They smiled at each other; it was so obvious that Anthony refrained from saying, "Lucky creature."
Presently they moved toward the house—first Pearl, bearing Horatius still wrapped in Anthony's motoring coat; then Durland, most solicitous lest the dog should be too heavy for Miss Exeter; then Anthony carrying his shoes and coat and waistcoat; and then Antonia, dancing about. They approached the house in a quiet and rather sneaky way, by the kitchen entrance. Anthony had no wish to meet his sister, who supposed that he had been grilling a criminal. The children felt grave doubts that their mother would welcome Horatius at all—not that she was a cruel woman, but that she feared strange curs about the house. Fortunately the cook, who had a great weakness for Antonia, was cordial, and allowed Horatius to dry out behind the kitchen stove.
It was now high time to dress for dinner, so there was a good excuse for stealing softly up the back stairs.
While Anthony was tying his tie a knock came at the door, and Edna came in with the manner of a person confidently expecting important intelligence.
She said in a low voice, but with an immense amount of facial gesticulation to take the place of sound, "Albertson told me you had an interview. What did you find out?"
For the first time Anthony realized that he had been an hour in the company of the false Miss Exeter without having even asked her true name. He might at least have done that. A weak man would have answered irritably that what between stray dogs drowning and Edna's children interrupting he had not had an opportunity to ask the woman anything. But he was not weak. He simply told her the truth. He saw that she accepted the story with reservations. A drowning dog was all very well, but how about her pearls?
Dinner ought to have been a terrible meal, with Edna bitter and suspicious and the two detectives looking in at the window every now and then—just to show that they were on the job; but, as a matter of fact, it was extremely gay and pleasant. Antonia was allowed to hover about the room in honor of her uncle's return, and Pearl and Anthony were—or appeared to be—in the highest spirits.
Need it be recorded that Pearl had on her best dress? It was a soft, black, shining crêpe which she had run up one afternoon in the spring when she felt most depressed about not being able to find a position. Dressmaking often lightened her black moments; it was to her an exciting form of creation. It had been quickly and casually done, but it had turned out well. Round her neck she wore the silliest little string of bright blue-glass beads, which someone had once given a doll of Antonia's in the dead past when Antonia played with dolls, and which Antonia herself occasionally wore. Antonia had left them in Pearl's room, for her new-found personal neatness did not as yet extend to the care of her possessions, and in an impulse Pearl had put them on and found the result good. So did Antonia.
"Oh, see!" she said as they sat down at table. "She has on my beads."
"Fancy Miss Exeter wearing someone else's beads!" said Edna in a tone hard to mistake for a friendly one.