"Oh, I wish I were Sherlock Holmes!"
"Oh, I wish I were Sherlock Holmes!"
"Mercy! what for?" cried Cynthia. "I'm sure I don't!"
"Why, do you suppose Sherlock would have been all this time getting at the final facts about our Boarded-up House? Of course not! He'd have had it all worked out and proved by now!" Joyce got to her feet and began roaming about restlessly. Suddenly she stopped in front of her companion.
"I tell you, Cynthia, it haunts me! I can't explain to you why, but I feel there is something we haven't discovered yet,—something we ought to know. It isn't just 'idle curiosity' as Professor Marlow would call it! I never knew or heard of anything that went so—so deep in me as this thing has. That poor, loving, proud mother, and her terrible misunderstanding with her splendid son!— He was right, too, I can't help but think. But was she in the wrong? I suppose we can't judge about how people felt in those days. The whole thing is so different now,—all forgotten and forgiven! But I've read that the Confederates considered their cause almost a—a religion. So of course she would have felt the shock of what her son did, terribly. And think how he must have felt, too!
"And then to lose his life, almost in the beginning! Perhaps he and his mother might have made it all up after the war was over, if he'd only lived. It's—it's the saddest thing I ever heard!" Cynthia had risen too, and they linked arms, strolling up and down the little orchard as they talked.
"I feel exactly as you do about it, though I don't often speak of it," said Cynthia. "But, by the way, did it ever strike you that we might find it interesting to look over some of the books in that old library? Some of them looked very attractive to me. And even if it didn't lead to anything, at least it would be good fun to examine them. I love old books! Why not do it this afternoon?"
"Just the thing!" agreed Joyce. "I've thought of that too, but we've never had much chance to do it, till now. This afternoon, right after lunch!"