"What did you think of it?" asked Becky Burdett.
"We were surprised, of course," Janet acknowledged, "but then we expected to be surprised. We started out to meet surprises on the way, and we didn't know at first but that it was one of them. We thought it was all pre-arranged, and when Mr. Austin came in, we thought he belonged to the performers."
"Then when did you begin to suspect?"
"When he brought in his son and began to talk of sending us to a lunatic asylum."
The girls screamed with delight.
"But we calmed down when his son took the matter in hand. Oh, girls, but when he asked us if we were from the Blind Asylum, it was too much."
The girls broke out into a second roar of laughter.
"It is so funny," cried Fay rocking back and forth in glee. "Go on, Janet. What did you think we were up to?"
"We hadn't an idea. We couldn't believe you had enlisted your fathers and brothers in the cause, and we were puzzled to know why you sent us to a place where we were not expected, till Mr. Austin, (Van, his father called him), suggested that we had been left at the wrong house. He really was a second Sherlock Holmes in the way he ferreted out the truth."
"He is a college man himself, and knows the ways that are dark," Becky told them.