Mrs. Bybee's stern, long, hatchet-shaped face had softened marvelously, but at Sally's eager request she shook her head emphatically.
"Not with the police looking for you and Dave. Yes, I saw her. She's all crippled up with rheumatism and was tickled to death to see Nora Ford's sister. That's who I said I was, you know. But it pretty near got me into trouble. The old lady took it for granted I knew a lot of things about you that I didn't know, and wouldn't have told me just what I'd come to find out if I hadn't used my bean in stringing her along. I had to go mighty easy asking her about you, since it was my 'sister' I was supposed to be so het up over finding, but lucky for you she'd been reading the papers and knew that you were in trouble."
"Oh!" Sally moaned, covering her hot face with her little brown-painted hands. "Then Gramma Bangs thinks I'm a bad girl--oh! Did you tell her I'm not?"
"What do you take me for--a blamed fool?" Mrs. Bybee demanded heatedly. "I didn't let on I'd ever seen you in my life. But it was something she let spill when she was talking about you and this story in the papers that give me the low-down on the whole thing."
"Oh, what?" Sally implored, almost frantic with impatience.
"Well, she said, 'You can't blame Nora for putting Sally in the orphanage when the money stopped coming, seeing as how she was sick and needing an operation and everything. But it pret' near broke her heart'--that's what the old dame said--"
"But--I don't understand," Sally protested, her sapphire eyes clouding with bewilderment. "The money? Did she mean my--father?"
"I thought that at first, too." Mrs. Bybee nodded her bobbed gray head with satisfaction. "But lucky I didn't say so, or I'd have give the whole show away. I just 'yes, indeeded' her, and she went on. Reckon she thought I might be taking exceptions to the way she'd been running on about how pitiful it was for 'that dear little child' to be put in an orphans' home, so she tried to show me that my 'sister' had done the only thing she could do under the circumstances.
"Pretty soon it all come out. 'Nora,' she said, 'told me not to breathe a word to a soul, but seeing as how you're her sister and probably know all about it, I reckon it won't do no harm after all these years.' Then she told me that Nora Ford had no more idea'n a jack rabbit whose baby you was--"