn’t we have telegraphs in our own houses, and get Dave to teach us how to use them? Then we could talk to one another whenever we pleased – rain or shine.”
The idea appealed to Phoebe. Lucy telegraphed the suggestion to her brother and he readily agreed to teach the girls if they provided instruments and stretched wires between the various houses. That would be quite an expense, he warned them, and they would have to get permission from the village board to run the wires through the streets.
Nothing daunted, they immediately set to work to accomplish their novel purpose. Marion Randolph, the eldest of the Randolph children, was home from college at this time and entered heartily into the scheme. They were joined by Janet Ferguson, and the four girls, representing the best families in the village, had no trouble in getting permission to put up the wires, especially when they had the judge to argue their case for them.
Dave, seeing he could turn an honest penny, undertook to put up the wires, for there was not enough business at the Riverdale telegraph office to demand his entire time and Lucy was now competent to take his place when he was away. He connected the houses of the Darings, the Randolphs, the Camerons and the Fergusons, and then he connected them with his own home. For, as Lucy was the original telegraph girl, it would never do to leave her out of the fun, although she could not be asked to share the expense.
Lucy seemed a little embarrassed because Dave accepted money for his work and for teaching the four girls how to operate. “You see,” she said one day when they were all assembled in her room, “Dave has lately developed a money-making disposition. You mustn’t breathe it, girls, but I’ve an idea he’s in love!”
“Oh, Lucy! In love?”
“He’s been very sweet on Hazel Chandler, the postmaster’s daughter, of late, and I sometimes think they’ve had an understanding and will be married, some day – when they have enough money. Poor Hazel hasn’t anything, you know, for there are so many in the Chandler family that the postmaster’s salary and all they can make out of the little stationery store in the post office is used up in living.”
“It’s used up mostly by Mrs. Chandler’s social stunts,” declared Nathalie. “She’s proud of being the leader of Riverdale society, and a D. A. R., and several other things. But doesn’t Hazel get anything for tending the shop and handing out the mail when her father is away?”
“Not a cent. She’s lucky to get her board. And when she’s not in the shop her mother expects her to do housework. Poor thing! It would be a relief to her to marry and have a home of her own. I hope Dave’ll manage it, and I’d love to have Hazel for a sister,” said Lucy. “Mind you, girls, this is a secret;
