"Don't let the other girls hear, Ruth Kenway," she said, with much mystery. "But Mrs. Bobster is the oddest thing!"
"Well! I guess she is," laughed Ruth. "But she's _good_."
"Good as gold," agreed Rosa. "But she has some funny ways. Of course I go to bed early. The doctor told me I should."
"You'd think she'd go to bed early, too, when she's up so soon in the morning?"
"Well----I suppose that's a matter of taste," Ruth observed.
"Anyway, you know how lonesome it is over there?"
"I guess there are not many people about--after dark."
"That's just it!" cried Rosa. "Mrs. Bobster scurries around and does all her out of doors chores before dark. And she locks and bolts all the doors. She is really afraid after dark."
Ruth nodded. She remembered how once the little old woman who lived in a shoe had spoken to her about being afraid.
"Well, she locks and bolts the doors," said Rosa, "and then we have supper and I go to bed. Sometimes, like a good child, I go right to sleep. Sometimes, like a bad child, I _don't_."
"Then I hear Mrs. Bobster talking. She has company. I never hear the company come in, or go out; but she has it every night."
"Not a word," said Rosa. "I hinted once or twice that she must have company every night, and all she said was that she didn't like sitting alone."
"I don't know," laughed Rosa. "That's one of the funny things about it. Although I hear Mrs. Bobster sometimes chattering like a magpie, I never hear an answer."
"That's right," said Rosa, nodding confidently. "Whoever it is talks so low that I haven't heard his, or her, voice yet!"
"Maybe. At any rate, I couldn't tell you for the life of me whether it is a man or a woman that comes to see the little old woman who lives in a shoe. Isn't it odd, Ruth?"
"But she treats me well," sighed Rosa. "I wouldn't do her any harm for the world. But I _am_ awfully curious!"
It was this day, too--the day of Dot's party--that the wooden-legged clam-digger came along through the Willowbend tent colony again. He always came to the tent of the Corner House girls when he appeared; Ruth was a regular customer, for she and her sisters were fond of shellfish.
"I'll have fifty to-day, Mr. Kuk," she said to the saltish individual when he hailed her from outside the tent. Ruth had learned that his name was Habakuk Somes; everybody along the beach called him "Kuk," and Ruth, to be polite, tagged him with "Mister" in addition.