Mystery Cases of Letitia Carberry, Tish. Mary Roberts Rinehart
like a fish, and I daresay if I had not pinched her she would have told the whole miserable story then and there. Not that I am ashamed of it—I am not too old, thank the Lord, to know real love when I see it—but Aggie has no sense of proportion, and in her telling, what was pure romance would have become merely assault and battery, with intent to compound a felony.
"I reckon. Miss Lizzie," Carpenter said, addressing me, "that you and Miss Tish and Miss Aggie didn't take the Witch Hazel out last night and forget to bring her back, did you?"
Aggie shut her mouth and swallowed.
"Certainly," I retorted sarcastically. "We decided to take a midnight row yesterday evening, but the boat leaked. In the middle of the lake it filled and sank under our feet."
Tish gave me an awful look, and snapped:
"I suppose if we'd taken your boat out, we'd have brought it back, not being mermaids."
"That's what I argued down at the camp," he meditated. "I said to them, 'you boys have been up to some devilment or other, and I'll git you yet. It ain't likely that them three old—them three ladies that can't row a stroke or swim a yard would take the Witch Hazel out in the middle of the night in a storm, sink the boat, and swim home four miles in time to put up their crimps and get breakfast.' "
"Thirtainly not," Aggie said with injured dignity, "I can't thwim a thtroke."
Carpenter spat on one of our whitewashed cobblestones. "It's what you might call ree-markable," he observed. "Not another soul on the island, and won't be 'til the Methodist camp meeting next week; one of the boys at the Watermelon Camp with a blanket on instead of his pants and a bandage on his head, and the Witch Hazel stole last night by somebody who cut through her painter with a pair of scissors and takes her out with two oars that ain't mates."
The young man with the kimono dropped it carelessly into Aggie's lap and straightened with a glance at her stricken face.
"Scissors!" he repeated. "Oh, come, Abe, you're no detective. How the mischief do you know whether the rope was cut with scissors or chewed off?"
Abe dived into his pocket and brought up two articles on the palm of his hand.
"Scissored off or chewed off," he said triumphantly. "Take your choice."
There, gleaming in the sunlight, were TisKs buttonhole scissors and Aggie's upper teeth!
"Found them in four feet of water at the end of the boat dock," he said, "where I left the Witch Hazel last night. If them teeth ever belonged in a fish, then I'm a dentist."
I remember the next ten minutes through a red haze; I knew in a dim way that Aggie had clutched at her teeth and disappeared; I heard from far off Tish's voice, explaining that Aggie had dropped the scissors in the water the previous afternoon, and had lost her teeth while lying on the dock trying to fish them up —the scissors, of course—with a hairpin on the end of a string. And finally, with the line of the waterfront undulating before my dizzy eyes like a marcel wave—which is a figure of speech and not a pun—I realized that Carpenter and the sleeveless and neckless young man from the camp were retreating down the path, and I knew that the ordeal was over.
I believe I fainted, for when I opened my eyes again Tish was standing in front of me with a cup of tea, and she had been crying.
"You needn't feel so badly about it," I said, when I had taken a sip of the tea. "There are times when to lie is humanity."
"It isn't that," Tish whimpered, breaking down again, "but—but the wretches didn't believe me!"
"No," I echoed sadly, "they didn't believe you."
"I could think of so many better ones now," she wailed.
"Never mind," I said, with a feeble attempt to console her, "they won't jail us for lying, anyhow. We are reasonably safe, Tish, unless Mr. Carleton has Aggie arrested for assault and battery."
But he did not. The only court concerned was the marriage license court, from which you will know that this is a love story. Even if it does begin with a mangy dog.
At least Aggie said it was mange; her parrot had the same moth-eaten look before it died. But Tish has always maintained that it was fleas. She says they breed in the grass, and attack dogs in swarms in hot weather.
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