It was only to Ruth and Agnes that the small girls related the details of their surprising adventure. And Agnes did not understand entirely, and was much troubled over the identity of the girl who had befriended her sisters in so strange a fashion.
Ruth had no difficulty in guessing who she was. It was the girl with the Gypsies who had masqueraded as the queen. The oldest Corner House girl was sure that it was she. And Ruth understood that she must be striving to get away from the Gypsies.
"I hope she won't go so far from here that I shall never see her again," thought Ruth. "For she was interested in Rosa Wildwood, I am sure; and it might be that she could tell me something about Rosa's missing sister."
While Agnes put forth many "guesses" and "supposin's" about the strange girl, Dot had quite another problem in her enquiring mind. And finally, as they were getting ready for bed that night, she threw out a leading question which attracted the immediate attention of her three sisters:
"Say, Ruthie," she asked, "how do frankfurters grow?"
"What?" gasped Agnes, and clapped a hand over her own mouth to keep from laughing.
"How do they _grow_, dear?" returned Ruth, rather taken aback herself.
"Goodness gracious, child!" exclaimed Tess. "They don't grow on bushes like pea-pods."
"Oh, no, of course not!" ejaculated Dot, who did not like to be considered ignorant. "A frankfurter flies, doesn't it?"
"Oh! I mean it crawls--it _creeps_. Of course," Dot hurried to add.
Agnes exploded here. She could not keep in any longer.
"Well, I think you're real mean!" complained Dot. "You won't tell me. I guess it's a fish, then. Does it _swim_?"
"Then they come in bunches like bananas!" declared the frantic Dot.
_This_ was the worst yet. Agnes rolled on the matting of the bedroom and almost choked. Ruth herself was laughing heartily at her small sister as she gathered her into her arms and told her just how the sausage-meat was stuffed into the frankfurters' skins.
"Well!" murmured Dot, at last, and rather sleepily. "I don't care. I believe they are the very _nicest_ things there are to eat--so there! Those the frankfurter man gave us were perfectly lovely."
That was what suggested the Frankfurter Party, and the Frankfurter Party was one of the very happiest thoughts that Ruth Kenway ever evolved. We shall have to hear about it, in another chapter.