carrying such gossip. "I should know you had called upon Miss Ann
Titus," she observed. "I hope you didn't hear anything worse than this."

"I heard her canary sing," confessed Tess; "and her little dog, Wopsy,
was snoring dreadfully on the sofa. But I guess I didn't hear anything
else. Where's Dot?"

"I'm sure I do not know," Ruth said placidly, while Luke wiped his eyes,
still chuckling in a subdued way. He saw that he was beginning to hurt
Tess' feelings and he was too kind-hearted to wish to do that. "Dot must
be somewhere about the house."

Tess went to look for her. Her tender conscience punished her for having
spoken to her little sister so shortly when she was starting on her
errand to Miss Ann Titus. But how else could she have gotten rid of the
"tagging" Dorothy!

Just now, however, Dot seemed to have mysteriously disappeared. Nobody
had seen her for more than an hour. Tess went to the fence between their
own and the Creamers' yard and "hoo-hooed" until Mabel appeared.

"Ain't seen her," declared that young person, shaking her head. "I tried
to get you and her over here a long time ago. My mother let me make some
'lasses taffy, and I wanted you and Dot to come and help. But I had to
do it all alone."

"Was it good?" asked Tess, longingly.

"It _looked_ luscious," admitted Mabel scowling. "But that young 'un got
at it when it was cooling on the porch and filled it full of gravel. I
broke a tooth trying to eat a piece. Want some, Tess?"

"No-o," Tess said. "I guess not. I must find Dot."

But she did not find Dot. She wandered back to the front of the Corner
House just as Mrs. Pinkney, rather wild-eyed and disheveled, appeared at
the side fence on Willow Street and called to Ruth:

"Have you seen Sammy?"

"Have you seen Dot?" repeated Tess, quite as earnestly.

Ruth was finally shaken out of her composure. She rose from her seat,
folding the work in her lap, and demanded:

"What do you suppose has become of them? For of course, if neither Sammy
nor Dot can be found, they have gone off somewhere together."

CHAPTER XIII

THE HUE AND CRY

Ruth Kenway's suggestion bore the stamp of common sense, and even the
excited mother of Sammy Pinkney accepted that as a fact. Sammy had been
playing almost exclusively with the little Corner House girls of late
(quite to his anxious mother's satisfaction, be it said) and if Dot was
absent the boy was in all probability with her.

"Well, he certainly