"Tish is going on a walking tour with a donkey, Lizzie," Aggie had told me -- and here we found Tish at work with a needle.

"What are you making, Miss Letitia?" Aggie asked Tish sweetly. "Summer clothes? With an upholsterer's needle?"

I was quite bewildered about all this. For even if Tish had decided on a walking tour I couldn't imagine what an upholsterer's needle had to do with it -- unless she meant to upholster the donkey.

At that very instant there was a thud under our feet and something came "ping" through the floor not six inches from my toe, and lodged in the ceiling. Aggie and I stood looking up. It had made a small round hole over our heads, and a little cloud of plaster dust hung around it.

"Somebody shot at us!" declared Aggie, clutching my arm. "That was a bullet!"

Best known for her detective novels, Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958) also wrote a widely popular series of amusing stories about a dauntless spinster and her two cohorts . . . including The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry, Tish, and More Tish.