“Not by profession, but I’m fond of it. And I flatter myself I could discover a secret passage if such existed.”
“I flatter myself I could, too,” said Dunn, but not boastfully. “Yet, I may have overlooked it. I’d be obliged, Mr North, if you’d come up to the house, and give it the once over. You might spot what I failed to see.”
“But I don’t know the people at all——”
“No matter; I ask you as a matter of assistance. Come up there tomorrow, will you?”
North promised to do so, and Dunn turned to Eleanor Varian.
“Sorry to trouble you, Miss Varian, but I have to ask you some very definite questions. First, do you know your relatives up there pretty well?”
“Why, yes,” said Eleanor, with a surprised look. “They live in New York and we live in Boston, but we visit each other now and then and we often spend our summers at the same place. Of course, I know them well.”
“Then, tell me exactly the relations between Miss Varian and her father. Don’t quibble or gloss over the facts,—if they were not entirely in accord it will be found out, and you may as well tell the truth.”
Eleanor Varian looked thoughtful.
“I will tell the truth,” she said, “because I can see it’s better to do so. Betty and her mother are much more in sympathy with one another than Betty and her father. I don’t know what makes the difference, but Aunt Minna always seems to want everything the way Betty wants it, while Uncle Fred always wants just the opposite.”