“I wish she’d be either more explicit or less,” she said.  “We’ll be arrested again.  I know it!”

[Now and then Tish’s enthusiasms have brought us into collision with the law—­not that Tish has not every respect for law and order, but that she is apt to be hasty and at times almost unconventional.]

“You remember,” said Aggie, “that time she tried to shoot the sheriff, thinking he was a train robber?  She started just like this—­reading up about walking-tours, and all that.  I—­I’m nervous, Lizzie.”

I was staying with Aggie for a few days while my apartment was being papered.  To soothe Aggie’s nerves I read aloud from Gibbon’s “Rome” until dinner-time, and she grew gradually calmer.

“After all, Lizzie,” she said, “she can’t get us into mischief with two wooden pails and a package of oatmeal.”

Tish and Hutchins came promptly at eight and we got into the car.  Tish wore the intent and dreamy look that always preceded her enterprises.  There was a tin sprinkling-can, quite new, in the tonneau, and we placed our wooden pails beside it and the oatmeal in it.  I confess I was curious, but to my inquiries Tish made only one reply:—­

“Worms!”

Now I do not like worms.  I do not like to touch them.  I do not even like to look at them.  As the machine went along I began to have a creepy loathing of them.  Aggie must have been feeling the same way, for when my hand touched hers she squealed.

Over her shoulder Tish told her plan.  She said it was easy to get fishing-worms at night and that Hutchins knew of a place a few miles out of town where the family was away and where there would be plenty.

“We’ll put them in boxes of earth,” she said, “and feed them coffee or tea grounds one day and oatmeal water the next.  They propagate rapidly.  We’ll have a million to take with us.  If we only have a hundred thousand at a cent apiece, that’s a clear saving of a thousand dollars.”

“We could sell some,” I suggested sarcastically; for Tish’s enthusiasms have a way of going wrong.

But she took me seriously.  “If there are any fishing clubs about,” she said, “I dare say they’ll buy them; and we can turn the money over to Mr. Ostermaier for the new organ.”

Tish had bought the organ and had an evening concert with it before we turned off the main road into a private drive.

“This is the place,” Hutchins said laconically.

Tish got out and took a survey.  There was shrubbery all round and a very large house, quite dark, in the foreground.

“Drive onto the lawn, Hutchins,” she said.  “When the worms come up, the lamps will dazzle them and they’ll be easy to capture.”

We bumped over a gutter and came to a stop in the middle of the lawn.

“It would be better if it was raining,” Tish said.  “You know, yourself, Lizzie, how they come up during a gentle rain.  Give me the sprinkling-can.”