“All right, come on—but your blood be upon your own head,” warned Burd, with a grin.
After they had gone Jessie and Darry looked at each other and laughed.
“I am almost as curious as Amy to meet Aunt Emma,” confessed Jessie. “She must be a very unusual person.”
“She is kind-hearted and full of pep and fun, but as domineering as they make ’em,” pronounced Darry. “Just the same, this trip to Forest Lodge is a mighty fine idea. I prophesy we won’t have a slow minute while we are up there.”
“How do we go, and when?” asked Jessie, with a mounting impatience to start on this adventure.
“As soon as you girls are ready, I suppose,” returned Darry. “And as for our means of transportation, I gather from what Burd has let drop that we will drive up in Miss Alling’s car—Aunt Emma driving,” he finished, with a chuckle.
“Well, as long as Aunt Emma doesn’t try to put up our radio set for us, we won’t complain,” laughed Jessie.
“Speaking of radio,” Jessie said suddenly, the matter of the five-dollar bill coming to her mind, “have you heard anything about the circulation of counterfeit money, Darry?”
The latter shook his head and looked surprised. Jessie told him of the special radio announcement that had come to them the night before and of their subsequent finding that the five-dollar bill in Amy’s possession was a counterfeit.
Darry listened with interest, but his chief concern seemed to be for Amy and the loss of her five dollars.
“Hard luck,” he laughed. “Now she will have to do without George Washington sundaes for the next six months to make up.”
“But the poor girl who gave her that five-dollar bill——”
“Poor girl!” exploded Darry, sitting up straight in his seat to stare at Jessie in astonishment. “I am used to your kind heart, Jess, but this is more than I could expect, even of you. Why pity a girl who passes a counterfeit bill? She probably is one of a gang of counterfeiters.”
“Oh, I should hate to believe that,” said Jessie, quickly. “Somehow, she didn’t look exactly dishonest.”
“Yet she gave you—or Amy, rather—a counterfeit bill in exchange for five good ones,” Darry argued. “That doesn’t seem exactly honest, you know.”
“Just the same, I don’t intend to believe any one guilty until the guilt is proved,” said Jessie, stoutly, and Darry, from the superior heights of his age, bent upon her a tolerant smile. Despite his slightly patronizing manner, Darry really regarded this chum of Amy’s as one of the squarest, most companionable girls he knew. For her age, he conceded, magnanimously, she sure was a wonder!