But her chiefest and most conspicuous feature was her hand bag. She carried it everywhere and never seemed to be without it. The bag was once brown leather but again time had collected its toll, and the bag looked now like something the rummage sale couldn’t get rid of. It was large enough to carry a half dozen of eggs which Nancy often traded with the dealers for other commodities, and it was flat enough to go in her basket, and had a clasp! It was that clasp that fascinated Nancy.
All these details were as familiar to the Barbend folks as was Nancy herself, but while introducing her in her oddities, it is best to take a good look.
Gloria now confronted the woman with something of a scornful smile on her lips. She was so glad that Tommy did not have to answer that foolish accusation! Being a normal girl with a sense of justice ever ready to assert itself, she felt at first very much inclined to tell the old-young lady just what she thought of her, but the small crowd just emerging from the post office were too plainly eager for a lark. Gloria was not quite good natured enough to satisfy them.
All this time Nancy kept talking. What she said did not matter in the least, her voice was so strident it supplied what her words might have lacked in the way of force.
“Say, Mrs. Trivett,” said Gloria after a long wait filled with the other’s cackling, “when and where did you lose that money?”
“Haven’t I told you? I laid it right down on the basket of tomatoes—”
“Come on over to Sam’s,” suggested Gloria.
“Haven’t I looked everywheres? Do you suppose I would go all day without that money that I had set aside for the fire insurance, if it was in Sam’s store?”
Nevertheless, she followed Gloria. Only a dim light fell from a center lamp around the dingy place, but the baskets of vegetables were easily shifted. Gloria went to work with a will. Sam looked on indifferently, all he asked was that his stuff be handled carefully. But the money did not come to light.
“What did you carry it in?” asked Gloria, as the next step in her systematic investigation.
“Why, in my bag, of course,” replied Nancy, indignant that such a question should be put to her.
“Oh, see here!” and Nancy’s indignation mounted. “Do you suppose I’m such a fool—”