CHAPTER IX
DORIS HAS A NEW THEORY
“WELL, for gracious sake!” was all Sally could reply to this astonishing remark. And a moment later, “How on earth do you know?”
“I don’t know. I’m only guessing at it,” replied Doris. “But I have one or two good reasons for thinking we’ve been on the wrong track right along. And if I’d known about her before, I’d have thought so long ago.”
“But what is it?” cried Sally again, bursting with impatience and curiosity.
“Sally,” said Doris soberly, “I’m going to ask you not to make me explain it all just yet. I would if I had it all clear in my mind, but the whole idea is just as hazy as can be at present. And you know a thing is very hard to explain when it’s hazy like that. It sounds silly if you put it into words. So won’t you just let it be till I get it better thought out?”
“Why, yes, of course,” replied Sally with an assumed heartiness that she was far from feeling. Truth to tell, she was not only badly disappointed but filled with an almost uncontrollable curiosity to know what Doris had discovered about her secret that she herself did not know.
“And I’m going to ask you another thing,” went on Doris. “Do you suppose any one around here knows much about the history of Miss Camilla and her family? Would your grandfather be likely to know?”
“Why, yes, I guess so,” replied Sally. “If anybody knows I’m sure it would be he, because he’s the oldest person around here.”
“Then,” said Doris, “I want you to let me talk to your grandfather about it. We’ll both seem to be talking to him together, but I want to ask him some questions very specially myself. But I don’t want him to suspect that we have any special interest in the thing, so you try and make him talk the way you did that night when he told you all about the wrecks, and the Anne Arundel. Will you?”
“Oh, yes,” agreed Sally. “That’s easy. When shall we do it? This afternoon? I think he’ll be down at the Landing, and we won’t have any trouble getting him to talk to us. There aren’t many around the Landing yet, ’cause the season is so early, and I’ll steer him over into a corner where we can be by ourselves.”