Farnsworth looked at her. "What do you mean, Mona?"
"What I say; are you sure?"
"Funny thing to ask. Well,—I am and—I'm not."
"Now, what do you mean?"
"I'll tell you." And then he told her how queer he thought it that Azalea had had no letters from her father since her arrival,—nor any letters at all from Horner's Corners.
"And she's so sly about it," he wound up; "why once she wrote a letter to herself, and pretended it was from her father!"
"I can't make it out," Mona mused. "If her father were dead, she'd have no reason to conceal the fact. Nor if he had remarried. And if he has done anything disgraceful—maybe that's it, Bill! Maybe he's in jail!"
"I've thought of that, Mona, and, of course, it's a possibility. That would explain her not getting letters, and her unwillingness to tell the reason. But,—somehow, it isn't very plausible. Why shouldn't she confide in me? I've begged her to,—and no matter what Uncle Thorpe may have done, it's no real reflection on Azalea."
"No; but now I've something to tell you about the girl."
Mona gave him a full account of the moving-picture play that she and Patty had visited, and told him, too, of Patty's distress over the pictures of Fleurette.