“You will start to-morrow.”
“Wish it were to-day.”
“And you will first inquire, not for O. B., that’s too indefinite; but for a young girl by the name of Doris Scott. She holds the clew; or rather she is the clew to this second O. B.”
“Another woman!”
“No, a child;—well, I won’t say child exactly; she must be sixteen.”
“Doris Scott.”
“She lives in Derby. Derby is a small place. You will have no trouble in finding this child. It was to her Miss Challoner’s last letter was addressed. The one—”
“I begin to see.”
“No, you don’t, Sweetwater. The affair is as blind as your hat; nobody sees. We’re just feeling along a thread. O. B.‘s letters—the real O. B., I mean, are the manliest effusions possible. He’s no more of a milksop than this Brotherson; and unlike your indomitable friend he seems to have some heart. I only wish he’d given us some facts; they would have been serviceable. But the letters reveal nothing except that he knew Doris. He writes in one of them: ‘Doris is learning to embroider. It’s like a fairy weaving a cobweb!’ Doris isn’t a very common name. She must be the same little girl to whom Miss Challoner wrote from time to time.”
“Was this letter signed O. B.?”