But Short and Long started on a quick trot for home, and left his friends to stare after him. It was Bobby who did most of the staring, however. She said to Jess and Laura, after they had parted from the other boys:
"What do you know about that boy? I'm just wise to him. I believe I know what is the matter with Short and Long."
"Do you mean," asked Laura, "what makes him act so to Purt?"
"You have guessed my meaning, Mother Wit."
"What is the trouble between them?" demanded Jess. "Although Billy never was much in love with Purt Sweet."
"Don't you two girls remember the Saturday night that man was hurt on Market Street?"
"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 identity," 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 Nobody 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!"