The hare burst into high speed again and disappeared, almost before Tom Jonah set out for him.
"Come back, Tom Jonah!" shouted Tess. "Why, you couldn't catch that bunny if you had started ahead of him."
"Wow! that's a good one," said Neale O'Neil. "Tell you what, Aggie, those small sisters of yours are right full of new ideas."
"That is what teacher says is the matter with Robbie Foote," remarked Sammy, thoughtfully.
"How is that?" asked Agnes, expecting some illuminating information from the standpoint of a lower grade pupil.
"Why," Sammy explained, "teacher asked Rob what was the plural of man. Rob told her 'men.' Then, of course, she had to keep right on at it. If you do answer her right she goes right at you again," scoffed Sammy. "That's why I don't often answer her right if I can help it. It only makes you trouble."
"Oh! Oh!" chuckled Neale. "A Daniel come to judgment."
"Wait. Let's hear the rest of Sam's story," begged Agnes. "What was Robbie Foote's idea?"
"That's what teacher said--he was full of ideas, only they were silly," went on Sammy. "When he'd told her 'men' was the plural of 'man,' she said: 'What is the plural of child?' He told her 'twins.' What d'you know about that? She said his ideas were silly."
"I'm not so sure he was silly," laughed Neale.
"I wonder what has become of those Birdsall twins," Agnes said thoughtfully. "Up here in this wild country--"
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Neale. "You don't know anything of the kind. Those two girls that fisher-woman spoke about--"
"Well, that doesn't prove anything. We don't even know that the two at the fisher-village were twins."
"But they were brother and sister roaming about--runaways and alone."
"Oh, Aggie!" he cried, "don't make up your mind a thing is so without getting some real evidence first. Mr. Howbridge asked, and he is not at all sure those stragglers were the twins."
"Somehow I just feel that they were," sighed the second Corner House girl, with a confidence that Neale saw it was useless to try to shake.
When Agnes Kenway made up her mind to a thing Neale wagged his head and gave it up.
The party was quite too jolly, however, to bother much about the lost Birdsall twins just then. Even Mr. Howbridge had said nothing about them since his cross-examination of the hotel-keeper back at Coxford.