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showed as yet no interest in the subtleties of local lives and events. They would come to it, no doubt, in the fullness of time. At the moment they were both busy waving their legs and examining their fingers, perhaps speculating on the desirability of getting one or more of these small but shapely digits into their respective mouths. Dittany studied them with a mother’s pride and a mother’s foreboding.
    “Osbert, I think we’d better get these kids home before they start yelling. Okay, Zilla, we’ll check out the post office and get Arethusa to work her wiles on Polly. Why don’t you two get hold of some pegs and string and begin staking out the area we want dug up?”
    “Someone had better see Mr. Glunck too,” said Osbert.
    “There might be something useful in the museum files.”
    “I thought of asking Grandsire Coskoff whether he’d ever heard of a mule skinner named Hiram Jellyby getting shot out in Hunnikers’ Field,” said Zilla. “Grandsire wouldn’t have known Hiram himself, I shouldn’t think, unless he’s been lying about his age all these years, but his father might have.”
    “That’s a good idea,” said Osbert. “Grandsire might also have heard talk about a payroll robbery that happened back before the turn of the century. It would be nice to know where the gold came from.”
    “It would be nice to know whether there ever was any gold in the first place.” Minerva Oakes still wasn’t buying that spectral mule skinner. “Before you try nailing Grandsire Coskoff about any big gold robbery, you’d better find out from Dot whether his hearing aid’s back from the repair shop. You know what Grandsire’s like when he gets going on something you don’t want to listen to and can’t hear you trying to shut him off.”
    “It might be interesting to get him in a room with Mrs. James and her two-string dulcimer some time and see who comes out ahead,” said Dittany.
    “Just so I’m not around the day you decide to try it.
    Dittany, you really are your mother’s daughter. I just hope Annie here doesn’t take after Clorinda’s side of the family.”
    Minerva pushed back her chair and buttoned her cardigan.
    “All right, then, Zilla, I’ll go home and change my shoes and get that big ball of heavy twine we use to mark the trails on the Enchanted Mountain.”
    “Then I’ll bring my hatchet and an armload of kindling wood that we can chop up for pegs,” her friend agreed. “I suppose we might as well each carry a shovel as well. Not that we’ll need ‘em, but just to start the ball rolling.”
    “Good thinking, ladies.” Osbert collected his offspring, one under each arm, and went to push the outsize baby carriage out of the way before somebody stumbled over it. Ethel followed close at his heels, emitting naggish whines and whoofles, somewhat to Osbert’s annoyance, though he didn’t complain out loud because he knew that Ethel meant well.
    The Monks didn’t live very far from Zilla; indeed, it was next to impossible for anybody to live any great distance from anybody else in Lobelia Falls. They did take rather a long time getting home, though, because they kept being intercepted by sundry fellow citizens wanting to know what was up. Dittany, skilled in the intricate diplomacy of her native heath, told the simple truth about Zilla’s desire to get a start on readying the soil for next year’s community garden. She told this truth with just enough extra earnestness to convince her hearers that she was stringing them along for dark and devious reasons.
    Osbert was subtler still. He merely smiled vaguely at all interrogations and didn’t say much of anything, thus making his interrogators assume he was trying to give the impression that his mind was drifting off to imaginary arroyos, as it so often did, whereas in fact he must be thinking about something far closer to hand that he wasn’t about to mention.
    By the time they did at last reach home and look out their kitchen