own you were coming--but she
didn't."

"What are you making, Miss Letitia?" Aggie asked sweetly. "Summer
clothes?"

"Yes. Some little thin things--it's getting so hot!"

"Humph! I see you are making them with an upholsterer's needle!" said
Aggie, and marched down the hall with her head up.

I was quite bewildered. For even if Tish had decided on a walking tour I
couldn't imagine what an upholsterer's needle had to do with it, unless
she meant to upholster the donkey.

We got down to the entrance before Aggie spoke again. Then:

"What did I tell you?" she demanded. "That woman's making her a----"

But at that very instant there was a thud under our feet and something
came "ping" through the floor not six inches from my toe, and lodged in
the ceiling. Aggie and I stood looking up. It had made a small round
hole over our heads, and a little cloud of plaster dust hung round it.

"Somebody shot at us!" declared Aggie, clutching my arm. "That was a
bullet!"

I stooped down and felt the floor. There was a hole in it, and from
somewhere below I thought I heard voices. It was not very comfortable,
standing there on top of Heaven knows what; but we were divided between
fear and outrage, and our indignation won. With hardly a word we went
back to the rear staircase and so to the cellar. Halfway down the stairs
both of us remembered the same thing--that it was Tish's day to use the
basement laundry, and that perhaps----

Tish was not in the laundry, nor was Hannah, her maid. But Tish's
blue-and-white dressing sacque was on the line, and the blue had run, as
I had said it would when she bought it. In the furnace room beyond we
heard voices, and Aggie opened the door.

Tish and Hannah were both there. They had not heard us.

"Nonsense!" Tish was saying. "If anybody had been hit we'd have heard a
scream; or if they were killed we'd have heard 'em fall."

"I heard a sort of yell," said poor Hannah. "I don't like it, Miss Tish.
The time before you just missed me."

"Why did you stick your arm out?" demanded Tish. "Now take that
broomstick and we'll start again. Did you score that?"

"How'll I score it?" asked Hannah. "Hit or miss?" She went to the
cellar wall and stood waiting, with a piece of charcoal in her hand. The
whitewashed wall was marked with rows of X's and ciphers. The ciphers
predominated.

"Mark it a miss."

"But I heard a yell----"

"Fiddle-de-dee! Are you ready?" Tish had lifted a small rifle into