"What did I want you to read it for? Is it possible that you don't see,--that you don't understand?"

"Understand what? We don't know these Smithsons."

"But we do know these--Smiths."

"Agnes, you don't mean--"

"Yes, I do mean that I believe--that I am sure that these Smiths are those very identical Smithsons."

"Oh, Agnes, what makes you think so? Smith is such a very common name, you know."

"Yes, I know it; but here is a girl whose name is Smith, and she is with a Mrs. Smith, her aunt, and they are staying at a summer resort near Boston. How does that fit?"

"Oh, Agnes, it does look like--as if it must be, doesn't it?" cried Dora, in a sort of shuddering enjoyment of the sensational situation.

"Of course it does. I knew I was right about those people. I knew there was something queer and mysterious about them. And what do you think,--only yesterday I happened to go into the little parlor, where there are writing-materials, and there sat this very Peggy Smith directing a letter; and when she went out, I happened to cast my eyes at the blotting-pad she had used, and I couldn't help reading--for it was just as plain as print--the last part of the address, and it was--'South America'!"

CHAPTER IV.

"I don't believe it! I don't believe it!" said Tilly Morris, indignantly, as Dora wound up her recital of the Smithson-Smith story.

"Well, you can believe it or not; but I don't see how you can help believing, when you remember that their name is Smith, and that they are aunt and niece, and that the niece is fourteen or fifteen,--just as the paper said,--and that they are staying at a summer resort not far from Boston, and--that the niece writes to some one in South America,--think of that!"

Tilly thought, and, flushing scarlet as she thought, she burst out,--

"Well, I don't care, I don't care. I'm not going to talk about it, either. How many people have you--has Amy--has Agnes told?"

"I haven't told anybody but you yet. I've just come from Agnes."

"Yet! Now, look here, let me tell you something, Dora. My father, you know, is a lawyer, and I've heard him talk a great deal when we've had company at dinner about queer things that people did and said,--queer things, I mean, that got them into lawsuits. One of the things that I particularly remember was a case where a woman told things that she had heard and things that she had fancied against a neighbor, and the neighbor went to law about it, prosecuted the woman for slander, and they had a horrid time. The woman's daughters had to go into court and be examined as witnesses. Oh, it was horrid; and the worst of it was that even though there was some truth in the stories, there were things that were not true,--exaggerations, you know,--and so the woman was declared guilty, and her husband had to pay a lot of money to keep her out of prison. There was ever so much more that I've forgotten; but I recollect papa's turning to us children at the end, and saying, 'Now, children, remember when you are repeating things that you have heard against people, that the next thing you'll know you may be prosecuted for what you've said, and have to answer for it in the law courts.'"

Dora looked scared. "Well, I'm sure," she began, "I haven't repeated this to anybody but you; and if Agnes--"

"What's that about me?" suddenly interrupted Agnes herself, as she came up behind the two girls. Dora began to explain, and then called upon Tilly to repeat her story of the lawsuit.

"Oh, fiddlesticks!" cried Agnes, angrily, after hearing this story; "you can't frighten me that way, Tilly Morris. We can't be prosecuted for telling facts that are already in the newspapers."

"But we can be for what isn't. It isn't in the newspapers that this Mrs.

Smith and her niece are these Smithsons."

"Well, Tilly Morris, I should think it was in the newspapers about as plain as could be. What do you say to this sentence?" And Agnes pulled from her pocket the Smithson article she had cut out, and read aloud: "'An older child--a daughter of fourteen or fifteen--was left behind in this country with Smithson's brother's widow, who has also taken the name of Smith. They are staying at a summer resort not far from Boston;'

and what do you say to that letter addressed to some place in South America?"

"I say that--that--all this might mean somebody else, and not--not these--our--my Smiths. What did your mother say when you told her, and showed the paper to her?"

"I didn't tell her; I didn't show her the paper. We never tell mamma such things; she is a nervous invalid, and it would fret her to death,"

Agnes responded snappishly.

