Aunt Judith, and looking up into her shrewd face.

"Why, yes," Aunt Judith replied, "only I'm lonesome without Rose, and
some anxious about the hens."

A sigh of relief escaped the other woman's lips, but she did not
explain.

"She's so worried about her own affairs that she simply didn't notice
what I was talking about," she thought.

Realizing that Aunt Judith's mind was so full of her own interests that,
for the time, she could think of nothing else, she dropped church
matters, and asked when she had heard from Rose.

And while in the cool shade of the large trees, they talked of the tiny
cottage, its garden, the chickens, and most of all, Rose, matters near
the hen-coop were becoming rather lively.

Aunt Judith watching to see if Gyp intended to return, did not dream
that he was watching her.

He saw her enter the cottage, and waited until she left the house to
saunter down the avenue.

Then he ran across the little open field from the wood, and, crouching
behind the back fence, near the coop, again waited until he felt sure
that she was not simply in the house of some neighbor, but, instead, had
gone to the "square."