"I should say I do remember it!" Laura agreed. "He is in the hospital yet, and he doesn't know who he is or where he came from."

"Oh, it's nothing to do with his ident.i.ty," Bobby hastened to say. "It is about the car that ran him down. You know the police never have found the guilty driver."

"Goodness!" gasped Jess. "You surely don't mean----"

"I mean that the car had no chains on its rear wheels. That is all that was noticed about it n.o.body got the number. But I heard Short and Long say he knew somebody who had been driving a car that day without chains. And the boys left us, didn't they, to look up the car?"

"What has that to do with Purt Sweet?" demanded Laura.

"Why, you heard what Billy just said about him and his chains!" cried Bobby. "'He's got nonskid-chains on his wheels to-day, all right.' Didn't you hear him? And he's had a grouch against Pretty Sweet ever since the time--about--that the man was hurt."

"Oh, Purt wouldn't have done such a thing. He might have run the man down; but he would never have run off and left him in the street!"

"I don't know," Jess said. "He'd be frightened half to death, of course, if he did knock the man down."

"I do not believe Prettyman Sweet is heartless," declared Laura warmly.

"The boys are making a mistake. I'm going to tell Chet so."

But when she took her brother to task about this matter she could not get Chet to admit a thing. He refused to say anything illuminating about the car that had run down the stranger at the hospital, or if the boys suspected anybody in particular.

"If we think we know anything, I can't tell you," Chet declared "Billy?

Why, he's always sore at Purt Sweet. You can't tell anything by him!"

Just the same it was evident that the boys were hiding much from their girl chums; and, of course, that being the case, the girls were made all the more curious.

CHAPTER XV

PIE AND POETRY

Laura's sleeves were rolled up to her plump elbows and she had an enveloping ap.r.o.n on that covered her dress from neck to toe. There was flour on her arms, on one cheek, and even on the tip of her nose.

Out-of-doors old Boreas, Jess said, held sway. Shutters flapped, the branches of the hard maple creaked against the clapboarded ell of the house, and there was an occasional throaty rattle in the chimney that made one think that the Spirit of the Wind was dying there.

"You certainly are poetic," drawled Bobby, who had come into the Beldings'

big kitchen, too, and was comfortably seated on the end of the table at which Laura had been rolling out piecrust.

"Now, if that crust is only crisp!" murmured Mother Wit.

"If it isn't," chuckled Chet, stamping the snow off his shoes, "we'll make you eat it all."

"I'm willing to take the contract of eating it, sight unseen, if Laura made the pie," interjected Lance Darby, opening the door suddenly.

"Come in! Come in!" cried Jess. "Want to freeze us all?"

"You would better not be so reckless, Lance," Laura said, smiling. "These are mock cherry pies; and I never do know whether I get sugar enough in them until they are done. Some cranberries are sourer than others, you know."

"M-m! Ah!" sighed Chet ecstatically. "If there is one thing I like----"

Lance began to sing-song:

"'There was a young woman named Hooker, Who wasn't so much of a looker; But she could build a pie That would knock out your eye!

So along came a fellow and took 'er!'"

"Oh! Oh! We're all running to poetry," groaned Chet. "This will never do."

"'Poetry,' indeed!" scoffed Jess Morse. "I want to know how Lance dares trespa.s.s upon Bobby's domain of limericks?"

"And I wish to know," Laura added haughtily, "how he dares intimate that I am not 'a good looker'?"

"'_Peccavi!_"' groaned Lance. "I have sinned! But, anyway, Bobby is off the limerick business. Aren't you, Bobby?"

"She hasn't sprung a good one for an age," declared Chet.

"A shortage," sighed Laura.

"Gee Gee says the lowest form of wit is the pun, and the most execrable form of rhyme is the limerick," declared Jess soberly.

"Just for that," snapped Bobby, "I'll give you a bunch of them. Only these must be written down to be appreciated."

She produced a long slip of paper from her pocket, uncrumpled it, and began to read:

"'There was a fine lady named Cholmondely, In person and manner so colmondely That the people in town From n.o.ble to clown Did nothing but gaze at her, dolmondely.'

Now, isn't that refined and beautiful?"

"It is--not!" said Chet. "That is only a play upon p.r.o.nunciation."

"Carping critics!" exclaimed Lance. "Go ahead, Bobby. Let's hear the others."

As Bobby had been saving them up for just such an opportunity as this, she proceeded to read:

"'There lived in the City of Worcester A lively political borcester, Who would sit on his gate When his own candidate Was pa.s.sing, and crow like a rorcester!"

"Help! Help!" moaned Chet, falling into the cook's rocking chair and making it creak tremendously.

"Don't break up the furniture," his sister advised him, as she took a peep at the pies in the oven.

"'Pies and poetry'!" exclaimed Jess. "Go ahead, Bobby. Relieve your const.i.tution of those sad, sad doggerels."

Nothing loath, the younger girl, and with twinkling eyes, sing-songed the following:

"'There was a young sailor of Gloucester, Who had a sweetheart, but he loucest'er.

She bade him good-day, So some people say, Because he too frequently boucest'er.'