"Well, I don't believe it's my Smiths; I believe it's somebody else,"

flashed back Tilly, with tears in her eyes and in her voice.

"Oh, very well; you can stand up for your Smiths, if you like; but you'll find they are--"

"Hullo! What's the little Smith girl done now? Agnes, I should think you'd get tired of rattling about the Smiths," interposed a voice here.

It was Will Wentworth's voice; he had come out on the piazza just as the girls were pa.s.sing the hall door.

Agnes started back nervously at the sight of him. "I think you are very rude to listen and spring at anybody like this," she said.

Will looked at her in astonishment. "I haven't been listening, and I didn't spring at you," he responded indignantly. "I simply met you as I came out, and heard you say something about the Smiths."

"What did you hear?" asked Agnes, quickly.

"I heard you say to Tilly, 'Stand up for your Smiths if you like;' and I knew by that you'd been going for Miss Peggy, and Tilly had been defending her." Will's bright eyes, as he said this, suddenly observed that there was something unusually serious in the girl's face. "What's the matter?" he inquired; "what's up now?"

Agnes put her hand into her pocket, and Tilly drew in her breath with a little gasp, and braced herself to come to the defence again when Agnes should answer this question, as she fully expected her to do, by producing the cutting from the newspaper and repeating her accusations.

But when Agnes drew her hand forth, there was no slip of paper in it, and all the answer that she made to Will's question was to say in a mocking tone,--

"Ask Tilly; she knows all the delightful facts now about Miss Peggy and her highly respectable family."

The decisive tone in which this was said, the significant expression of the speaker's face as she glanced at Tilly, and Tilly's own silence at the moment impressed Will very strongly, as Agnes fully intended; and when a minute later she slipped her hand over Dora's arm, and went off with her toward the tennis ground, and Tilly refused to tell him what this something that was "up" was, honest Will felt convinced that the "something" must be very queer indeed.

Poor Tilly saw and understood at once the nature of the impression that Will had received; but what could she do? It was certainly better to keep silence than to speak and tell that dreadful, dreadful story of "Smithson, alias Smith." Even, yes, even if it was true,--for Tilly, spite of her vehement defence, her stout declaration of disbelief at the first, had a shuddering fear at her heart as she thought of that last paragraph about the girl of fourteen or fifteen, and of that letter to South America,--a shuddering fear that the story might be true; but even then she would not be one of those to point a finger at poor innocent Peggy; for, whatever her father might have done, Peggy was innocent.

There was one person, however, that Tilly could speak to, could ask counsel of, and that, of course, was her grandmother. Grandmother, she was quite sure, would agree with her that the story was not to be chattered about; and even if it were true that Mrs. Smith and Peggy were those very Smithsons, neither was to blame, but only, as she had heard her father say once of the family of a man who had proved a defaulter, "innocent victims who were very much to be pitied."

But perhaps--perhaps grandmother would not believe that Mrs. Smith and Peggy were "those Smithsons," and perhaps she would find some careful way to investigate the matter and prove that they were not. With this hope springing up over her fears, Tilly flew along the corridor to her grandmother's room.

"What! what! what!" cried grandmother, as she listened to the story; "I don't believe a word of Agnes's suspicions. There are millions of Smiths in the world."

"But did you hear what I said about that last paragraph,--the girl of fourteen or fifteen, and--and the letter,--the letter to South America?"

asked Tilly, tremulously.

"In what paper was it that Agnes found the statement?"

"It was some morning paper: I don't know which one,--I only remember seeing the date."

Grandmother rang the bell, and sent for all the morning papers. When they were brought her, she put on her spectacles and began the search for "Smithson, alias Smith." One, two, three papers she searched through; and at last there it was,--"Smithson, alias Smith!"

Tilly watched her grandmother as she read with breathless anxiety, and her heart sank as she noticed how serious was the expression on the reader's face as she came to the last paragraph.

"Oh, grandmother," she cried, "you do believe it may be our Smiths."

"Well, yes, my dear, I believe that it may possibly be, that's all; but it may not be, just as possibly."