"We've been up here all afternoon," said Roberta tiredly. "We can't stay in the attic three weeks hiding till everybody forgets."
"We'd starve."
"What'll we do, then? Do you think anyone saw and followed us?" They looked at each other.
"No. Nobody saw."
The town was silent, all the tiny houses putting on lights. There was a smell of watered grass and cooking suppers from below.
"Time to put on the meat," said Miss Fern. "Frank'll be coming home in ten minutes."
"Do we
dare go down?"
"Frank'd call the police if he found the house empty. That'd make things worse."
The sun went swiftly. Now they were only two moving things in the musty blackness. "Do you," wondered Miss Fern, "think he's dead?"
"Mister Quartermain?"
A pause. "Yes."
Roberta hesitated. "We'll check the evening paper."
They opened the attic door and looked carefully at the steps leading down. "Oh, if Frank hears about this, he'll take our Green Machine away from us, and it's so lovely and nice riding and getting the cool wind and seeing the town."
"We won't tell him."
"Won't we?"
They helped each other down the creaking stairs to the second floor, stopping to listen.... In the kitchen they peered at the pantry, peeked out windows with frightened eyes, and finally set to work frying hamburger on the stove. After five minutes of working silence Fern looked sadly over at Roberta and said, "I've been thinking. We're old and feeble and don't like to admit it. We're dangerous. We owe a debt to society for running off--"
"And--?" A kind of silence fell on the frying in the kitchen as the two sisters faced each other, nothing in their hands.
"I think that"--Fern stared at the wall for a long time-- "we shouldn't drive the Green Machine ever again."
Roberta picked up a plate and held it in her thin hand. "Not--ever?" she said.
"No."
"But," said Roberta, "we don't have to--to get rid of it, do we? We can keep it, can't we?"
Fern considered this. "Yes, I guess we can keep it."
"At least that'll be something. I'll go out now and disconnect the batteries."
Roberta was leaving just as Frank, their younger brother, only fifty-six years, entered.
"Hi, sisters!" he cried.
Roberta brushed past him without a word and walked out into the summer dusk. Frank was carrying a newspaper which Fern immediately snatched from him. Trembling, she looked it through and through, and sighing, gave it back to him.
"Saw Doug Spaulding outside just now. Said he had a message for you. Said for you not to worry--he saw everything and everything's all right. What did he mean by that?"
"I'm sure I wouldn't know." Fern turned her back and searched for her handkerchief.
"Oh well, these kids." Frank looked at his sister's back for a long moment, then shrugged.