“They do keep you hangin’ around here.” Blumpitty looked wearily at the crowd. “Guess I’ll go and make an appointment with Baumgarten for right away after breakfast to-morrer.” He moved off with the giant at his side and the small wife at his heels.
Hildegarde hurried back to Madeleine’s, where behold Mrs. Mar and Harry!
“The boys began to fuss when they read in the papers about Mr. Dorn being ill.”
“Oh, it’s all right—about me, I mean,” said Hildegarde.
“I told you it would be,” Mrs. Mar said to Harry. “Now, here we are in a town where every hotel is full to overflowing, and Jacob Dorn dying—to judge by the way Madeleine behaves. But she always was a little theatrical—that girl.”
“No, her husband is very ill. I feel I oughtn’t to be here myself, really.” Obvious enough Hildegarde’s dismay at the apparition of her family. Ignorant as she was, already she had learned how little help the average person could be about this undertaking. The Blumpittys were different. She told about them.
Mrs. Mar no sooner heard of their existence than she said: “Now, if you could travel with a respectable couple—” In vain Hildegarde pointed out she was going on another ship. Anyhow, those people could tell Hildegarde things—they could advise. Anybody but Hildegarde would have had them here and pumped them well. The girl, in a subdued voice, reminded her mother that it was a house whose owner lay dangerously ill.
“The very reason! Mr. Dorn isn’t advising you, as he promised. You must find some one who will. Oh, you are slow-witted! Where are those people staying with their foolish name? You don’t even know their address? Well, upon my soul, it’s a good thing we did come, after all! How you’ll ever be able to get on by yourself, I don’t know.” In a trice Mrs. Mar had despatched Harry to scour Seattle, to ransack every hotel register in the place, “And don’t come back here without those Blumpittys.”
When, at four o’clock, there was no news either of Harry or them, Hildegarde and her mother set out together—having told the Japanese servant to keep anybody who called, as they’d be gone only half an hour. If the Blumpittys, Mrs. Mar said, were not among the crowds in the principal street, they’d very probably be on that water front Hildegarde had written about.
But no, not a Blumpitty to be seen. On their way home—the giant. “He might know—he’s a friend of theirs,” Hildegarde said.