“Oh!” exclaimed the girl in expostulary tone, “I am not a guest. My name is—Bobbie Burr. Mrs. Kingdon hired me to do plain sewing for the children and to care for the linen.”
There was no trace of a seamstress in the plain but elegant garb and appointments of the young girl, and Mrs. Merlin was at a loss as to the proper establishment of the newcomer.
“Maybe,” she said to Kurt hesitatingly, “the room the last nursery governess had—”
“Any room will do,” said the girl hurriedly, as she followed Mrs. Merlin.
Kurt went down the road which Jo and Pen had taken. He felt the need of a pipe and solitude to help him figure out this puzzling problem, and soon he was sending a jet of smoke up to the branches of the tree which he had selected for a resting place.
Who was this girl whose belongings betokened money, and yet who said she had come to do plain sewing? Enlightenment came with the recollection that she had been sent by Mrs. Kingdon and was doubtless one of her protégées. The name she had given sounded demimondish, and she was a friend of Pen’s! The thought made him wince. She had seemed to him some way isolated from her kind, with naught in common with them save her profession. To find he was mistaken brought him an unpleasant shock.
A sound of wheels around the curve; the clatter of hoofs. In a moment they came into his vision—the prancing team, the merry driver and—the thief. Delicate as a drop of dew, as lovely as a forest blossom, her voice, bird-like and rippling, wafted to him from the clear aromatic air, she inverted again all his theories and resolutions.
He walked toward them, his hand raised.
Jo reined in.
“Will you get out and walk up to the house with me?” Kurt asked her, the question given in the form and tone of command.