"Have the man arrested?"
"Of course not, my dear. It's worth the money just to learn what talents
the fellow possesses. Tell me, Patsy," he continued, as the other nieces
joined them, "what did you pay for your book?"
"Five dollars. Uncle. He said--"
"Never mind what he said, my dear. It's all right. I wanted it to add to
my collection. So far I've got three 'Lives of the Saints'--and I'm
thankful they're not cats, or there'd be nine lives for me to
accumulate."
CHAPTER X.
THE MYSTERY DEEPENS.
Ethel Thompson came over the next day, as she had promised, and the
sweet-faced, gentle school-mistress won the hearts of Uncle John's three
nieces without an effort. She was the eldest of them all, but her
retired country life had kept her fresh and natural, and Ethel seemed no
more mature than the younger girls except in a certain gravity that
early responsibility had thrust upon her.
Together the four laughing, light-hearted maids wandered through the
pines, where the little school-ma'am showed them many pretty nooks and
mossy banks that the others had not yet discovered. By following an
unsuspected path, they cut across the wooded hills to the waterfall,
where Little Bill Creek made a plunge of twenty feet into a rocky basin
below. In spite of the bubbles, the water here showed clear as crystal,
and the girls admiringly christened it the "Champagne Cup.
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