"He would fancy himself an amateur detective at once," she said to her aunt. Whereupon that lady returned grimly she would gladly become a detective for the time being if she thought there was any chance of finding the wretches, but that such people usually hid their tracks too well. Nevertheless, Barbara noticed that she eyed her fellow-men with great suspicion, and one day she persisted in pursuing a stout gentleman with blue glasses, whom she declared was the solicitor in disguise, till he noticed them and began to be nervously agitated.
"I'm sure it isn't he, aunt," Barbara whispered, after they had followed him successfully from Notre Dame to St. Etienne, and from there to Napoleon's Tomb. "He speaks French—I heard him. Besides, he is too stout for the solicitor."
"He may be padded," Aunt Anne said wisely. "People of that kind can do anything. There is something in his walk that assures me it is he, and I must see him without his spectacles."
Barbara followed rather unwillingly, though she could not help thinking with amusement how the family would laugh when she wrote and described her aunt in the role of a detective. She was not to be very successful, however, for, as they were sauntering after him down one of the galleries of the Museum, the blue-spectacled gentleman suddenly turned round, and in a torrent of French asked to what pleasure he owed Madame's close interest, which, if continued, would cause him to call up a gendarme. "If you think to steal from me, I am far too well prepared for that," he concluded.
"Steal!" Aunt Anne echoed indignantly. "We are certainly not thieves, sir, whatever you may be." Barbara was thankful that apparently his knowledge of English was so slight that he did not understand the remark. It was not without difficulty that she prevailed upon her aunt to pass on and cease the wordy argument, which, she pointed out, was not of much good, as neither understood the other's language sufficiently well to answer to the point.
"We shall have all the visitors in the Museum round us soon," she urged, with an apprehensive glance at the people who were curiously drawing near, "and shall perhaps be turned out for making a disturbance."
"Then I should go at once to the English ambassador," Aunt Anne said with dignity. "But, as I have now seen his eyes and am assured he is not the man we want, we can pass on," and with a stately bow, and the remark that if he annoyed her in future she would feel compelled to complain, she moved away, Barbara following, crimson with mingled amusement and vexation.